2. Mad EP's "S-Cents"
"Yeah, that's just one dude. Well, he has this MC named EQ on there. He studied composition and sound recording, and is a member of this cool experimental jazz group. EQ almost MC'd on my friend's album (he's on Mad EP's label), but I don't know what happened."

3. Quasimoto's "Put a Curse on You"
"Man, I played you this before, right? I love how Madlib (he's the producer and the pitch-shifted voice of Quas) makes those samples his by singing along with/trading off with the crazy old man. This dude kid606 has the record that he sampled -- one of 606's tracks has this sample all over it. I'm trying to figure out who sampled it first."

4. Dälek's "A Beast Caged"
"I know! This stuff is so dark. Dälek is the MC, Oktopus is the producer and Still is the turntablist. Still is a really experimental dude who does things like scrape his turntable needle on his teeth and run it through a ton of effects. He has a couple of albums out. I read that he's homeless. Oh man, Dälek was also supposed to rhyme on my friend's album."

5. Automato's "Focus"
"I know this kid in the Polyphonic Spree, that band with, like, five million members who dress in robes. He and I started a few tracks together one night... Anyway, he made a copy of this for my friend Molly a while back. She and I listened to it on the way to Wyoming. Ha, we played pool with this total shark. She had her own pool glove and everything! Anyway, I like how dense everything is; it's like this big Wu-Tang jam, but with white college kids. James Murphy, that 'Losing My Edge' guy you asked about the other day, produced it."

6. Headset's (feat. Subtitle) "Breath Contrails"
"Wait, did you tell me you hate this song? It's so fucking crunk, even with the sample of a purring cat, hahahaha. Yes, I know what crunk means, you dork. Shut up and listen to the beat that isn't there. A few months ago, my friend and I saw this guy named 2Mex at Urban Lounge. I drank, like, seven pints of Polygamy Porter (note: this is a real beer, brewed in Utah) and then wrote all over 2Mex's email list how much I loved his set and how the Shapeshifters weren't worthy to be on tour with him. So outside, we found 2Mex on the phone -- with his ex-girlfriend it turns out. He was totally cool and talked about the little LA underground scene that pretty much lives in one house. He told us that Subtitle -- the MC on this album -- slept on his couch for, like, three months, then went to Europe and disappeared."

7. The Books' "There is No There"
"These guys are so cool. Like, I hate all this stuff they call 'Neo-Folk'. It's neat how they make the little glitching edits on the cello melody into the beat. Heh, I read this article about The Books where they list their musical inspirations, and one of them is 'Zion's National Park'. One of the guys came to Utah and hiked all over the canyons down there. He said the peace and quiet made even the sound of his clothes rubbing together seem loud, so he took them off and walked around buck-naked. Then the sound of his muscles and joints started bugging him..."

8. Squarepusher's "50 Cycles"
(Note: my friend claimed that he thought his "brain might hemorrhage" during this song, so I had to reassure him.)

"Yeah, this is a strong one, even for Squarepusher, I guess. His early stuff is, like, an extension of drum 'n' bass and acid house put together. That's him 'rapping' and playing bass. That bass stuff isn't sped up, either -- he's around the Les Claypool level. He's totally nuts, too. Even Aphex Twin calls him nuts. He said that Squarepusher disappears for months at a time then turns up with an album's worth of music. Squarepusher was supposed to tour the States a few years back, but he decided to bag the whole thing. I was pissed because I had my friend in San Francisco (this druid chick named Yen) buy tickets."

9. Sage Francis's "Dance Monkey"
"How does this sound like the Bloodhound Gang? No way. This song is so tough! He's totally calling out the Olsen Twins and Ashley Simpsons of the world on that one line. I like the part where he says 'she likes repetitive songs that keep playin' / you know, the repetitive songs that keep playin'?' That's so cool, and that delay on his voice is awesome. Sage Francis is this mad, straight-edge, vegan dude with a big beard. Look, here's a picture of him."

10. Larvae's "Redline Version"
"This guy also has a big beard. I didn't realize I put those back to back. I heard he totally killed it at this festival in Berlin last year. Like, everyone was in shock at how good he is. Listen to that bass! Oh, this is from the album I reviewed where I mention Lil' Jon and 'Hotlanta', and my editor went along with it."

11. Funkstorung's (feat. Tes) "Play Pause/Fat Camp Feva"
"These guys are from Germany. White guy hip-hop producers are the ones doing weird stuff these days. I gave this girl from school a CD with a demo of a song I was working on and this song as the next track, and told her to go to town with it. She kept asking me, "Can I sing on something of yours?", but got all scared and nervous when she heard this. It was total bullshit. I'm so sick of this town. Like, they have no idea about anything unless it's on 92.5. And at school, they don't listen to anything unless it's on their repertoire for the semester. And blah blah blah blah blah..."

