If you've ever slowly blinked back to consciousness in a dentist's chair, unable to distinguish dream from fact, you already know what King Krule sounds like. Archy Marshall, the 17-year-old who wrote and sing- mumbles this five-song EP, exaggerates his South East London accent and douses his voice in echo, so it's slurred and evasive. Slow hip-hop beats fade in, brush against sparse guitar chords, then disappear like a distant radio signal. The lyrics add to a feeling of unease, with references to a bloody bed, wounds, "ill health" and "spastic gyrations," but Marshall hides the words from listeners. He's built a singular world where nothing is in focus.  

Listen To "The Noose of Jah City":

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• Photos: Random Notes

“IRM”

Fashioned to mimic the sound of a magnetic resonance imaging or MRI, "IRM" (the French designation for the brain scan) grew out of Gainsbourg’s love of the sound of the clickety-clack of medical machinery. The IRM album project also marked the fulfillment of two goals for the singer: to document a traumatic experience, and to record an album with Beck. Though her co-creator and producer didn’t necessarily know the details of her water-skiing accident and resulting cerebral hemorrhage (which lead to the IRM of the song's title), he somehow knew how to handle the material. "Beck had a way of guessing what I was thinking and feeling without me telling him," said Gainsbourg. "We never discussed these things explicitly."