Huzzah! EMMA, LORD OF THE UNDERWORLD is here. Track listing:

01 PETER BJORN & JOHN Amsterdam (Writer’s Block)
02 MODESELEKTOR (feat. TTC) Dancing Box (Hello Mom!)
03 DEVINE & STATTON In The Rain (Cardiffians)
04 ROOTS MANUVA Double Drat (Alternately Deep)
05 THE DRESDEN DOLLS Dirty Business (Yes, Virginia)
07 JENS LEKMAN The Opposite Of Hallelujah (The Opposite Of Hallelujah EP)
09 BRAZILIAN GIRLS Jique (Talk To La Bomb)
10 SMUT PEDDLERS Diseases (Porn Again Revisited)
11 CALIFORNIA ORANGES Run Away (Souvenirs)
12 BARR Is All For Updated (Beyond Reinforced Jewel Case)
14 HELEN LOVE Junk Shop Discoteque (single)
15 VYBZ KARTEL Bad Man Party 2 (J.M.T.)
16 APOPTYGMA BERSERK Shine On (You And Me Against The World bonus track)
17 TOMMY HEAVENLY6 Lcdd (Tommy Heavenly6)
18 CEX Chicago (Actual Fucking)
19 SUBURBAN KIDS WITH BIBLICAL NAMES Loop Duplicate My Heart (#3)
20 PINK Leave Me Alone (I’m Lonely) (I’m Not Dead)
21 THE DOUBLE Loose In The Air (Idiocy)
22 JME Serious (Run The Road remix) (Run The Road 2 compilation)
23 THE HOUSEMARTINS Sunday Isn’t Sunday (Live At The BBC)
24 THE MARS VOLTA Day Of The Baphomets (Amputechture)

This one has several languages, some performance art, and diseases. (Like frostbite!) You seriously need to at least hear “Dancing Box”.

Small print: The records by Devine & Statton and Smut Peddlers were (expanded) reissues, and the Housemartins track is from an archival release. Also, if you are the sort of person who cares enough to read the small print here but you haven’t been looking at the cover images that come with these mixes, you should.

* This is the fourth mix of eight for 2006.
* Graphics by The Grave-Robber Of Sacramento.
* Sleepless help by the Pharaoh Beatrix.

* Mix by,

* your favorite chili-parlor mountebank,
* JJ Rackjobber.

It’s not her creepy voice that’s the problem; if anything, her voice makes it easier for me to imagine how I might love this in a nearby alternate universe. The problem is… everything else. I find Newsom’s music boring in the way that only annoying things can be, and annoying in that way that only boring things can be.

I have the persistent sense that I dislike most “freak-folk” because I got my fill of its ilk a long time ago in another context, only I don’t think that actually happened. Still, that’s the color of the frustration I have with its popularity.

There’s a pointless cover of “(You’re So Square) Baby, I Don’t Care” and a musical setting of that passage from Corinthians that everyone reads at everyone else’s wedding. Meanwhile, drums on seven of the eleven tracks are played by one of Frank Zappa’s drummers.

Punk culture may have overstated the need for or effectiveness of rebellion, but listening to 80s Joni Mitchell you do feel like there was some particular Thing to rebel against. And look, I even liked some of this album.

No shame in going after easy targets if the target is easy because you’re trapped in the center of it.

SERVICES. Torrent available here. Track listing:

