Track of the Week - Spirit Catcher, Hidden Memories
Because it perfectly evokes the feel of the passenger-seat perspective on peacefully aimless late-night drives around the city.

Track of the Week: Funeral Songs & Quadrant Khan, Hindi
Completely awesome tribal stormer featuring a gloriously chaotic build-up of interlocking percussive layers. Plus: sitars! And, as I can personally attest, when performed live it produces an immediate all-hands-on-deck surge for the dancefloor.

(Disclaimer: not just caning it because they’re friends of mine).

Track of the Week: Lisa Shaw, Let It Ride (Jimpster remix)
Because some weeks, what you need is smooth, untroubled love.

Track of the Week - Bonobo featuring Bajka, Nightlite
Featuring Bajka, it appears, is the way to my heart, and Bonobo’s done a bang-up job of framing that gorgeous paradox of a voice - weathered, almost wizened, yet indescribably rich.

The trick here is that, for all the relaxed self-assurance of the bass and percussion, the momentum derives entirely from keyboard and strings. Rolling forward, soaring up, circling back: a hypnotic setting for Bajka’s cracked purr.

Live Show of the Week - Shout Out Out Out Out at Louis'
Gotcher robot rock show right here, you bet. Vocoder vocals, two drummers, two bass players, and more Korgs and high kicks than you can shake a stick at - man, I haven't been so entertained in ages.

Book of the Week: Bob Harris, Prisoner of Trebekistan: A Decade in Jeopardy!
You don't have to be a Jeopardy! fan to adore this book; Harris is a supremely engaging writer, and bounces adeptly from category to category - Life, Love, Memory Skills, Freakish Trivia, Stand-up Comedy in Small Midwestern College Towns, and Tiny Log-Climbing Ungulates - without ever losing the thread of true story-telling. I laughed out loud and misted up within the space of about two pages, and now I'm jonesing for there to be a second decade of Trebekistan, and the story thereof.

Track of the Week: Swag, Fat Chance
I've never really bought into the notion that New Year's should be all "out with the old, in with the new". Instead, it seems to me an excellent occasion to celebrate the old while welcoming the new - hence the fishing of No Such Thing out of the archives to start off the New Year's Eve party. And this track opens the album as a deft and sparkling reminder that these guys, indeed, remain fine purveyors of thumpety-funk house.