"Field Holler" is the opening piece off the above album, a collection of recordings of the Appalachian tradition ranging from 1944 to 2002. You can listen to more, and buy it, at this link here. There are several gems therein, but "Field Holler" is the one that haunts me. It has some spectral relationship with music I’ve heard from the Solomon Islands, with Bayaka music, with Clive Powell’s rendition of "Reed Sodger." There’s something ancient about it, something that speaks to blood.

(link degrades in seven days, review purposes only, shout if you need it removed)

I have, through foul means, come into possession of a copy of the new Titus Andronicus album, THE MONITOR. While very much a sequel to the previous record (THE AIRING OF GRIEVANCES), it has ambitions all its own. Someone’s been listening to very early Billy Bragg a lot, for instance: the song "Richard II" has the shreds of the Bragg song "Richard" embedded in it, and the final track opens with classic Bragg-style narrative songwriting and percussive guitar.

But the most pleasurable surprise on this entertaining record is the piece called "…And Ever," a reprise, late in the album, of a refrain from the second song on it, "Titus Andronicus Forever." Because, for absolutely no reason at all, they redo that refrain as a bit of crackling old-style rhythm and blues, complete with boogie-woogie piano.

And you know what? It just makes me smile.

THE MONITOR is released on 9 March 2010. And this is "…And Ever."

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I discovered Scott Tuma’s work a few years ago, with a record called THE RIVER. He’s usually filed under "Americana," but I find this reductive.

This is a piece from a collaboration with Mike Weis called TARADIDDLE, just because it’s what I’ve got to hand right now, but I find it preserves what’s important about Scott Tuma. His work is powerfully strange and estranging: it smacks of mutated ground, poisoned water, rust and death. The first track off 2008’s NOT FOR NOBODY is actually kind of harrowing, in the way that recent Elegi and Svarte Greine records have been — the sound of someone in extremis in an unforgiving environment. But I seem to have misplaced that. And TARADIDDLE is a fine record. So, from it, I play you "On Cox."

(mp3 provided for review purposes only, dies in seven days, contact me at warrenellis [at] gmail.com if you need it removed)

Some of Tickley Feather’s new album HORS D’OEUVRES has that oddly-produced "sonic glare" that I associate with (her labelmates) Animal Collective’s MERRIWEATHER POST PAVILION. Some of it is the tinkly stuff that tips over from "hypnogogic pop" to The New Twee. Some of it’s the sort of stuff you think of when you realise that Ariel Pink might actually just be the new Daniel Johnston with better medication. But this, the opening piece… not only does it weirdly remind me of Danielle Dax for some reason, but it’s the first best point on the record where her aesthetic really works and comes alive. It’s got all the fuzzy fragile lo-fi "hypnogogic" (is that term going to stick? Will I be able to drop the quotation marks soon?) signifiers… but it does something else, it pulses and lopes, sways and glows. It’s a fun record, with some high moments. But this is best. (It’s not on eMusic yet, for some vile reason, so don’t look there.)

(mp3 provided for review purposes only, degrades in seven days, contact me if you need it removed sooner and it shall be done)

Comics artist and cosmic cowboy Tony Moore — who introduced me to the term "Kentucky chrome" for duct tape — attempts to educate me about country music.

Eight tracks currently passing across my desktop, including music by Bleeding Heart Narrative, Clark and Crystal Stilts.

Random selection of stuff that’s crossed my desk this week, including music by 65daysofstatic, Big Ned and Radikal Guru.

A bit of my Eighties: Eight tracks including music by Billy Bragg, Echo & The Bunnymen and The Jam.

Eight tracks for a nearly-sunny day including music by A Sunny Day In Glasgow , Gang Gang Dance and Lucky Dragons .

Utterly random picks from today’s 400-song playlist.

Eight tracks taken from music I’ve picked up over the last couple of days.

Awesomely pissed-off Irish band Fight Like Apes appear to have re-released their single "Jake Summers" in support of a new album that I haven’t been able to find yet. In the hope that you find the album more easily — you can hear a bunch of FIGHT LIKE APES AND THE MYSTERY OF THE GOLDEN MEDALLION here — I’m going to make you listen to "Jake Summers" for a few days. Because you can’t not love a song that says "Hey you, you’re taking up space / And you’re a fucking disappointment to the human race."

(Usual rules apply: mp3 vanishes in seven days, provided for review purposes only, if you need it gone before then email at degaussing at googlemail com and it shall be done)

Ah, the 3 Mustaphas 3, a veritable gang of related musicians trained in the unforgiving and terrible mire of the Crazy Loquat Club in the Balkan town of Szegerely. They might never have been discovered if not for their canny and dubious Uncle Patrel Mustapha, who had them illegally transported inside refrigerators to London in the summer of 1982…

None of which was remotely true, of course, but it was a good story. The Mustaphas — I don’t think there were ever less than six of them, and sometimes they appeared to be an army of probable mental patients — were in fact a bunch of musicians with a Britsh core in love with what was not yet called "world music." These were people who could go from klezmer to five different African styles to Cajun to Mexican songs sung in Hindi in the space of… three or four minutes, frankly, which could occasionally make them a challenging listen. The three albums I know of were berserk world tours of music.

