Aimee Mann – Amateur
great song for an amicable but sad breakup

Elvis Costello – I Hope You’re Happy Now
great song for that ex you’re so angry at, like a more literate version of Alanis Morisette’s You Oughta Now

Soft Cell – Tainted Love
my wife played it for four hours straight when she broke up with her boyfriend in college

Oh yeah, Rez! Not only did the Chemical Brothers pass on their music being included, but so did Underworld (for whom their song of the same name was an inspiration) and Aphex Twin! An officially unreleased beta, or unfinished early version (most of us know what a beta is, right?), leaked a few years ago with different music and other features for…[Read more]

One other thing that you may find fun to do is surf the budget bins and resale stores for oddities. You would be surprised how many great records get written off as easy listening trash, and how much of that material has been re-contextualized by well-known artists throughout the years. Just to give a shout to DJ Shadow, he’s such a collector of…[Read more]

These days, remixes are merely an excuse to tack a popular dance or club music producer/artist’s name onto a record that wouldn’t normally cross over. Sure, Lana Del Rey’s remixes sold some records and got some people to hear her music that might not have checked it out otherwise, but that doesn’t mean the EDM fans will make a full crossover, or…[Read more]

In response to the question, “who would buy a leak?”, the answer may surprise you. Many collectors of unreleased material by your favorite artists sell their goods for high dollar price tags so private collectors can have things no one else has. Of course this is highly illegal, but it happens a lot. Just about every major entertainer’s musical…[Read more]

Amon Tobin’s Bricolage is great. Walt Mink’s El Producto sucks now and sucked then. UNKLE’s Psyence Fiction isn’t a 9.8 but it’s quite good. And Pitchfork gets a 2.7. At this point, if they are compared to Rolling Stone, it should be for how inept and unimportant both have become.

The one thing I’ll generally give Pitchfork is that their news…[Read more]