01 THE PAPER CHASE We Know Where You Sleep (Now You Are One Of Us)
02 HERBERT Something Isn’t Right (Scale)
03 DON JUAN DRACULA Down In The City (Young Debutantes II)
04 EMM GRYNER See The Sea (The Summer Of High Hopes)
05 DESTROYER European Oils (Destroyer’s Rubies)
06 RANDOM Searching For Atlantis (Happy Ending After All)
07 THE STREETS Hotel Expressionism (The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living)
08 INFADELS Jagger ‘67 (We Are Not The Infadels)
09 JONATHAN COULTON Code Monkey (Thing A Week 3)
10 AESOP ROCK The Next Best Thing (7″)
11 THE BLUE AEROPLANES Up In A Down World (Altitude)
12 DAR WILLIAMS Beautiful Enemy (My Better Self)
13 PEACHES Stick It To The Pimp (Impeach My Bush)
14 SWAY Download (This Is My Demo)
15 ANAMANAGUCHI Video Challenge (Power Supply)
16 CALVIN JOHNSON Rabbit Blood (Before The Dream Faded)
17 MARIT BERGMAN Alone Together (I Think It’s A Rainbow)
18 TOKYO POLICE CLUB Cheer It On (A Lesson In Crime)
19 CLUE TO KALO The Just Is Enough (One Way, It’s Every Way)
20 THE HUSH SOUND We Intertwined (Like Vines)
21 THE GOTHIC ARCHIES Crows (The Tragic Treasury)
22 PONY PANTS Haircutz (’Til Death Do Us Party)

This one has a lot of very skillful swearing, mostly deployed with admirable reserve.

* Small print: The records by Random and Anamanaguchi can be downloaded in full for free at 8bitpeoples.com, as can almost everything else the label puts out. And yes, I know that’s not how you spell “infidel”.

* This is the third mix of eight for 2006.
* Graphics by The Grave-Robber Of Sacramento.
* Vital help by the Pharaoh Beatrix.

* Mix by

* your favorite terrifying secret,
* JJ Rackjobber.

Next up, THE VISIBLE. Torrent available here. As ever, if you want to hear it but are having trouble with torrents, let me know. Track listing:

01 THE ABSENTEE We Should Never Have Children (Schmotime)
02 XIU XIU Save Me Save Me (The Air Force)
03 AUDIOGARDE Mardi Gras (Cock Rock Disco 2006 compilation)
04 BABY RAY Superbutch (Low Rises)
05 DAVID SUGAR Totally On (Fresh Off The Chip)
06 TILLY & THE WALL Bad Education (Bottoms Of Barrels)
07 ROBOTS IN DISGUISE The DJ’s Got A Gun (Get Rid!)
08 JON AUER Josephine (Songs From The Year Of Our Demise)
09 SAFETY SCISSORS Sunlight’s On The Other Side (Tainted Lunch)
10 ROBBIE WILLIAMS Rudebox (Rudebox)
11 ROBERT POLLARD Rhoda Rhoda (Normal Happiness)
12 SATURDAY LOOKS GOOD TO ME Hiding (Sound On Sound)
13 HIS NAME IS ALIVE Maybe Again When I Leave U (Detrola)
14 THE LONG WINTERS Teaspoon (Putting The Days To Bed)
15 SUGABABES I Bet You Look Good On The Dance Floor (Pop! Justice comp)
16 BELLE & SEBASTIAN The Blues Are Still Blue (The Life Pursuit)
17 ANDREW W.K. Pushing Drugs (Close Calls With Brick Walls)
18 ELECTRIC SIX I Buy The Drugs (Switzerland)
19 ROCKETSHIP The Scene Section (Here Comes Rocketship)
20 IMOGEN HEAP Glittering Cloud (The Plague Of Locusts) (Plague Songs comp)
21 GET HIM EAT HIM Patronage (The Rude Reach EP)
22 AMOR ANTIQUITA Lost Something (Metallic Sonatas)
23 THE CORAL In The Morning (The Invisible Invasion)
24 BARBARA MORGENSTERN The Operator (The Grass Is Always Greener)

If you got a CD from me on New Year’s Eve, this mix and the last one were switched, and this had a different title and worse artwork. Things are much better this way.

* Small print: The songs by Robbie Williams and Barbara Morgenstern are both single mixes, though the album versions aren’t markedly different, just longer. Saturday Looks Good To Me’s song is from an archival collection of singles and whatnot, mostly only on vinyl before. The Sugababes track is a cover of the Arctic Monkeys single, which I liked until I heard the Sugababes do it better– at least the Sugababes were alive in 1984, even if, being infants, they probably didn’t spend much time in dance clubs.