This medley from the album HEART OF UNCLE is pretty much as slow and sober as the Mustaphas ever got, but I think it’s also one of the loveliest things they ever did.

(Usual rules apply: mp3 vanishes in seven days, provided for review purposes only, if you need it gone before then email at degaussing at googlemail com and it shall be done)

I thought Goldfrapp’s first album, FELT MOUNTAIN, was an interesting start. I liked the second album quite a bit, because T-Rex was playing on the radio when I grew up and hence I’ve always been a sucker for schaffel. The third album… did very little for me. The most recent, I thought, was dismal, confused and rudderless, sensing a style to love (or, as others felt, an opportunity to predate upon) but never quite locating it. And then, some while back, I tripped over a remix of "Number 1", a track from the third album. "Number 1," on the album, did nothing for me. But the remix is by Mum, a band I’ve loved since their debut (I even have the tiny mini-CD of "Nightly Cares" and the music they made with comics alchemists Metaphrog). This version is crystalline and clockwork’d, alien and chiming. It’s just a little thing, but it’s beautiful.

(Usual rules apply: mp3 vanishes in seven days, provided for review purposes only, if you need it gone before then email at degaussing at googlemail com and it shall be done)

For years, thanks to a mislabelled compilation package, I thought this piece was by Her Space Holiday. It’s only recently been revealed to me that it’s called "Peacon," and it’s off an album called END OF THE PIER by a band called Workhouse. And for some seven years it’s been one of my very favourite pieces of postrock, right up there with the "Sleep" section of disc 2 of RAISE YR SKINNY FISTS.

It does, I think, require a decent set of speakers or phones. But it still needs to be heard, regardless. It’s seven and a half minutes, and like all postrock you need to grant it two or three minutes to get moving, so you can hear the shape it’s slowly forming.

At which point it becomes magnificent.

(Usual rules apply: mp3 vanishes in seven days, provided for review purposes only, if you need it gone before then email at degaussing at googlemail com and it shall be done)

"Gloomy Sunday," also known as "the Hungarian Suicide Song." The story goes that the lyricist wrote it for an ex-girlfriend who’d committed suicide, leaving behind a note simply reading "Gloomy Sunday." The composer committed suicide in the year of my birth, 1968. And the song itself has become what Snopes calls "a meta-legend," an unverifiable tangle of old news stories, probabilities and urban myths.

On The You Tube, I find a version by Diamanda Galas that begins with her talking about the song:

Brooklyn seems somewhat haunted by the bedheaded spectre of 1987-88 right now. I’m hearing a lot of fuzzed-out takes on proto-shoegaze come out of there these days. "I Know I’ll See You" by A Place To Bury Strangers does, in a lot of ways, take me back to shithole venues from the era — particularly the bass sound, which reminds me of something specific that I can’t put my finger on. The guitars are a fusion between midperiod Jesus & Mary Chain and midperiod My Bloody Valentine, the latter’s breakthrough point… I could spit out points of perceived influence all day, and my sense of sonic magpies at work could be completely misplaced. But I like it.

For Sean Bonner, who asked me for it on Twitter.

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You ever have those days when you just can’t wake up? I’m having one of those. Blood isn’t moving, can’t stop yawning, shit isn’t happening. There are some CDs I always save for the days when I can’t wake up. Flipping this one over in my hands just now, I realised that I’ve had it for ten years. 1998. Really doesn’t seem that long.

Talvin Singh’s ’OK’ was, in my head, the soundtrack for my comics miniseries TWO-STEP (illustrated so brilliantly by Amanda Conner & Jimmy Palmiotti). I’ve got something like four different mixes of this, but this is the one that unscabs my head, the "Heavy Rotation Radio Refixx". It may only be available on the "OK" CD-single. Play loud.

(Usual standards apply: mp3 is live for seven days only and provided for review purposes only, contact degaussing at googlemail com if you need it taken down immediately)

Grouper’s DRAGGING A DEAD DEER UP A HILL is a collection of songs and instrumentals that all seem to come from unknown fields in the dawn hours. Thick with mist and the white noise of strange nature. I was torn between this and the howling of "Wind And Snow," but I started to hear a detourned and distorted echo of Fleetwood Mac’s "Albatross in the middle of it. So I’m playing "When We Fall," because it’s just perfectly dark jewelled night music.

You can buy the CD from a ton of places, just stick it into Google and be amazed. Mp3 purchase can be had at eMusic.

G’night.

(Usual standards apply: mp3 is live for seven days only and provided for review purposes only, contact degaussing at googlemail com if you need it taken down immediately)