SUN RA Nothing Is... (ESP-DISK)
KIM PHUC Wormwood Star 7" (CRIMINAL IQ)
POPOL VUH Affenstunde (SPALAX)
PADDED CELL Night Must Fall (D.C. RECORDINGS)
MI AMI Ark of the Covenant 12" (LOVERS ROCK)
Collective Voice Podcast #274 (24.01.08, includes spotlight on Blues Control/Watersports)
UNDERGROUND RESISTANCE Waveform EP (UNDERGROUND RESISTANCE)
BLUE OYSTER CULT Secret Treaties (COLUMBIA)

The key track on the Sun Ra album for me will always be "Exotic Forest." Incredible atmosphere on this one, percussion clusters and flocks winding their way over & through Ronnie Boykins's bass ostinato. Sweet memory of freaking out to this track late one night in like 1996 while driving on a back-road highway somewhere in Ohio in the middle of a two-day road-trip from Omaha to NYC. (Was not on drugs other than caffeine, don't worry.) Kim Phuc single is a rager. Very heavy, legit intensity level, terrific recording. Go Pittsburgh. Here's their myspace. Popol Vuh sez "It's monkey time!!!" Padded Cell album is so-so, fun and groovy if you happen to be in the room when it's playing but overall a case of 'rad sounds, no songs (retro funky lounge we-should-be-doing-soundtracks division)'. What is it that makes Mi Ami and Underground Resistance -- bands that are also arguably playing something that could be called "dark disco" -- much better? I think it's level of commitment... Mi Ami and Underground Resistance have really absorbed and digested the ingredients they work with, and thus the notes they play are coming from somewhere deep inside, where with bands like Padded Cell, the notes stay outside the body, comfortably resting in the same retro context they were found in. The only thing they touch them with is their fingers, arranging them around in different rad patterns from track to track.