The plan for this feature was to let my pet stegosaurus Little Sammy review a bunch of records. Unfortunately, as the deadline approached he became gripped by what he described as "a state of mammoth existential ennui" and has therefore been unable to do very much music criticism (although he has criticized me for watching Much Music - does that count?). In fact, he's spent the last two weeks reclining at the centre of a large velvet cushion, re-reading the complete works of Albert Camus (for the third time). Anyway, I was able to get him to dictate some responses to the CDs we've been listening to recently (when he hasn't been moping along with Low's Things We Lost in the Fire on his headphones). To help him complete this task (which he described as "Sisyphusan", whatever that means ) we devised a rating system of one to five dinosaurs - one dinosaur being really crappy, two being crappy, three being average, four being good and five being really fucking good. To fill out the rest of the space, I've written some comments of my own but I should add that I am in no way as discerning as the dinosaur.
Let's start by taking a look at what's happening on the local scene in our adopted home-town of Vancouver. The biggest local release of recent month has to be Destroyer's Streethawk: A Seduction. This album comes in the wake of Dan Bejar (AKA, for all intents and purposes, Destroyer) quitting his part-time job in The New Pornographers. Presumably, he was repelled by the wide critical notoriety and moderate commercial success achieved by the Vancouver supergroup's superb album, Mass Romantic. Bejar, it appears, is something of a militant anti-careerist and this kind of involvement in the music business causes offence to his delicate soul's artistic purity. So, if you thought Destroyer's last album (Thief) was an impassioned poison-pen letter to an industry that could, and probably would, make Dan a star, just imagine the outpouring of bile that constitutes Streethawk. Perhaps surprisingly, given the album's acerbically anti-commercial lyrical content, this is Destroyer's most focused and polished collection of music to date. Bejar started off his "career" as a mercurial lo-fi noodler, gradually refining his craft and putting together a band, eventually arriving at a style firmly rooted in the sound of Eno/Cale art school glam. But, while Streethawk, is essentially '70s rock with unusually bitter lyrics, the whole thing adds up to (if you'll excuse the unusually pertinent cliché) much more than the sum of its parts. Bejar's obtrusively literate couplets, unique nasal delivery and imaginative song structures are the catalysts that allow this remarkable gestalt reaction to take place. That is to say: this guy's got serious talent. Let's just hope he allows his excellent new album to get the widespread hearing it deserves.

Little Sammy says: Anyone with this much anger and self-pity fermenting in the pit of his stomach is okay by me. I award it FOUR DINOSAURS. Also let's not forget excellent local releases by Pop Boffin interviewees Beans (Crane Wars) and Jerk With a Bomb (The Old Noise). The Dixie's Death Pool album is also pretty good in a Gastr Del Sol kind of a way (I can't remember the title. It's on the CD case, which is right by my cushion but I can't get the strength up the reach over and grab it because I'm feeling particularly drained right now.)

Yes Sammy and let's not forget Un Jin's Rain Jacket. UJ seems intent on humanizing experimental electronica with some unusually lithe rhythms, a little live jazz instrumentation and a few world music samples. Occasionally, the results are drearily tasteful but, when things start to get somewhat more daring, interesting dissonances emerge - both harmonic and stylistic.

Little Sammy says: Yeah, it's okay. I'd give it THREE DINOSAURS. It's better than most of the mediocre electronica out there.

Oh yes, we know all about that, don't we Sammy. Remember that split CD by David Abir and Ashley Wales. Well, for the benefit of our many readers, it came to us courtesy the Sulfur/Sulphur label run by Robin Rimbaud (aka Scanner). As with all Scanner products, it comes weighted down by rhetoric ("…breaking the mould, dissolving expectations…") that the flimsy musical contents can't support. Needless to say, my expectations were not dissolved. The first half of the CD features a piece by composing newcomer David Abir. It's a pleasant-enough slice of post-minimalist ambience, which sounds not unlike a very long Spiritualized B side. The second half of the programme is filled by Ashley Wales of fair-to-middling "intelligent drum'n'bass" duo Spring Heel Jack. His "Landscape" is as tediously predictable as its title suggests. None of this music is really bad, as such. It's just that, if you really want to hear this kind of thing, you'd be better off going back to one of Eno's original ambient recordings from the '70s. These musicians attempting to recapture the magic of those classic releases is hardly more admirable than trying to recreate, say, "Tommorow Never Knows".

