“Material” is the brainchild of Mike Skinner, a pasty 23-year-old Brit who wrote and recorded it in his bedroom. Despite the moniker, The Streets have little to do with crime-lord posturing or other thug-life tales of American gangsta rap. Skinner reports on the everyday lives of people like himself and his mates, chronicling, as he puts it, “a day in the life of a geezer.” (“Geezer” means guy or dude, not old man.) To that end, any street in England that is home to young, perpetually broke, PlayStation-addicted potheads who are bored out of their minds will do.

However, Skinner’s songs are more than celebrations of slackerdom. They are smart, often funny and remarkably nuanced descriptions of failed relationships (“It’s Too Late”), violent youths (“Geezers Need Excitement”) and, naturally, drinking binges gone awry (“Too Much Brandy”). Loaded with social commentary, “Material” paints an honest picture of modern working-class England, a country struggling with “deep-seated urban decay,” in the form of high unemployment rates and rising cases of youth violence. Skinner, to his credit, refrains from romanticizing these predicaments. He understands the problematic nature of “real manhood” well enough to know it’s important to “let geezers know you’re not lightweight,” but that doesn’t stop him from telling off a jealous boyfriend who is ready to beat up a competitor — “football fan style.” His message to his peers is to “leave the forces,” to take a step back, calm down and then make better choices.

But Skinner is not naive enough to fully trust in this approach either. Consequently, one of the most brilliant moments on “Material” occurs when he undercuts the diary-style immediacy of his story by removing himself from the narration. The track “Same Old Thing” starts with the universal complaint “round here nothing seems to change / same old thing everday” — then the beats stop and Skinner sings, “Apparently there’s a whole world out there / I just don’t see it.” Simultaneously, a second voice (also Skinner’s) seems to answer, “It’s right there / that’s it, that’s it, that’s it!” but the message evidently fails to reach the first speaker, who simply continues his lament.

According to Leclair, his approach is inspired by the Canadian automatist movement of the 1940s that tried to achieve artistic expression without a preconceived idea of the outcome. Automatist painter Jean Paul Riopelle, for instance, filled his canvases with numerous and seemingly insignificant objects which added unexpected visual depths to his works. Likewise, Leclair masterfully shapes thousands of randomly selected sound artifacts into new formations. He does so often with surprising effects like on “Deck the House,” when a myriad of sampled word fragments, though unchanged, seem to gradually turn into sung lyrics including harmonies.

Random elements in music are not a new phenomenon by any means — an entire sub-genre of electronic music is based on errors, or so-called glitches, that become (part of) the music. Leclair, however, maintains full control over the process and is less interested in incorporating waste products as such than he is in recycling them. In Akufen’s microsampling universe there is no distinction between accidental and planned sound. In fact, the nature and context of the source are completely irrelevant: Any old airwave will do.

Gotan whips the meditative, spaced-out “The Man” into a hyperactively swinging easy-listening version of its former self, while Rainer Trüby transforms the subdued, jazzy “Shining” into a bonafide drum ‘n’ bass number, easily tripling the original’s beats-per-minute count. Indeed, most of the “Reset” remixers choose to accelerate the loungy headphone music of “Peace Orchestra,” relentlessly pushing it onto the dance floor.

Peace Orchestra’s “The Man” Remixed by Gotan Project

Audio: Real Audio

Duration: 7:17

“One All,” his second solo effort, was released in the rest of the world as “One Nil” in spring of 2001. This year’s U.S. version features slightly different mixes of some of the “One Nil” material as well as two new songs (“Lullabye Requiem” and “Human Kindness”). Notable collaborators on “One All” include Lisa Coleman (vocals, keyboard) and Wendy Melvoin, who plays drums and/or bass on every track except the two late additions, and also co-wrote three songs with Finn. Yes, these are Wendy & Lisa of Prince and the Revolution fame.

Finn sticks to his trademark sweet melodies and atmospheric arrangements on “One All.” He’s always played beautiful pop tunes, but at the same time his lyrics are full of doubt and darkness: “Anytime” finds him pondering myriad ways to die, and on “Driving Me Mad” (listen to this track below) he complains “Year after year / the demons always come.” So while the presence of Prince’s former muses may ease his pain, Finn is still a haunted man.

“Driving Me Mad”

Audio: Real Audio

Duration: 3:57

Iceland, of course, is also the home of pop chanteuse Bjork and indie band Sigur Ros. Like both of those acts, Mum create beautiful soundscapes and subtle, fragile arrangements. But instead of the vocal acrobatics of Bjork or the wind-swept, static noise epics of Sigur Ros, Mum make electronic music with a strong affinity for liquid sounds. Throughout the album, water seems to be trickling and seeping in through the cracks of drum patterns, washing over bleeps and bass lines.

Mum have performed concerts in unusual places, including shows in Iceland’s public pools. (The band used U.S. military underwater speakers while listeners floated on water with their ears submerged; you had to be in the water to hear anything at all.) “Faraway Swimmingpool” feels like an attempt to simulate that experience, and many other tracks on “Finally” have an equally bubbly, yet muffled quality.

Mum’s most recent project involves accompanying Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 silent film “Battleship Potemkin,” a show that will be shipped stateside this summer.