AS their names suggest, Low and Smog make murky music, so quiet and enigmatic they risk going unnoticed in the corner. Yet misty as they are, something lurks within the shadows, something that will gradually seep inside, rather than leap on you in the manner of brattish nu-metal.

Minimalist, Mormon rock trio Low, from Duluth, Minnesota, have honed their solemn, funereal blues to a new sonic delicacy with more percussive detail on their sixth wintry album, a reflective and hypnotically sad record of bleak midnight beauty and new-age, majestic madrigals with an occasional sinister sting beneath the soothing warmth and Low glow.

The reductive policy of less is more applies equally to Bill Callahan's spartan, spooky Smog on a collection of ten seven-inch vinyl singles, radio sessions and previously unreleased off-cuts to mark the band's first lugubrious decade. Sombre and darkly humorous, ghostly and strange, they float like Major Tom's tin can in a most peculiar way

Updated: 17:26 Thursday, November 14, 2002