Jimmy Buffett's latest CD, Buffet Hotel, is a cruel joke. It is not just the fact that the album title purposely misspells his last name to get back at all those who have been pronouncing it wrong. More importantly, for anyone whose average day does not consist of lying in the sand, cruising on a boat, or partying in the tropics--always with a Margarita in hand--the music of Buffet Hotel is an unfair daydream machine. However, it is this lifestyle depicted in Buffett's music that has electrified the souls of Parrotheads for decades.

Buffet Hotel, his whopping 32nd album, is no different; Buffett's lyrical quality and incomparable musical performance on the album is airtight. Furthermore, some songs are closer to home than one might think. In the first song on the album, "Nobody from Nowhere," he has exchanged his usual beach paraphernalia for "farms and fields and cows," a unique move, and speaks of someone "Waitin' for a car to drive by / just so you can say 'hello,'" exemplifying the solitude of a small town atmosphere.

There is a real Buffet Hotel by the way; it is a French colonial inn in Mali, which Buffett happened to visit, and it makes for a great album title. The song "Buffet Hotel" toward the end is much more serious, and has a historical note to it. Buffett sings "Well the train slipped in to the station/ A worn out steel blue soul/ A relic from colonial days/ When the French were still in control," before singing a line in French.

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n "Wings," it is easy to get the feeling of Buffett's easygoing yet restless need for independence, and most likely even alludes to his lesser known pastime of aviation. Songs of this nature are must haves on any Buffett album.

Buffett gives "Big Top" a holiday spin at the beginning of the song by saying that "Just like Santa, [he] come[s] around once a year." However, one could venture that the rest of the words are less to do with Christmas cheer, and more about the dramatic and chaotic carnival that is life. One could even further venture that Buffett did a better job of covering the "circus" theme than Britney Spears' attempt.

"Turn Up the Heat and Chill the Ros�" incorporates the joyful sound of the steel drums, an instrumental equivalent to actually being in the islands.

One of the first songs to be leaked from the album was "A Lot to Drink About." Crudely titled, yes, but the song has deeper meanings, alluding mainly to national issues weighing on everyone these days. He sings, "There's the price of oil/ the war of the spoils/ Here's your bucket for the big bailout?/ Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan/ We've got a lot to drink about."

Who knows if anyone but the Malians would deem the real Buffet Hotel a four star place to stay, but that is certainly the rating of the album to which it gave its name. Buffet Hotel brings laid-back, classless charm to a sunshine-starved populace. Even if UW students yearn to "waste away in Margaritaville," there's always the similar option of getting wasted in Madison...to the sunny soundtrack of Buffet Hotel.

4 starts out of 5

Lies. Conspiracy. Cold War extraterrestrials. Inspiration can come in unlikely forms, and the backbone of Sound Tribe Sector 9's latest, Ad Explorata, might be one of the strangest.

The story involves code-cracking, secret government organizations and intergalactic communication. This is the kind of inspiration every electro band (and sci-fi flick) should look for. Part of the code they allegedly discovered is sampled at the start of "Central," and if you trust your decrypting ability, you can go ahead and try to figure it out for yourself. Or you can read the full back story here.

An eerie darkness surrounds the album, but it casts no shadows on a brilliant sonic spectrum. Ad Explorata has the kind of mysterious undertones that render a cynical appeal. Avoiding excessive optimism, it is an exhilarating step into unknown realms of sound. Ever explore a cave by candlelight?

As always, STS9 is equal parts sci-fi movie soundtrack, jam band and Euro dance club. If the ambience of 2005's Artifact represents their past and 2008's Peaceblaster is a socially conscious present, then Ad Explorata gazes into a bleak future--stimulating, yet dismal.

It is like a digital audio rendition of Bukowski's "Dinosauria, We." A bitter future will sooner or later lead to beauty in destruction. The downtempo dance break "EHM" supports the theory, incorporating just enough curiosity and good feeling into Ad Explorata to makes the present worthwhile. Bukowski references "the most beautiful silence never heard;" STS9's take on beauty is completely audible and still carries a similar tone.

If the album needs to be summed up in a single track, "Oil & Water" is the leading candidate. Its title is fitting because like the album at large, it contains sounds that shouldn't mix. But anything can mix when you shake it up, and STS9 can be ruthless with a blender. "Oil & Water" opens to a psychotic stir to move things along. From there the track drifts into some atmospheric electronica, ranging from minimalistic patterns to climaxing builds.

What Daft Punk was to nineties house, STS9 is to the millennium, an innovative dance explosion. Their self-description of "post-rock dance music" is madly apparent in Ad Explorata's array of instruments and frequencies. At times a shredding guitar section takes over, and songs like "Heavy" will make you wonder where the metal came from. Did they team up with Lightning Bolt?

Experimentation with sound is a beaten path in digital music. It's practically the genre's foundation. But pushing the envelope a little further never hurts when some original quality is maintained. "Crypto City" is a strong sample of the group playing the old-meets-new card. Exit the concrete jungle and move into the chrome age with animal-like reverberations and floaty synths. This trip is heading down the river, and it's just another leg in the journey.

As with any release, the general appeal can, but should not, be boiled down to individual factors. Darkness shows up through mystery, down tempo minor keys and a crazy back-story. Dance-ability via drum beats and synth hooks. Futurism from digitized sound bites and, well, the usual electronic aspects. But in the end, the factors are all notes in a chord. Alone, they are nothing. Through conglomeration, they can add up to something great. Fans will recognize the band's uncanny mastery of keyboards and soundboards, while skeptics and nonbelievers may shrug. The feel of Ad Explorata might take more than a single listen to get acclimated, but it is well worth the climb.

