Iowa City-based producer landethics’ release phantom tidepools appeared in the Reader’s pages back when it was released in May of 2020, and its lovely blend of post-video game OST melodicism and tonal choices, fused with a fine-tuned sense of beat programming, won my heart.

Whoa. Here’s a nice surprise from a Quad Cities-based project that until this point has been nowhere near my personal radar. A five-track EP of mostly instrumental hip-hop beats from the Davenport duo Pariah and Robscire, Idle Hands perfectly scratches a sweet spot between the kinetic, proto-trap drum patterns and throbbing basslines of Memphis hip-hop staples such as Three 6 Mafia, and a strain of more tripped-out modern-rap beatmaking closer to, say, Death Grips.

It took me, like, a minute into the first track on Iowa City experimental rock crew Nraakors’ album Hoppel Poppel to decide that I frickin' love this band.

In the wake of Princess Dismal, December 2020’s album’s worth of outtakes that proved just as compelling as his typical “proper” album material, Rock Island’s resident drone kingpin and improbably prolific composer Terry Skaggs hovers back into view with a new batch of extended ambient meditations titled My Atlas of Never-Taken Paths.