Little Sammy says: It's not that it's bad, it's just that I have a very low tolerance for mediocrity. I'll be generous and award it TWO AND A HALF DINOSAURS. At least it's not as bad as Neotropic's La Prochaine Fois, which is currently competing with Prefuse 73's Vocal Studies and Uprock Narratives for the Most Disappointing Album of the Year award.

Wait a second there little Sammy! Riz Maslen - aka Neotropic - has gained quite a reputation for herself via a series of releases on which she has achieved a style of electronic music that is gritty, militant and compelling. Moreover, La Prochaine Fois is Maslen's most ambitious work to date and sees her collaborating with The Verve's guitarist and a string arranger who has scored Manic Street Preachers songs. Wait a second… did I just say "Manic Street Preachers"??? Yes readers, Little Sammy was right all along - Le Prochaine Fois is a perfectly dreadful piece of empty, pretentious middlebrow crap. Clearly disenchanted with bleeping away at music industry's margins, Maslen has decided to go for the prize - the Mercury Music Prize, that is. After the atrocious new Mugwai (sic) album, this is 2001's second most desperate attempt to win Britain's embarrassing "Booker Prize for music". Why a musician whose track record is so solid should wish to debase herself in this way is beyond me. I sat through La Prochaine Fois's soupy new age muzak a couple of times and even watched the accompanying Quicktime film of clichéd nonsense, just willing it to get better. It didn't. Consequently, one has to conclude that only really committed Mike Oldfield fans should come within a mile of this dishearteningly banal epic.

Little Sammy says: Damn! Low are on this album. What a fucking criminal waste of talent that turned out to be. Pull yourself together Maslen. I'm giving you TWO DINOSAURS. If you want to learn how to combine harsh electronic textures with dreamy harmoniousness, then I suggest you take a few pointers from Fennesz's new album Endless Summer.

I'm glad you brought that up little Sammy. The Fennesz record reminds me of a couple of other great records that came out this year, namely Kid 606's GQ on the EQ++ and Oval's truly astounding Ovalcommers. In rejecting the austere, cerebral nature of most abstract electronic music in favour of shameless, noisy bliss-out, these records have hinted at a crucial and important new approach to music. This is a type of digital psychedelia which thrives on flux and contradiction; which refuses to be tied down to constricting formalism; which shows no mundane purpose in its pursuit of sheer sonic abandon. Oval's process-fixated Markus Popp would doubtless object to this optimistic appraisal but after hearing Endless Summer, I am more convinced than ever that electronic music has turned an important corner in the year 2001. Fennesz is an Austrian musician who began his career as an avant rock guitarist. Even though he has since made his reputation as a "laptop musician" the electric guitar is, by all accounts, still the major sound source on his recordings. Over the last few years these recordings have documented Fennesz's perfecting of a musical form that eschews traditional rhythm and harmony in favour of highly textured threads of sound. By 1999's formidable Plus Forty Seven Degrees 56' 37" Minus Sixteen Degrees 51' 08" (Touch) he'd pretty much cracked it. But the release that most fans of digital music seem to remember most fondly is Fennesz Plays (Rhiz) a single on which the maestro "covered" The Rolling Stones' "Paint it Black" and - prophetically - The Beach Boys "Don't Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)". Here the disquieting laptop language of clicks, glitches, drones and hisses was counter-pointed with the comforting-but-melancholy certainties of '60s pop harmony. Perhaps sensing that people liked this kind of thing and that - quite frankly - it might be time to lighten up a little, Fennesz has provided his "home" label - Vienna's estimable Mego - with a whole album of the stuff. Yes indeed, it's time for music lovers to rejoice because - from Tina Frank's lovely retro-futurist sleeve art to the closing pops and crackles of "Happy Audio" - Endless Summer is a bona fide classic; a significant and profoundly enjoyable piece of work. It starts off slowly. "Made in Hong Kong" is a restrained take on Fennesz's usual textured amorphousness. But he doesn't wait long to hit us with the motherlode. Soon the title track rears up to launch itself on a mission to encapsulate everything that makes this album truly great. Throughout this languidly sprawling epic, plangent acoustic guitar chords are repeatedly attacked by swarms of decrepit digital detritus. Again and again they emerge to astonish the listener with their unfettered emotional directness. What's crucial here is this simple fact: beauty is more keenly felt when it's under threat. So, rather than shattering the harmony, Fennesz's harsh timbres actually accentuate it. This is crucial given the album's relation to the Wilson brothers (Endless Summer was also the title of a 1974 Beach Boys compilation). At their best Brian and co underscored their tales of sunny joy and childlike innocence with a resigned melancholy and a creeping sense of dread. In this context, the title takes on an ironic aspect - it becomes an impossible dream, an autumnal reverie. This yearning melancholy may be a result of Fennesz's experiences as a married man in demand at art/music festivals across the world. Titles like "Got to Move On" and "Before I Leave" call up images of Christian on the beach in, say, Melbourne, using the laptop to Email his far-off wife and kids. Long may he yearn for them if the upshot is that he keeps pitting his expert noise manipulations against wistful vibraphone melodies ("Caecilia") and surging Hammond organ chords ("Before I Leave") - we're all a lot better off for it. It's true: the world is a considerably better place because of the existence of this record. Album of the millennium.