3 and 1/2 stars

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if your computer was schizophrenic? Probably not, but if you braved the snow to see Chicago-based I Love Presets show at the Memorial Union Play Circle, you got a pretty good idea of what it'd be like.

The show started out innocently enough. Jon Satrom and Jason Soliday, two thirds of the experimental sound duo, gave the small crowd a quick primer on "data-bending," a method by which one can change the way their computer interprets a file. This was actually a pretty interesting segment. They gave some cool insights into how computers interpret data, and how you can screw with that interpretation. After the two had finished their example, the show itself started. This is where all hell broke loose.

The third member of I Love Presets, Rob Ray, joined the duo via the internet to begin pumping random sound effects into the Play Circle. The room was soon filled with a nearly indescribable cacophony. At times, it'd sound like a fire alarm going off in the turbine room of a cruise ship. This would go on for a few minutes, fade out, and come roaring back sounding like a 56k modem connecting to AOL. All of this was under the ominous hum of an alien mothership flying overhead. In short, it sounded like the computers were going insane.

While the room filled with noise, the duo put on a performance showing off some more advanced data bending techniques. Software windows were consumed by colorful static, melting into an incomprehensible digital kaleidoscope. At times, animated .gifs typical of late 90s Geocities sites would float across the screen. The viewing experience was a unique and nearly unfathomable experience.

If you get a chance to see I Love Presets, don't go expecting music, or any entertainment in the traditional sense. Unless you have a deep interest in glitching out computers that supersedes your interest in not listening to loud noises, I Love Presets probably isn't going to be your cup of tea. If you're looking for a better idea of what the trio does, you can check out some rough approximations of the visual aspect of their show on their website. It's not quite the same, but if you're really curious this is probably your best bet. I Love Presets is unlikely to be back in Madison any time soon, but unless you're a hardcore fan of the experimental noise, you haven't missed much.

The offbeat and theatrical, yet calmingly cool sounds that Tom Waits fans know and love are served up in a healthy dose on his newest release, Glitter And Doom (Live), and the characteristically gruff singer reveals yet again his versatility and sheer talent in his new live album, recorded on his 2008 tour of the US and Europe.

Waits' signature gravelly voice strikes unique chords in listeners on Glitter And Doom, often with a poignancy that Waits seems to have mastered, but which is rarely to be found on live albums. From the heart-wrenching "Lucky Day," to the endearingly romantic "I'll Shoot The Moon," to the whiskey-tinged sultriness of "Dirt In the Ground," Glitter And Doom touches on a wide range of moods and styles that the enduring singer has experimented with throughout the past four decades, from the bluesy to the smoky to the downright obscure.

Some songs are a bit lacking of the grit you'd expect from a live Tom Waits, such as "Falling Down," which doesn't quite capture the raw emotion that the lyrics seem to suggest, and the album contains too few of Waits fan favorites in their live versions. Another flaw of the album is the amount of crowd noise that was included in the recordings. We know that Tom Waits is a captivating and talented performer; hearing the crowd cheer loudly for him doesn't make the songs sound better.

Overall, Glitter And Doom (Live) is worth a listen, for both seasoned Waits fans and those who have never heard his music. It effectively demonstrates Waits' live persona and offers a glimpse at the vastness of his 40-plus year career, including in the tour some of the hidden gems that have come from Tom Waits' creative and quirky musical style.

The album comes as a two-disc set, with one CD including "Tom's Tales," a 35 minute track consisting of clips of Waits' charismatic and comical stage banter. The songs included on Glitter And Doom (Live) are melodic and melancholy, creating an album worthy of listening to any time you've got the blues... or a just hankering for some whiskey and smoke.

4 stars out of 5

The offbeat and theatrical, yet calmingly cool sounds that Tom Waits fans know and love are served up in a healthy dose on his newest release, Glitter And Doom (Live), and the characteristically gruff singer reveals yet again his versatility and sheer talent in his new live album, recorded on his 2008 tour of the US and Europe.

Waits' signature gravelly voice strikes unique chords in listeners on Glitter And Doom, often with a poignancy that Waits seems to have mastered, but which is rarely to be found on live albums. From the heart-wrenching "Lucky Day," to the endearingly romantic "I'll Shoot The Moon," to the whiskey-tinged sultriness of "Dirt In the Ground," Glitter And Doom touches on a wide range of moods and styles that the enduring singer has experimented with throughout the past four decades, from the bluesy to the smoky to the downright obscure.

Some songs are a bit lacking of the grit you'd expect from a live Tom Waits, such as "Falling Down," which doesn't quite capture the raw emotion that the lyrics seem to suggest, and the album contains too few of Waits fan favorites in their live versions. Another flaw of the album is the amount of crowd noise that was included in the recordings. We know that Tom Waits is a captivating and talented performer; hearing the crowd cheer loudly for him doesn't make the songs sound better.

Overall, Glitter And Doom (Live) is worth a listen, for both seasoned Waits fans and those who have never heard his music. It effectively demonstrates Waits' live persona and offers a glimpse at the vastness of his 40-plus year career, including in the tour some of the hidden gems that have come from Tom Waits' creative and quirky musical style.

The album comes as a two-disc set, with one CD including "Tom's Tales," a 35 minute track consisting of clips of Waits' charismatic and comical stage banter. The songs included on Glitter And Doom (Live) are melodic and melancholy, creating an album worthy of listening to any time you've got the blues... or a just hankering for some whiskey and smoke.

4 stars out of 5