Avant .:. Private Room

Whether you like slow jams or not, you have to hand it to Avant—he is a boy who gets the girl. On songs like “Av” and “Hooked,” Avant drips with a sophisticated sleaze. He’s a smooth rider. There’s only one reason to buy this CD, and if you need me to spell it out, you probably don’t need to own it.

The rhythm behind producer Stizzle’s beats spell out a slow grind, and Avant’s lyrics—reproduced in full in the lyric book, down to “You will be my feast/Mm mm/something sweet to eat/Mm mm”—are designed to fast-forward the evening straight to an intimate moment on a very comfortable couch. Avant has exactly one mode, and that’s sexing U up. We get to hear the whole thing on two different songs, first on the interlude to the lush “Phone Sex (That’s What’s Up),” and then on “Read Your Mind,” as Av convincingly lays down the law—“I know you wanna rub/I know you wanna touch/I know you wanna see/I know you wanna be/in my B-E-D.” Tell it, Av.

Dalek .:. Deadverse Massive, Vol. 1 (rarities)

Dalek, the hip hop duo, or the instrumental group with a vocalist, or the industrial group—or whatever you want to call them—comes alive and seems to almost actively duck the “rarities” moniker that’s attached to Deadverse Massive. It’s a sprawling collection of songs that is hip hop at its core, but shrouded in shadowy vocals, layered and echoed, together with grinding music that sometimes sidesteps the beat but never loses it. This is Massive Attack before they became a party band: slow, loud hip hop that specializes in ambient noises that shouldn’t work but do. Their beats are made of guitars and synths alongside crashes, wheezes, frequently disconcerting noises that sound like a 1950s computer going crazy and rampaging Manhattan—and yet, the Dälek duo never let up sounding slow, sultry and darkly, fiercely sexual. Reminiscent of Dan the Automator, but only in a good way—like, in their New Jersey basement, they stumbled upon the first Dr. Octagon album, decided that it contained the secrets of the universe, and retold it in their own image. And they keep on telling.