n Up & Coming:

Pearl Jam, Ben Harper and Relentless7

(KeyArena) One of my earliest assignments for The Stranger was to write the scathing "con" side of a pro/con piece about Pearl Jam. It was fun, and I took to it with bilious gusto, but I must confess: I don't really hate Pearl Jam. It's more that I just haven't cared about them one way or the other since around 1994's Vitalogy. Before that, I actually really liked the band. Hell, Ten was the first "cool" cassette tape I ever owned (thanks, Uncle Brian). The band have kept on churning out good-hearted, unsurprising alt-rock 'n' roll over the years, and they've continued to be unassailably good guys, supporting righteous political causes and charities and sticking up for their fans against the corporate ogres. Their new album, Backspacer, is reportedly as vital a record as the band's done in years. And I still couldn't care less. ERIC GRANDY

DJ Vadim, Pugslee Atomz

(Nectar) Abstract hiphop, a genre that is usually branched with triphop but really should be associated with hiphop (on this side of the Atlantic, it is called instrumental hiphop), has four important producers: DJ Cam (France), DJ Shadow (USA), DJ Krush (Japan), and DJ Vadim (UK/USSR). Vadim's masterpiece is U.S.S.R. Repertoire (The Theory of Verticality), which appeared in 1996 (the best abstract hiphop albums came out between 1994 and 1997), and what he introduced to the movement was something we now call hauntology (Cam, for example, introduced samples of modern jazz). Long before Burial, ghosts were moving in and out of the deep and dark sonic spaces of Vadim's hiphop. CHARLES MUDEDE

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