Pitchfork

2006 is shaping up to be a massive year for the Michigan electronic music imprint Ghostly International. Not only do they have albums from label superstars Dabyre and Matthew Dear in the works, but all sorts of other goodies are lurking up their vaporous sleeves.

Pushing the already avant (they like that word) boundaries of the downloadable music game, the label plans to offer monthly EPs of remixes, alternate takes, new songs, and b-sides through online retailers. The Ghostly Digital (or GDIG if yr cool) series will launch January 24 with Midwest Product's Swamp, and future releases by Mobius Band, Skeletons & the Girl-Faced Boys, Solvent, and others are planned.

Here's the Swamp tracklist:

01 Swamp (Warren Harding Version)
02 Cold Sore
03 Ohfas
04 Mumbler
05 Easter Surrenders

Betcha didn't know that our 29th president was a remix wizard, huh? Although Ghostly has offered to sell album packaging with MP3 downloads in the past, such shall not be the case with the GIDG series.

As if the prospect of fresh Ghostly music every month for the next year wasn't tantalizing enough, the label has also announced the March 7 release of their latest compilation, Idol Tryouts Two: Ghostly International Vol. Two, a sequel to the 2003 collection Idol Tryouts One: Ghostly International Vol. One. If that and other Ghostly comps, like 2002's Disco Nouveau, are any indication, it's gonna be classic.

As uncommitted to one style as the label itself, the double-CD/triple-LP Idol Tryouts Two is split into two ethereal minds, with the first half devoted to "avant pop" and the second to "SMM". What, exactly, is "SMM", you may ask? Is this some new sub-sub-sub-genre only Philip Sherburne knows about? The Ghostly people say "Stately Modern Melodies? Sensual Machine Music?", so we think they don't even know. But it's safe to say that disc two is a soothing assortment of background music, while the first enters the world of more salient Ghostly artists who have taken their electronic educations and thematically fleshed them through their pop music childhoods.

Tracklist:

Disc One: Avant Pop

01 Solvent - "An Introduction to Ghosts"
02 Matthew Dear - "Send You Back"
03 Outputmessage - "Sommeil"
04 Skeletons + The Girl-Faced Boys - "Fit Black Man"
05 Kill Memory Crash - "Press + Burn"
06 Dabrye - "Magic Says"
07 Mobius Band - "Electronic Piano"
08 Daniel Wang - "Berlin Sunrise"
09 Charles Manier - "Bang Bang Lover (Original)"
10 Benoit Pioulard - "The Depths & the Seashore"
11 Solvent - "Spin Cycle"
12 Lawrence - "Wasting a Fall"
13 Mobius Band - "The Loving Sounds of Static (Junior Boys Remix)"

Disc Two: SMM

01 Loscil - "Umbra"
02 Deru - "Straight Speak"
03 Sybarite - "Sanctuary"
04 Cepia - "Ramp"
05 Cepia - "Hoarse"
06 Kiln - "Isthmus"
07 Greg Davis - "Amaranthine"
08 Lusine + David Wingo - "Locks"
09 Aeroc - "A Little Something"
10 Christopher Willits - "Colors Shifting"
11 Terre's New Wuss Fusion - "Love on a Real Train (Risky Business)"
12 Twine - "Gliding in On"
13 Tim Hecker - "Sundown6093"
14 Richard Devine - "Murman"

"The tracks on this compilation are music in its rawest sense," says Ghostly owner and master compiler Sam Valenti IV, who adds that the music in this album answers our current, troubled times through a return to the self. "Not raw in the sense of blood and guts, but raw in their purity. Like everything Ghostly does, they invite the listener to think for himself. Each track is a pure redefinition of American pop and ambient music."

Whatever, dude. We just think it sounds cool.