The Angel, one of the few accomplished women producers in underground music, will release her latest album, No Gravity, May 22 on Supacrucial Recordings. The album mixes instrumental hip-hop cuts with tracks featuring rappers Tre Hardison (formerly of the Pharcyde), Divine Styler, the Freestylers' Navigator and Mystic. The Angel, a Brooklyn native and longtime Los Angeles resident, has released two albums, Thru the Haze, a 1997 collaboration with Smith & Mighty called Jaz Klash, and '98's Tune In Turn On, which was released under the pseudonym 60 Channels. ...

The third album by English electronic duo Plaid will be titled Double Figure and is due May 29 in America on Warp Records. Following their 2000 compilation of early tracks, Trainer, the duo, Andy Turner and Ed Handley, have made snippets of five songs from Double Figure available on the Warp Web site (www.warprecords.com). In a similar vein to their first two albums, 1998's Not for Threes and '99's Rest Proof Clockwork, the new album is packed with Plaid's warm sense of melody and inventive, pulsing beats. ...

Chicago house legend Larry Heard (a.k.a. Mr. Fingers and Fingers Inc.) will return to the fold with his latest album, Love's Arrival, which is due in early June on the Brooklyn, NY, house label Track Mode Recordings. Following a flurry of releases that ended with 1999's Genesis, Arrival will be Heard's first release since last year's "Missing You" single. The creator of such seminal '80s house cuts such as "Mystery of Love," "Washing Machine" and "Can U Feel It?" continues in the vein of subtle, enveloping deep house on the new album, which features 12 cuts, including Heard's own Jazz Café mix of "Missing You" and 11 new songs. ...

Down-tempo San Diego hip-hop DJ/producer Greyboy (born Andreas Stevens), has completed work on his third LP, Master the Art, which is due May 22 on Ubiquity Recordings. Greyboy's first album in almost five years mixes bossa nova and '70s spy-soundtrack snippets with his trademark jazzy breakbeats, and features collaborations with vibraphonist Dave Pike, guitarist Elgin Park and MC Mainflo. The producer gained notoriety in the mid-'90s for his jazz-inspired breaks and his incorporating of live jazz musicians on 1995's Freestylin' and 1996's Land of the Lost, which spawned the popular touring funk ensemble the Greyboy All-Stars. A brief U.S. tour in support of Master the Art is in the works for late May. ...

Japanese hip-hop master DJ Krush has released his sixth album, Zen, at home in Japan, with the album due for a U.S. release in early July, according to a spokesperson for his American label, Red Ink. Zen, which features cover art by Krush himself, is rife with the organic, contemplative beats that he's perfected, and includes vocal collaborations with rappers Black Thought of the Roots and El-P of Company Flow as well as soul singer N'Dea Davenport. Roots drummer ?uestlove plays on a track, and turntablist phonosycographDISK lends his skills to another. Krush will tour the U.S. sometime around the album's release date, but no dates have been announced yet. His most recent release was the 2000 mix-CD Code 4109, which highlighted tracks of his own along with several Japanese underground hip-hop cuts. ...

Rephlex, the label co-founded by Richard D. James (a.k.a. Aphex Twin), will release The Braindance Coincidence, a collection of tracks in celebration of its 10th anniversary, April 3. Featuring tracks by top Rephlex artists including u-ziq, Global Goon and Bogdan Raczynski, Braindance culls 16 cuts from Rephlex's more than 100 releases since 1991, when James started the label with partner Grant Wilson-Claridge. ...

The fourth installment in the Stateside Essential Mix series is mixed by venerable British radio and club DJ Pete Tong, who is also responsible for launching the series. Due March 20, Tong's 15-cut mix finds the DJ lending his signature deep, soulful vibe to a journey through house, techno and trance, including songs by Blaze ("My Beat"), Way Out West ("Intensify") and Photek (David Morales' remix of "Mine to Give"). In addition to founding and operating the cornerstone British dance label FFRR in 1988, Tong has hosted the immensely popular BBC Radio 1 Friday-evening show "Essential Selection" for the last decade. He will begin a two-week DJ tour in support of Essential Mix March 23, when he will broadcast his Radio 1 show live from the Winter Music Conference in Miami Beach. Past volumes in the Essential series were mixed by Fatboy Slim, Paul Oakenfold and, most recently, Boy George. ...

South London house heroes Basement Jaxx — Felix Buxton and Simon Ratcliffe — will release the follow-up to their 1999 full-length debut, Remedy, June 26 on Astralwerks, according to a spokesperson for the duo. Remedy featured a slew of tracks that became club staples over the last two years, including "Rendez-Vu" and "Red Alert." ...

The next album by Autechre, the Sheffield, England, deities of experimental techno, will be titled Confield and is due April 17 on Warp Records, according to a spokesperson for the label. Aside from featuring nine new tracks by the duo, Rob Brown and Sean Booth, no other information on the album is available yet. On six albums and a slew of EPs and side projects over the last seven years, Autechre have defined a new branch of electronic music with their skittering, disorienting rhythms and enveloping caverns of sound. In addition to a second collection of Peel Sessions recordings that came out in January, their most recent releases were the curiously named 1999 album EP7 and a 1998 self-titled LP. The duo plans to tour the U.S. for the first time since 1998 following Confield's release. ...

Gurgling-techno masters Mouse on Mars will release their sixth full-length, cutely titled Idiology, May 8 in America on Thrill Jockey Records. The album's first single will be "Actionist Respoke," which comes out Feb. 20 and features vocals by Dodo Nkishi, who plays drums during the group's live shows. The Dusseldorf, Germany, duo — Andi Toma and Jan St. Werner — will support Idiology with a month-long North American tour beginning June 8. Mouse on Mars' most recent album was 2000's Niun Niggung, which was followed late last year by Instrumentals, a reissued collection of older tracks. ...

The latest release from Matthew Herbert, the British experimental-techno producer who also records as Doctor Rockit and Wishmountain, will be an album called Bodily Functions, which is due May 15 in the U.S. on Studio K7. The record's first single, "Leave Me Now," will include remixes by Detroit electronic funkster Recloose and Atlanta experimentalist Richard Devine. Herbert recently mixed a volume in Tresor Records' Globus Mix series titled Let's All Make Mistakes, which came out in October and featured tracks by Theo Parrish and Hombre Ojo. Bodily Functions will be followed by a world tour, with Herbert performing live with a trio. ...

— sonicnet.com staff report