Caught in the Net - Popping in for the experimental

Recently, it has seemed that Super Furry Animals albums were the diversionary side projects to increasingly fertile solo efforts and collaborations by Gruff Rhys.

His latest effort is a collaboration with experimental Brazilian musician Tony Da Gatorra. Their new record is 'The Terror of Cosmic Loneliness' and is due on 26 July. DrownedinSound has a video for the first track to emerge from it; "In A House With No Mirrors (You'll Never Get Old)" – ind.pn/bg1Vgl. Apparently the record is experimental but this infectious psych-rock first track is actually rather poppy.

It's all new age Greek to Beck

At the end of "Que Onda Guero" – one of the standout songs from Beck's patchy 2005 album Guero – someone can be heard saying, "Let's go to Cap'*Cork. They have the new Yanni cassette." So now it seems oddly appropriate that Beck would choose the Greek new age composer for the next installment of his Record Club project, in which he gathers together a group of musicians to record cover versions of an entire album in one day. For the latest effort he's pulled in Tortoise and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth to cover Yanni's 1994 album 'Live At The Acropolis'. The first track "Santorini" features Moore ad-libbing words over what was originally an instrumental. They cook up a bizarre sound; see it at beck.com. The remaining songs will follow in weekly offerings. Given that "Que Onda Guero" also namechecks Michael Bolton and James Joyce perhaps we'll get recordings of Time, Love and Tenderness and Chamber Music at some stage.

Can Selway beat the drummer rap

On PhilipSelway.com you can find the first track from the Radiohead drummer's debut solo LP, Familial. The track, "By Some Miracle", is a delicate and lullaby-like acoustic number, Download for free from Selway's site. The full album comes out in August on Bella Union. The song is rather nice, though whether his efforts will be enough to dislodge "drummer from Radiohead" prefixes from his name remain to be seen.

A new zone for off-the-wallers

An interesting new music site launched this week called alteredzones.com; it's a sister to pitchfork.com that aims to focus on left-field and experimental music and various DIY music scenes. What's interesting, beyond the music, is that it's a collaboration between Pitchfork and several already established international music bloggers, such as Don't Die Wondering from London and Gorilla vs Bear from Texas. Perhaps it will point the way to how smaller music sites can survive and prosper across the web's open plains.

l.ryan@independent.co.uk