Friday Five highlights music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This edition features guitar jazz by Randy Napoleon, concept-based ambient by Othercast, trip-hop by VaporDaze, alt-indie rock by ckdndcrckd, and drum 'n' bass by NT1AE.

Randy Napoleon, Waking Dream
Ann Arbor's The Rationals had a song on their 1969 album called "Guitar Army." Pioneer High School grad and Michigan State University educator Randy Napoleon could have used that title for his new album, Waking Dream. Napoleon's six strings are joined by four guitarists who've studied with him: Luke Sittard, Chris Minami, Jocelyn Gould, and Ben Turner, along with frequent musical companions Rick Roe (piano), Rodney Whitaker (bass), Quincy Davis (drums), and some other guests. The result is like walking into Guitar Center and hearing actual great players jamming lyrically on harmonically compelling and melodically dense original jazz tunes in a post-bop style with nods to world music ("Cafe Brasilia") and classical ("Two Thoughts")—in other words, an actual waking dream if you've ever spent time in a music-shop nightmare. Waking Dream, subtitled The Music of Gregg Hill & Randy Napoleon, is the guitarist's 10th as a leader and his third featuring Hill's compositions. Long may their creative partnership continue. (The Hill story is an interesting one, and he was recently featured in Downbeat.)

Othercast, The Moonset Production Company (2025 Remaster)
Ann Arbor's Othercast has been dealing out wide-screen ambient-dance concept albums for a minute now, including 2019's The Moonset Production Company. Kelman Wolfkostin, the person responsible for all these cinematic ideas and sounds, counts this album among his Othercast favorites. Still, he decided to do a remaster, add some sonic tweaking, create new cover art, write an accompanying short story, and commission a collage-based video edition of the album from Pete McDeter to make it an even more favorite-y favorite. Turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream.

VaporDaze, "All Gonna End"
VaporDaze is a collaboration between Ann Arborites George Mashour and Marty Gray, who worked together to bring the former's psychedelic rock record, Eulogy for My Ego Death, to life in 2025. This project is also steeped in psychedelia, but the beats borrow from hip- and trip-hop rather than '60s rock 'n' roll. Mashour does a sing-speak rap straight out of the early days of hip-hop as Gray layers sitars, horns, and synths that wouldn't sound out of place on a Massive Attack album.

ckdndcrckd, "We're Out of Time"
George Mashour and Marty Gray may also be responsible for "We're Out of Time," the debut single by ckdndcrckd on Ann Arbor Records. (Though the production is stripped-down and basic, unlike Gray's more decorative style.) The band pronounces its name "cooked and cracked," and its website states, "We are a songwriting/production duo making alternative rock music in THE CITY OF Ann Arbor, Michigan." But if Mashour and Gray did do the music—which is sing-songy indie rock with early-'90s-style distortion swells during the chorus—they worked with a female singer to deliver this tuneful number.

NT1AE, various releases
Long story short: A whole treasure trove of drum 'n' bass jams just dropped from a new (old?) artist from Ypsi, NT1AE, who blessed their Bandcamp page with two singles, one EP, and two albums.

Christopher Porter is a library technician and the editor of Pulp.