9 Volt Haunted House

Matt Cassidy, guitarist for the '60s-leaning acts the Volta Sound and New Planet Trampoline, is well practiced in warm, vintage sounds. But in 9 Volt Haunted House, the third band in the group of musicians called the Davenport Collective, he embraces modernity with ominous forays into found sounds and burping electronics.

On 9 Volt's second album, Second Appropriation, Cassidy and fellow sound-sculptors Jack Smiley and Craig R. Chojnicki craft an LP of short-circuiting samplers and deformed beats. Tracks such as "Dimensional Scrambler" morph continually, slowly building from dark, atmospheric rhythms and strangulated guitar to flurries of beeping electronics -- like R2-D2 having an orgasm. From the funereal, Radiohead-like reverie of "Nine-Volt Reduction" to the spectral electro-march of "Astral Sovereign," Appropriation is another dense, dynamic couch trip from the Collective.