It's that time of year — spring cleaning! Time to get rid of the old and usher in the new.

Amoeba Music is gonna help you out by taking those dusty CDs and LPs off your hands. Bring in your old stuff and get cash or 30% more value in a credit slip that you can use to shop whenever you like. Right now we're especially looking for those used CDs, so bring them in and trade up to vinyl, MP3 or whatever your preferred format. See our price breakdown here; we pay anywhere from 10 cents to $5 for used CDs, depending on condition and desirability.

Come to the buy counter in the front of the store and see what our expert appraisers have in store for your collection. And if you're looking for something other than media to use that credit on, Amoeba Music has a bevy of books, T-shirts, posters, collectibles and other goodies on hand throughout the store.

Check here for more information about Amoeba's buy counters, including hours per location.

 

The good news from New York City this week is that, following a few false starts of promising good weather following an elongated winter that cut into spring weather, the warm weather has finally arrived and looks set to stay. The bad news of the past week is that, despite all of the advances in human rights especially in this incredibly diverse heavily populated city, that hate crimes are reportedly on the rise - a sad reality that was brought to light over the weekend when a gay man was shot and killed in Greenwich Village in an apparent hate crime. The tragic irony of this unprovoked cold blooded murder was that it occurred just a few short blocks from the Stonewall Inn - the landmark of the beginning of gay rights revolution - when, according to NYPD, 32 year old Harlem born Brooklyn resident Mark Carson was fatally shot in the face with a .38 caliber revolver by homophobic slur throwing 33 year old Manhattan ex-con Elliot Morales who has been charged with second-degree murder as a hate crime. This hate crime, according to NYPD records, is the 24th (reported) anti-gay bias attack this year in the city - a startling statistic since that is almost double the number for the same period in 2012. In reaction to this fact, and following this latest hate crime, on Monday (May 20th) thousands of New Yorkers, including some Pols, took to the streets to march in protest. The rally was organized by openly gay City Council Speaker/mayoral candidate Christine Quinn who promised both a new anti-hate initiative in NYC public schools and increased NYPD presence in both the heavily gay populated Greenwich Village and Chelsea districts.

Stellar Om Source

Elite Excel

RVNG Intl.

Teaser 12-inch for Christine Gualdi's upcoming LP on New York institution RVNG Intl (Max D, Blondes, Sun Araw/Congos). Stellar Om Source's recent Image over Image 12" saw her integrating tough beats into her synth vistas -  on Elite Excel, Gualdi combines raw, adroit drum programming with the time-warp qualities of her earlier work. Everything is in its right place - at 2:30 a pristine C2-esque synth vamp emerges over the hazy acid. The momentum picks up as the track spans on, Gualdi continuing to strike the balance between rough acid techno and synthetic mind-music. The remix finds Kassem Mosse  exploring the cubist funk he pulled off so well on 2D. Buy Elite Excel

Kyle Hall

The Boat Party

Wild Oats

Assured full-length debut from the producer whom many expect to carry Detroit's legacy forwards. What's on display here is not a producer buckling under decades of dance music history, rather, a singular talent who began his career taking risks and continues to double-down. KMFH's use of isolators is unparalleled. The first half of this album holds skittering drum tracks, yet remains compelling due to Hall's nuanced filtering and effects work. "Flemmenup" welds the recent footwork fixation onto classic Detroit electro-styles, while "Crushed" shows the producer can cut a sample alongside legends like KDJ and Terrence Parker. "Finnapop" is a Dancemania tribute which ends in a solid 2:30 minutes of spooling noise, emphasizing the experimental nature of Hall's production and listening (Hall enjoys shopping for outre records at Windy and Carl's "Stormy" records). The final track, "Measure 2 Measure" shows Hall effortless skating around a pair of soul samples, juggling insane hi-hats and morphing the soaring female vocal into an endless, abstract delay trail. There is a perfect sloppiness to what Hall does on the record, light years away from marathon Ableton sculpting sessions.

      

Since news first broke yesterday of the passing of legendary rock keyboardist Ray Manzarek, who co-founded The Doors in 1965 with Jim Morrison, people have been playing Doors music and sending out tributes. I never realized just how many people loved the Doors so much but such is the sign of a truly great band. Some people, upon hearing the news at first, didn't believe it and questioned if it was a hoax. Such is the ere we live in. But soon everyone found out that sadly the news was no hoax and that the greatly admired musician/author/film director, who maintained a consistent passion for his art throughout his life, had left this earth. Yesterday, Monday May 20th, the South Chicago born Manzarek died at the RoMed Clinic in Rosenheim, Germany following a battle with bile-duct cancer. Manzarek was 74.

While Jim Morrison - the late great vocalist and front man of The Doors - might be the first one to come to mind when the average person thinks of the Doors it was the blues rooted keyboard playing of Manzarek and his signature hooks, that also doubled as the bass backbone of the group's sound, that helped distinguish the Doors' warm sound. And the fact that the Doors even came about in the first place is thanks to Manzarek's intuition and foresight. As the story goes; following a chance encounter on Venice Beach with Morrison, who he first met at UCLA before the two film students had graduated, Manzarek convinced the future Doors front man, who considered himself a poet and not a musician, that his poems/songs would be best presented with the backing of a blues-based rock band. And the rest as they say is rock n roll history. Manzarek's soulful musicianship was instrumental in defining such Doors classics as “Light My Fire,” “Riders on the Storm,” “Love Her Madly,” and (my personal favorite) “Roadhouse Blues.”