News You Can Bruise for 2005 July 11

The new beat by Jake Berendes hails back in its lo-fi splendor and Internet pranksterism to his early days with crupper scupper supper upper and the flupperdupper maleatora. His previous solo albums (including his debut, <simulated wood grain vinyl>, which I only recently remembered about) showed him on a clear trajectory into a black hole constructed of samples pasted together on a cosmic Macintosh.

But Foreign Policy demonstrates Jake and his guitar and the rain alone in his bedroom and not even sounding as high-quality as stuff I've done that people ribbed me about afterwards. Leading me to believe that these seemingly artless recordings are actually microsecond samples of ambient noise, twisted into an approximation of the Berendan vocal cords like the Guns 'n' Roses Self-Similar Midi Synth. Just as the song lyrics have been constructed from the shattered hopes of people who asked the web for something and got Jake Berendes instead. Each song fulfils a search request while giving the listener the feeling that they have failed to find something.

Songs to watch out for as they climb the pop charts: "jla dreamer", "history of sour candy", "old lamborghinis", and the Matthew Barney-esque "synchromaids".