Little Sammy says: The rule is that no album can get more than five dinosaurs. This is the exception that proves the rule. SIX DINOSAURS.

Endless Summer is just one of many excellent records put out by Mego over the last few years. I've been thinking a lot recently about how I came to be so attached to this label's music and, well, everything else about it too. It led me into a few theories that I'd like to share with you. When a new record label really makes waves, it's often because it releases every record like it could be the last. This may be made material in iconoclastic musical content, imaginative packaging or the simple fact that the owners really might not be able to afford to put out another record. At such a moment it can be genuinely exhilarating to ponder what they might unleash upon the world next, if finances allow for it. Once such a label's initial impact on music fans has come back to it in the shape of (ahem) "the Benjamins", it will find itself poised to move in either one of two directions. Kid 606's Tigerbeat6 label is currently at this parting of the ways and it will be interesting to see which path the kiddie cat decides to prowl upon. The fist option is this: After the company starts to achieve a modicum of success its releases start to come more frequently and seem less definitive. After a while it becomes hard to keep up with - let alone get excited about - them. Such is the case with Montreal's Constellation label. In the aftermath of Godspeed You Black Emperor!'s apocalyptic appearance on the scene, the Quebec collective seemed like a hive of creativity and commitment. Sadly, that impression has been lessened by countless releases of varying quality, each having more or less to do with the imprint's flagship act. The latest Constellation album comes from Hanged Up, an instrumental duo peddling an unconventional combination of drums and viola. Their self-titled debut certainly sounds fine - echoing elements of The Dirty Three and Einsturzende Neubauten. But it doesn't feel exciting or important. After repeated listens, one is left with the impression that this record exists because it can, not because it has to; that it is the product of a clique enjoying its success by resting on its laurels. In contrast, San Francisco-based underground hip-hop label Anticon has used its recent increase in success to keep pushing the envelope and provoking responses. Man Overboard by Halifax's Buck 65 is just one drop in the label's increasingly torrential outpouring of claustrophobic, literate and emotional "post-rap" (their term, not mine). Made soon after the death of the artist's mother, it's an expressionistic odyssey that delves into bereavement, heartache, paranoia, humour and the true meaning of hip-hop. What's most remarkable is that Man Overboard is pretty typical of Anticon's output. Most everything the label releases is steeped in the kind of need that you just can't fake; is the kind of music that can only be made by people who have found true sustenance and redemption in their chosen form. It may not be real hip-hop but, in these irony-soaked times, it's about as real per se as music gets. Only Mego can compete with Anticon in terms of un-contrived commitment to sonic brinkmanship. Both companies are proof that success doesn't necessarily lead to mediocrity. The people at Constellation might be well advised to follow these examples. Then again, if their hearts just aren't in it any more, it could already be too late.

Little Sammy says: I give Hanged Up THREE DINOSAURS and a stern "must try harder". I give Buck 65 FOUR AND A HALF DINOSAURS because I can, like, totally relate to what he's saying, y'know? I should point out that there are plenty of good underground hip-hop LPs coming out on labels other than Anticon. There's that cLOUDDEAD thing, for example.

