Time seems to be flying by so fast as we get close to the end of the year. I really do love this time of year and hate that it goes by so fast. As soon as October begins it seems to end. Halloween has come and gone and Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, and New Year's Eve will be here and gone before we know it. The music releases will start to slow down in November and December but there are still some great albums coming out. We have a new fantastically great reissue from the fantastically great band Pylon. I can't believe it has already been two years since their last reissue, but it's true! I was about to do a whole blog about Pylon but it was sounding a bit familiar as I was thinking about it in my head. That is because I already did a whole blog about them two years ago. Pylon's first album, Gyrate, was reissued by DFA two years ago on October 16, 2007. You can go back and read my blog here if you want. I just went back and read it myself. I was amazed what I had forgotten over the last couple of years and actually learned something myself. Pylon was great. You may not know that. I sure didn't know anything about them until 2 years ago when that first reissue came out. DFA has now reissued their second album, called Chomp. It is equally as great as the first one. And I love how they recreate the LP artwork for the CD reissue along with the worn in imprint from the vinyl. Pylon was a new wave band from Athens, Georgia, but they have a darker sound than fellow Athens groups the B-52's and R.E.M. They remind me of Siouxsie & the Banshees at times, mixed with the Motels and Romeo Void. Basically, you can just think of any fantastic female led new wave band and mix them all up together and you get Pylon. The band toured a bit with Gang Of Four and also sound like them at times. This second album is at times dark and gothy and at times just a dark sort of punk. I like to think of them as Athens Goth. Seriously. These songs would not be out of place at a death rock night at any club. Good stuff. I really did love that first reissue but had sort of forgotten about Pylon until now. I was so excited when I heard that their second album was also getting reissued. I went and listened to that first reissue again to get myself ready. The second reissue does not disappoint.

Since the release last week of Jason Bitner's engaging new book Cassette From My Ex: Stories and Soundtracks of Lost Loves, the St Martin's Griffin published, 212-page anthology of 60 short stories, has been striking a nerve with  readership of a certain age who can directly relate to and recall its pre-iPod subject matter: the bygone era of the homemade mixtape -- specifically mixtapes made to woo new crushes or love objects.

An image that pops into many minds would be the Rob Gordon character played by John Cusack in the  Stephen Frears directed film adapatation of Nick Hornby's novel High Fidelity and his obsession with making the perfect mixtape, regardless of how long it took. Or as Shirley Manson of the group Garbage wrote for Cassette From My Ex's jacket cover, "Anyone who understands the obsessive attention to detail, the time it took to collate, select, and edit the content of a perfectly executed mix tape, or just someone who appreciated the rhythms and nuances of such extraordinary artifacts will treasure this collection of stories, comfortable and secure in the knowledge that such exquisite efforts were not made in vain and indeed there was a time when a humble cassette tape was perhaps the greatest gift of all."

For Cassette From My Ex: Stories and Soundtracks of Lost Loves, Bitner, who is best known as a co-founder of the wonderful Found magazine series, compiled first-person essays about mixtapes fueled by crushes or love (some tragic, some hilarious, many in-between) written by sixty different writers, many of them journalists & musicians. Contributors include author Rick Moody, This American Life's Starlee Kine, The New Yorker's Ben Greenman, The Magnetic Fields’ Claudia Gonson, Improv Everywhere's Charlie Todd, Mortified's David Nadelberg, and former Rolling Stone writer and MTV2 veejay Jancee Dunn.

ELECTRONIC/TECHNO


STEVE BUG Look Who's Stalking/Zero Balance 12" (COR 067EP)

Steve Bug follows up his Collaboratory mix with this superb 12" for Cocoon. While "Look Who's Stalking" uses the raw energy of Chicago/Detroit house with driving hand claps, percussions and nasty vocals, "Zero Balance" is an experiment in how far you can reduce tech-house to the essence of a bass line. Short vocal loops complete a sensibility that makes Bug's tracks such high quality music.


SIZE Yeah (Gregor Tresher Remix) 12" (PURE 055EP)

VA Snuggle & Slap 2x12" (CCS 041LP). 2x12

CONFORCE Cruising EP 12" (CURLE 021EP)

SIGUR ROS Gobbledigook 12" (KOM POP015EP)

ROBERT HOOD The Pace/Wandering Endlessly 12" (MPM 004EP)

ANDY STOTT Night Jewel 12" (LOVE 058EP)

PACO OSUNA Lemon Juice 12" (PLUS 8106EP)

JABBERJAW The Garden Of Eden 12" (SPC 078EP)

JOHN SELWAY Shake The Snow 12" (THRONE 003EP)

ROCHA/MUGWUMP Hands Of Love (Fingers Of Sand) 12" (IFEEL 001EP)

Beatconductor CARIBBEAN PATH 12"

DJ Koze MINIMAL ELVIS & MIXIMAL MJ 12" LTD001

Danton Eeprom SCORING ONLY TO BE.. 12" CNTX3637

PROXY Who Are You?/8000 12" (TURBO 071EP)      

Super Value SPECIAL EDITS 07 12" SV07

Hell & Christian Prommer FREAK IT 12" 047BUZZ

Another spooky Amoeba San Francisco Halloween has come and gone...thank goodness we have photographs to help us always remember the good, the bad, and the ugly!

We kicked things off with mood-setting DJ sets by DJ Tay and Miz Margo, Taylor in some creepy garb and Margo a dead ringer for Abbey from NCIS!