* This is the second of eight mixes for 2006.
* Graphics by The Grave-Robber Of Sacramento.
* Unblinking help by the Pharaoh Beatrix.

* Mix by
* your favorite Turkish armorer,
* JJ Rackjobber.

For the eleventh time (!) my year’s end was spent making a mix of my favorite recent releases*, where in this case when I say “a mix” I mean eight CDs’ worth of mixes.

These will be posted once a week, probably on Tuesday, until I run out. This first one is called COERCIVE EPISTEMIC MODEL and you can download it via BitTorrent here. Personally, I like listening to mixes straight through once before I read the track listing, but then, I am That Guy in this respect. If you want to know what you’re getting into:

01 ROBERT POLLARD I’m A Strong Lion (From A Compound Eye)
02 LO-FI-FNK End (Boylife)
03 KOOL KEITH Trees (The Return Of Dr. Octagon)
04 DAVID & THE CITIZENS Absent Mind (Are You In My Blood? EP)
05 GUILLEMOTS Trains To Brazil (From The Cliffs)
06 CURSIVE Dorothy At Forty (Happy Hollow)
07 TARKIO Weight Of The World (Omnibus)
08 ABOUT Band Dynamics (Bongo)
09 TEDDYBEARS Cobrastyle (Soft Machine)
10 THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS Why Did You Grow A Beard? (podcast)
11 INDIGO GIRLS Pendulum Swinger (Despite Our Differences)
12 THE LIKE YOUNG Something Fell Through (Last Secrets)
13 SUBTITLE Restructure/Reroute (Terrain To Roam)
14 JAY BRANNAN Soda Shop (Shortbus soundtrack)
15 SCISSOR SISTERS Paul McCartney (Ta-Dah!)
16 RHYMEFEST Brand New (feat. Kanye West) (Blue Collar)
17 SS CARDIACS Wolfies (Fear The Love)
18 DANI SICILIANO Slappers (Slappers)
19 THE PIPETTES Pull Shapes (We Are The Pipettes)
20 VOXTROT The Start Of Something (Raised By Wolves EP)
21 HEAD AUTOMATICA Curious (Popaganda)
22 ISLANDS Rough Gem (Return To The Sea)
23 PIPAS Windswept Room (Sorry Love)
24 DARREN HANLON Happiness Is A Chemical (Fingertips And Mountaintops)

Sorry about the transition out of that Rhymefest song. It really just ends like that.

* Small print: Records were things I first heard in 2006 that came out in either 2005 or 2006. Reissues qualify if they’re new to me and weren’t still in print beforehand. With imports and tiny labels, ‘release date’ can be sort of ambiguous, plus sometimes I’m just wrong.

Loved this book. I feel like it’s still rearranging my brain. Rarely does a day go by when I don’t notice something making more sense with Dennett’s account of consciousness available to me.

He leans hard on his assumption that pure materialism is correct, which can be disorienting. It’s not that I disagree, or that I think he treats the alternatives unfairly; it’s just rare that a writer has cause to point out, over and over again, that whatever physical laws describe the world must also describe us.

More on this when I finish The Intentional Stance and Elbow Room, which seem to complete this corner of Dennett’s theory.

Never bothered tracking this down until now because I foolishly believed the subtitle, which states that this is a live album. (The awful, pixelated cover art didn’t help.) It’s not, and furthermore it’s a mixture of Momus’ pop habits, his fascination with music hall, and his (ineradicable) cynicism, combined better than on any other album from this part of his career. After this he vanished into severe moodiness for a few years and then departed for the land of “Space Jews” and “Coming In A Girl’s Mouth” and songs about HTML, whence we only got him back a little while ago.

The more gaps of my Momus collection I fill in, the more it seems as though Nick Currie actually does know how to travel through time. I like a guy who can make his albums out of order.