Good point Little Sammy but I should add that cLOUDDEAD's self-titled album, which compiles a series of ten-inch singles, is the work of Odd Nosdam, Why? and Dose One, three artists most commonly associated with Anticon - even though this CD is issued by Ninja Tune offshoot Big Dada. These tracks were apparently recorded during particularly traumatic periods in the trio's lives. As such, this compilation represents the latest refinement of an angst-ridden hip-hop style that has been developed by a loose-knit community of mostly white rap fanatics with their roots in the small-town Mid West. Albums like Deep Puddle Dynamics' The Taste of Rain… Why Kneel? (Anticon), Atmosphere's Overcast (Rhymesayers), Sonic Sum's The Sanity Annexe (Mush) and Sole's Bottle of Humans (Anticon) were all seminal in their wedding of traditional rap music to more emotional and atmospheric elements. But it was Boom Bip and Dose One's Circle (Mush) that finally severed the music's stylistic tethers and ventured out onto a stormy ocean of doom-laden abstraction and oddball eclecticism. Since then, the likes of Sixtoo and So-Called Artists have taken up the challenge of Circle and helped to create a specific new rap language, increasingly separate from anything else in hip-hop, either over or under ground. Sadly, these recent developments have awakened the troubling spectres of cultural appropriation and musical stagnation. Even in this light, cLOUDEAD appears as a truly remarkable record born from a deep understanding of hip-hop's inner workings and a desperate need to keep innovating. I'd call it brave but, honestly, it seems like these guys are just doing what they have to, regardless of the socio-cultural context in which they're doing it. Their inner convictions are so strong that they render the external context virtually irrelevant.

Little Sammy says: I'm giving this one a hearty FOUR AND A HALF DINOSAURS.

And if you find the thought of a small pet dinosaur being into hip-hop bizarre you should check out recent developments at yet another label of note, namely K. Yes indeed, Calvin Johnson's Olympia-based K label - champions of all that is pallid and jangly - has decided that being black and funky is where the dope shit is at, G. The latest upshot of this remarkable about-face is COCO, a band who sound exactly like your high school chess club covering songs by legendary punk-funkers ESG. In theory, it's all a bit offensive. In practice, it's pretty good fun.

Little Sammy says: Yeah, for about half a listen. Then it's just annoying. TWO AND A HALF DINOSAURS and not a dinosaur more. If you want a far more successful example of K branching out, listen to that Chicks on Speed album they put out. It was put together by Mego's Ramon Bauer and, as if that ain't recommendation enough, I'm giving it FOUR AND A HALF DINOSAURS.

You might want to take this with a pinch of salt because, although you might love Chicks on Speed, you might just hate them. Still, to miss out on them would be a terrible shame. A band this chaotic, exciting, confounding, hysterical, provocative and - often - downright irritating offers too much fun for fans and foes alike to be written off. Still, many are keen to offhandedly dismiss this bunch of transatlantic art school dropouts, seeing them as hangers-on and charlatans. But to complain that the Chicks have managed to build a career on other people's musical talents plus their own knack for image production and self-promotion is to miss the point. The music on this odds-and-ends compilation, mainly produced by bald Austrian men it seems, is superb raw electronica in its own right. The abstract laptop punk of the Mego label (whose ads the Chicks design) is pitted against the sleazy techno of Patrick Pulsinger (a contributor to the album). Bizarre cover versions (B52s anyone?) rub shoulders with eardrum-popping noise interludes. It's a magnificent mess, to be sure, but a pretty baffling one. When heard in the context of Chicks on Speed's arch conceptualism, though, it really starts to make sense. The almost theatrical element of attitude-heavy concept art here transforms the whole project into a grand, irresponsibly irreverent and malevolently acerbic satire. Contemporary attitudes to gender, electronic music, art and glamour are given a severe kicking. Listening to the album is like picking flesh from the bloodied remains. Disturbing, even upsetting but compelling, evil fun nonetheless. Far less unsettling is, Sunny Border Blue, the latest album from ex-Throwing Muses front-person Kristen Hersh. It's a pretty solid effort but with fewer catchy tunes and somewhat less intricate guitar playing than usual. The real problem is, though, that there's nothing here with the scarifying intensity of the early Muses material.

Little Sammy says: I'm giving it THREE DINOSAURS. It's a pretty poor album but I'm just glad to see she's still making records. The same goes for The Tindersticks and their newest LP, Can Our Love… THREE DINOSAURS.

