Like any respectable city with its share of colleges, Richmond, Virginia is full of young men and young women who feel the need to express themselves through song. They start bands, some better than others, play clubs and record things. This is where the local DYI label comes in; it's run by everyone's friend and more than willing to press hundreds of CDRs or send out that mainstay of indie labeldom, the compilation.

Comp V2 is better than most of its kind, thanks to the fact that some of the tracks here are really damn good. Kids Techno's "Maximillian Cohen" is a brief whoosh of acid-techno halfway between Boards of Canada and My Bloody Valentine, an exotic respite from the guitar-driven raggedness of the rest of the disc. Among the rockers here, Forget Cassettes' "Ms. Rhythm and Blues" and A New Dawn Fades' "Inject" are highlights -- the first a girl-screech anthem, the second an ungainly mass of downer space-rock.

Most of the glue that holds this disc together isn't necessarily filler, either. Pick at random and the worst you'll get is badly produced but enigmatic and alive indie-boy rock -- a good sign for Cherub, since many of these home-pressed comps are badly produced and utterly pulseless.