12. Quasimoto's "Low-Class Conspiracy"
"Yeah, I had to put another Quas song on there. It's like... I wish I had Quasimoto and MF DOOM albums hanging over my head so I could just point up whenever anyone asks me about 'new hip-hop'. This shit is so experimental and gangsta, though he takes the edge off slightly with a goofy voice. But man, they believably talk about bank robbery, smoking weed on the freeway (he mentions 'pass me that spray' after 'finish up the blunt', which is a cool detail) and tell cops to fuck off when they want to search his car. Man, when he quotes the cop ('Y'all got warrants? Y'all niggas ready for some torment?'), I feel the same chill I get when I see those flashing lights in my rearview mirror."

13. Peter B's "Sound of Doves in a Cave"
(Note: my friend says this reminds him of a Chris Isaac song, which is absurd)

"Heh. I guess. It's got that twangy echo guitar. Yeah, I can see that. I wrote this guy to tell him how much I loved his album and how impressed I am at the fact that he makes all his own synths. Oh man, he said that he was supposed to tour and come to Kilby Court, but couldn't make it this far west or something. Check out this pic. This is his 'Shinth'. Who, the girl performing with him on that surfboard-looking thing? I don't know who that is, but look at those little metal poles. I think they control the sound. Haha, look -- she put worms on there to control the pitch! Everyone on his label is kind of weird. This band Skeletons on there is probably my least favorite on there, so of course they're getting big now."

14. kid606's "Spanish Song"
"We drove all the way to Denver to see him. We got there, slept five hours then had to check out of the motel; we drove around all day, drank a lot of caffeine and saw those Matthew Barney movies to pass the time. Well, we go to the club and this guy asks me for a marker. I loan him a Sharpie, and he writes, "Kid 606 show is cancelled". I about lost it. So we drove home and sneakily took pictures of ourselves by this coffee machine at the Kum 'n' Go. For real, that's the name of it. Haha, then I had to pee in the worst way so we stopped at a truck stop called Gaye Johnsons. We saw about 20 semi-trucks parked around the place. I thought I was going to get kidnapped and sold into slavery, so instead of going in, I peed in a ditch and ran back to the car as fast as I could. Anyway, this is a really poppy version of kid606's music. He doesn't really have a certain sound, but his early stuff is way digital and noisy."

15. Wagonchrist's "Shimmering Haze"
"I used to think this was a metal band. His name is Luke Vibert and he has this awesome drum 'n' bass album under the name Plug. It still sounds relevant today, I think. I love the juxtaposition of the Alfred Hitchcock-y sample and the scream with the hip-hop beat. Oh, he and Squarepusher and Aphex Twin are friends; you can kind of hear it, in that they all sound a little off."

16. cLOUDDEAD's "Pop Song"
"Yeah, critics call this hip-hop, but it's really just weird-ass electronic music with even weirder words mixed in; my roommate always asks, "Is this They Might Be Giants?" I think it sounds like a new Monty Python musical. cLOUDDEAD released this album Ten, decided it was as far as they wanted to go together, then broke up, but they're all in a million other bands. These are the guys I told you about that make me want to try DMT. I would give my left arm to have made this album."

17. So' s "Untitled 8"
"There's this guy named Markus Popp, who is known as Oval. Well there are a couple of other guys in Oval, but no one remembers them. Anyway, he did this whole "the sound of skipping CDs" thing, which is basically just a little patch he wrote in this program called Max/MSP. It's like this really programmer-oriented music program. Well, that's what people say, that he uses the same patch over and over. This guy Lesser wrote this song called 'Markus Popp Can Kiss My Redneck Ass' because he claims he made this kind of music way before Oval. Whatever. Popp's stuff takes forever to really get into as far as hearing differences and stuff, but it's pretty cool after you get used to it. Anyway, he and this Japanese girl got together and put out an album under the name So. He took her songs and plugged them into his process deal."

18. Metric's "Hustle Rose"
(Note: here, he kind of questions my skills, as this song sounds nothing like anything else on the disc.)

"I put this on because it's a cool song. I guess the mix kind of fell apart, but whatever. I don't like that whole beat-matching thing. Sorry, I respect it, but... I grew up with dance music where the songs all sound different from each other, you know? Like, it was Depeche Mode then Sisters of Mercy and maybe Soft Cell and Violent Femmes, all in a row. Whatever. Oh, (coworker) Billy has a huge crush on the singer of this band. My friend Robin from Toronto actually knows her really well. She's the one who dated the Death From Above 1979 guy. Oh, she worked for MAC and did make-up for that one D12 video."

19. Aphex Twin's "IZ-US"
"This song is so melancholy, it almost makes me cry every time I hear it. Man, I hated Radiohead for about a year because they pretty much took the sound of Aphex Twin and people on his label and... Well, I hated people who liked Kid A but didn't bother to figure out all the album's influences. But I love Kid A now. Actually, it was the first Radiohead album I bothered to buy. Anyway, when I was in school, my musical world consisted of experimental jazz and old-school electronic stuff like that guy Stockhausen -- I had to catch up on all that stuff. It was kind of a natural step when, with Napster's help (haha), I found IDM in... like, 2000? This is one of my favorite Aphex Twin songs, and definitely my favorite of his EPs. I used to fast-forward past 'Come to Daddy' to get to this one. It's on that EP with the song where that voice says 'I want to kill you and cut off your butt-hole,' or whatever."