Holy Ninja Tune! Do people still make instrumental hip-hop albums? Scratch that (ho ho). Do people still make great instrumental hip-hop albums? Are the glory days of Mo' Wax and Ninja Tune not just so much bong resin? Is it possible that I received two such albums that, call me crazy, are just as good as anything Krush or The Herbaliser ever did in the heyday?

Yes it is. DJ Frane presents … Electric Garden of Delights almost never made it past my stoner detector. It features cover art done by a 16-year-old who just got Bitches Brew for his birthday, and it has a running tube-pulling theme (the subtitle is "Beats to Blaze To Volume 2") that would normally cause this CD to leap into my trash can. But, but… it's funny. It's clever. It's all done with records and turntables, you know, and it's done in an eminently listenable, consistently funky, downright coherent style. It's everything hip-hop DJ albums used to be before the good DJs got too tricky (Kid Koala anyone?) or got rapper friends (sorry Triple Threat). And you know what? It'd probably be good to get high to. There's lots of very funny and very unlicensed sampling of a Bill Cosby anti-drugs routine that makes even your very un-stoned reviewer get the giggles. Trip-hop reloaded: who knew this is what my life was missing?

DW & Fat Jack knew, so they made the best DJ Krush album since 1995. And just as Krush's increasingly technical production style has emerged at the expense of his ear for mood, melody and a good sample, so DW & FJ's The Message offers songs of a quality inversely proportional to their fidelity. Despite Fat Jack's alleged status as some kind of LA hip-hop production legend, this is some lo-fi, unpolished shit. Frequencies mesh, songs fade out for no reason -- it sounds practically unmastered. It's a mess. But what The Message does have is head-nodding, dubbed-out tunes of distinction, and a wicked, hazy atmosphere that feels like a room full of stacked cushions. Light another.

Whether these two albums have anything in common beyond a distributor and some terrible artwork I do not know. But I hope they're both part of some kind of revival. The world, surprisingly, needs more of this.