September 5, 2012 – Noir balladeer Scott Walker is an unlikely connection. In the '60s, he made theatrical music tackling unmarketable subjects like family men who only feel alive when scoring hookers, and his more recent albums have been radically unpleasant affairs featuring the sound of people punching beef. What Walker and Animal Collective have in common is a seductive approach to horror: In the darkest corners of their music are things you can't look at but can't look away from either. Ironically, it was Panda Bear — the gentle one — who sampled Walker on Person Pitch's "Take Pills." Back to the Centipedia glossary NEXT: Hildegard Westerkamp

July 20, 2012 – Fat Boys Fat Boys (8) Traffic Entertainment Yes, they were sort of a novelty act, but at the root of novelty is a desire to entertain, which takes as much skill and integrity as supposedly higher-minded goals. Though they were undoubtedly rappers, their forefathers weren't in rap but in black doo-wop and early rock groups like the Coasters — acts unafraid to put themselves at the butt of a joke, acts unafraid to make fart noises with their mouths. When they rob a pizza place, it's not for the money, but because they're hungry for pizza. "Don't You Dog Me" features several samples of actual dogs. But they have rhythm, too, and heart. The tough con of another rapper's narrative turns into a lonely boy waiting for a letter, and when they peacock for the ladies, it's with the caveat that just because they're fat doesn't mean they're unbreakable.

April 23, 2012 – Codeine Frigid Stars (7) Barely Real EP (7) The White Birch (9) (Numero Group) Codeine's jagged, exquisitely slow music is the embodiment of a particular kind of Fuck It, or maybe even the silence that stands in when Fuck It takes too much effort. There's an excellent Greek word for this, and the word is anhedonia: the condition of being unable to experience pleasure. This isn't the same thing as saying Codeine made miserable music, because they didn't — misery would be too clear a feeling, a feeling defined by a presence instead of an absence. The band's ancestry is in Black Sabbath and "Wild Horses," but the product is closer to jazz: confidently performed but vague in its intentions, marked by mumbled vocals and big, open guitar chords blowing in flurries across the mix.

February 16, 2012 – Mantronix Mantronix: King of the Beats (Anthology 1985-1988) (Traffic Entertainment) Kurtis Mantronik's productions represent a time in the mid-1980s when rap still meant synthesizers and drum machines. Instead of the comforting, continuous sound of funk breaks and vinyl static, listeners heard the mean punctuation of silence; instead of grainy horns and soul choirs, they heard the burble of the 808's tom-tom and the brash syncopation of digital bells. By the late-'80s and early-'90s, this was all deeply out of fashion. In the rearview, though, Mantronik was a visionary — one of those artists whose sound feels common and unremarkable, until you realize he invented it. Compared to the beats on Mantronix records, the rapping (mostly by MC Tee) was quaint and nervous. It's there to move the party. It's there to rock your body.

December 15, 2011 – EDITOR'S NOTE: There are two ways (at least) to look at the apparently neverending glut of Reissues currently being churned out by the superstar-lacking, MP3-haunted music industry. One, the repeated repackaging of certain artists' catalogues has reached a questionable, almost laughable extreme -- Pink Floyd seemingly believe their fans smoked so much weed while listening to the Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, et al. that they're now just braindead zombies who will hooever up whatever's left in the band's dustbin from now until that infernal inflatable pig revolts and returns to seek vengeance on its minders. Two, the music industry has been so incompetent over the years, and has colossally botched the careers of so many worthy artists, that there is a fairly substantial backlog of out-of-print or overlooked or underappreciated albums that are in need of a fresh hearing.