Little Sammy would support anyone who carried on being a miserable bugger in public for years on end. The new Tindersticks album is crap! They seem to think that their considerable reputation means they don't have to write any more songs. A not insignificant section of the indie record-buying public seems to agree with them, though. Talking of reputations, recent months have seen the release of albums by the type of musical legends who are often discussed but seldom heard. First came a self-titled anthology of work by Swiss experimental post-punk group Liliput (originally known as Kleenex), put together by the Kill Rock Stars label. No disappointments here, just two discs of angular anti-rock weirdness in a Slits/Raincoats stylee. Then came a brand new, also self-titled album by jazz/rock legend David Axelrod on Mo'Wax. Based on tracks recorded in the late '60s for a never-to-be-released Electric Prunes LP (with musicians including Beach Boys bassist Carol Kaye), the album was recently completed with contributions from the likes of rapper Ras Kas and soul singer Lou Rawls. The juxtaposition of old sessions (complete with tape hiss) and new arrangements (often epic orchestrations) is an odd one - which is precisely why the album is such a disconcertingly compelling listen. Finally, we have the '70s German duo Neu! There three LPs - Neu!, Neu! 2 and Neu! 75 - have been officially unavailable since the '70s and have never had a kosher CD release. Until now that is, thanks to a series of major label reissues which should allow the record buying public to find out where Stereolab got that summery drone groove thing from.

Little Sammy says: Neu! gets FOUR DINOSAURS, Neu! 2 gets a mere THREE DINOSAURS for recycling tracks by mastering them at different speeds but Neu! 75 gets FIVE DINOSAURS because it's a bona fide krautrock classic. The Axelrod album is a strange and pretentious piece of work - but then so am I! FOUR DINOSAURS. Liliput could show COCO a thing or two about getting into that punky-funky groove. FOUR STARS also.

If you want a more creative updating of girl punk experimentalism than COCO can provide, try the latest EP from Kathleen Hanna's Le Tigre (From the Desk of Mr Lady). A rather slight collection of songs, maybe, but the anthemic "Get Off the Internet" hints at great things to come on the band's forthcoming second album. Le Tigre also feature on the Mr Lady label's compilation Calling All Kings and Queens, alongside Sleater Kinney, The Butchies, Tracy & The Plastics and V for Vendetta. The compilation suggests a welcome return to Liliput-esque experimentation in the feminist indie rock scene.

Little Sammy says: That's as maybe but a few too many tracks here sound like things that dirge-rock icon Steve Albini would approve of. THREE AND A HALF DINOSAURS. Le Tigre, on the other hand, can do no wrong in my eyes. The EP is little more than a padded-out single but it still gets FOUR DINOSAURS.

While the girls get all angular and rocky, more and more boys are taking to fey dreaminess - perhaps as a response to Limp Bizkit's macho omnipresence. Recent LP's by Badly Drawn Boy associates Alfie and veteran lo-fi noodlers The Nectarine No 9 have hinted at this trend.

Little Sammy says: The Alfie album sounds like The Charlatans UK and should consider itself lucky to get THREE DINOSUARS. Likewise The Nectarine No 9 should feel thankful for their THREE AND A HALF DINOSUARS which is, once again, a mark for longevity as much as anything else. When I'm looking for Mummy's-boy dreaminess, I get more out of Magnetophone's I Guess Sometimes I Need to be Reminded How Much You Love Me. FOUR STARS for that one.

The Magnetophone album probably appeals to Sammy because the Birmingham-based duo approach their pastoral/psychedelic aesthetic in such a non-obvious manner - with chaotically fractured beats and analogue synth lines replacing acoustic guitars and wistful vocals. Luke Sutherland should take a leaf out of their book. Cassidy is the second LP that he has has released under the name Bows since the demise of his excellent Scottish lo-fi band Long Fin Killie. Bows' debut Blush was a pleasant, if not particularly compelling, diversion into electronic eclectica. Sadly, Cassidy is only pleasurable to me insofar as it recalls the work of neglected dream pop obscurities like AR Kane and Butterfly Child. Aside from that, these songs are little more than generic vocal trip hop - the sort of thing that sounded smugly contemporary five years ago and now seems embarrassingly passé. Far more interesting, theoretically at least, is the Pink Puppet EP, on which various remixers create backing tracks for a short story written and recited by Sutherland. Unfortunately, the results range from predictable (Rob Swift) to annoying (Gonzales). Stick around, though, for the unlisted, music-free final track. Hearing Sutherland's fantastic writing unhindered by crappy tunes reminds us that this boy is a genuinely unique talent.

Little Sammy says: I like this guy, so it pains me to give both of his new CDs TWO DINOSAURS a piece. Now, I'm really depressed. Can I go back to brooding silently now.

Yes Sammy, you can go back to brooding silently now.