Released by Trevor Jackson’s Output Recordings in 1999, this raucous piece of punk pop comes from a highly overlooked EP that might have become something of a cult classic if it weren’t at least a couple of years ahead of it’s time, instead forging a music territory that would later be settled by bands like The Rapture.

Gramme – Telephone Me (right click to download) 4:35 mins/ 192 kbps/ 6.29MB

As their contribution to Smiling Pets, an unusually interesting Beach Boys tribute album released by Sony Japan in 1998, girl group Feelds provides what is intended to be a faithful rendering of one of Brian Wilson’s most enduring compositions. While it might be considered a form of sacrilege to describe it as surpassing the original, something about hearing the Japanese accent repeating, “sometimes I feel very sad” just kills me.

Feelds – I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times (right click to download) 3:15 mins/ 160 kbps/ 3.36MB

For the opening salvo of his upcoming LCD full length, James Murphy sticks with his tradition of preempting the album with a deliberate hipster party anthem, also following the progression of moving away from more conspicuous production and towards instrumentation.

If you’d like to hear the song, you can stream or download from the link below. Failing that, I expect you can just spend ten minutes in an American Apparel shop this weekend, and I’m sure it will grace the store’s speakers.

LCD Soundsystem – Drunk Girls (right click to download) 3:43 mins/ 128 kbps/ 3.40MB

Centuries ago, a British curator travelled deep into Southeast Asia on a quest to find the artisan responsible for an exquisitely crafted statue of an Elephant, carved from a single piece of wood with what the man assessed as a preternatural level of skill. After months of trekking the unforgiving continent, he eventually met a slight and humble Indonesian woodworker living in poverty, though not in discontent.

Sharing a pot of tea inside a ramshackle workshop, the curator was awestruck to learn that such primitive tools were responsible for bearing such majestic artifacts. Eagerly, he pressed the craftsman to explain the nuances of his technique. Taking a wear-worn chisel in his hand, the craftsman replied, “I start with a block of wood and then I chip away the bits that don’t look like an elephant”.

Le Loup – Outside of This Car, The End of the World
Whitey – Can’t Go Out Can’t Stay In
Benoit & Sergio – What I’ve Lost
Felix Da Housecat – He Was King
No Regular Play – Owe Me
The Armaberokay – The Hype (Marc Schneider and Ralf Schmidt Remix)
Wolf – Papa Was a Rolling Stone
Unknown Artist – Maximal Michael
Ytre Rymden Dansskola – Bange Aneiser
Laurent Garnier – It’s Just Muzik
Birds and Souls – Birds and Souls
Giorgos Gatzigristos – Sporting Dark Stuff
Mr. C – Full Moon
Minilogue – Giant Hairy Super Monster
International Pony –The Royal Pennekaums
Nicolas Jaar – Time For Us
Trusme – War
Ark – Back to Sleep Back
Paul Simon – Can’t Run But (Jerome Covington Remix)
Inch Time – Crystal Visions
The One – Double Life
International Pony – Goodbye

Electric Adolescence – Elephant Carving (right click to download) 60:00 mins/ 320 kbps/ 137MB

With few things in this life less obvious than a love song, you have to give credit to the writer who brings something new to a subject exploited more frequently than a woman with father issues. After all, there is such a fine line between a song that stirs your soul to one that makes you feel the way a male model might about his first week in prison.

Striding the right side of that line is the often inspiring Smog, most of whose fantasies involve making someone else cum. This sort of line might come across as crass at closing time at the bar, but our man convinces of his need to simply be of use: like a spindle, like a candle, like horseshoe, or like a corkscrew.

Smog – To Be of Use (right click to download) 5:41 mins/ 160 kbps/ 6.52MB

I know that many people search music blogs as a way to help make themselves more hip, so I thought I’d cut to the chase and post an all out instructional tape on the subject.  Recorded by Del Close and John Brent for Mercury Records in 1959, this tongue-in-cheek record was no doubt taken seriously by more than a few wannabe hipsters.

Still, as it never hurts to brush up on the fundamentals, here’s an edited copy of the album for stream or download. Don’t be a drag, baby. Dig it!

Del Close and John Brent – How to Speak Hip (right click to download) 20:00 mins/ 256 kbps/ 36.62MB

While arguably the greatest soul artist of his generation in his own right, D’Angelo has never hidden his desire to follow in Prince’s footsteps. His debut album Brown Sugar was made in the model of the Minneapolis Genius, complete with the trademark ‘written, produced, arranged, composed, and performed by’ credit. Taking a long five years to release his follow-up, Voodoo, D’Angelo transformed his live show from his low-key man-at-the-piano setup to a large stage show modeled after Prince’s seminal Sign O’ the Times tour, and the result was as strong a concert as I’ve ever witnessed, and one I followed across two states to take in twice.

Even being as big a Prince fan as Christians are of Jesus, I admit that D’Angelo clears the bar Prince set in all but one very important way: his debut was fifteen years ago, and his only follow-up was released when the Twin Towers were still standing. When Prince was at the same point in his career he had 17 albums released and a rumored thousand more songs in his infamous vault. Add to that 3 feature films and two theatrically released concert films, and one is reminded of a comment Woody Allen once made: “It’s not the quantity of your sexual relations that counts, it’s the quality. On the other hand if the quantity drops below once every eight months, I would definitely look into it”.

That said, with rumors of an impending double album including a collaboration with Prince himself, D’Angelo is parlaying his lack of output into the sort of hype that preempts a Terrance Malick film or a lunar eclipse, and with the darkly themed “1,000 Deaths” recently leaked, it becomes easy to assume that the album will take some interesting directions and even be worth the long, if not frustrating, wait.

D’Angelo – 1,000 Deaths (right click to download) 6:56 mins/ 192 kbps/ 9.58MB