I make no secret of my analog nostalgia. I'm a Mexican kid from East of LA, and my childhood was not as awash in digital enhancement as it is today. I remember days watching hand-drawn cartoons on a mirror-projector big screen, renting fuzzy video tapes from the local hole in the wall every weekend, and listening to tape-saturated dirty raps after my parents went to sleep every night. Much of my "musical upbringing" happened on a record player. My dad is a recovering vinyl addict; every week he would walk down to Poobah Records to buy a couple of LPs. Well, over the weeks and the years, his collection began to fill out: prog-rock (lots of Yes!), sixties hippie-shite, ZAPPA!, a few bits of jazz, disco, heavy metal, power pop, punk, movie soundtracks, drippy singer-songwriters, and tons of R&B. It seems to tail off with a handful of terrible ‘80s pop records and virtually comes to a dead halt mid-80s, just about when the second kid was born (me) and vinyl reached the end of its reign as the industry standard.

I've always been a pretty firm believer in Sturgeon' s Law, the postulate credited to science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon that "90% of everything is crud" - a number that, in today's user-generated media world, might seem even higher. But I think the percentages are holding pretty steady, it's just that the sheer volume of stuff out there has jumped exponentially in recent years. Which is a great (if sometimes exasperating) thing for dedicated music fans (though perhaps not for their bank accounts), since it means that the overall amount of genuinely creative sound production has also exploded. Certainly the ability to self-release and virtual-distribute one's own music has made it possible for folks who wouldn't have gotten a second glance from most conventional "record labels" to spread their sounds to similarly-minded others

Michio Kurihara is one of the most revered electric guitarists in the world today, though outside of his native Japan only the closest followers of psychedelic rock might even know his name. For over 20 years Kurihara has honed an approach that's equal parts scorched earth and cool breeze. His tone exists with and apart from nature, its effects felt clearly whether serving as a melodic compliment or a central focal point. The dense fuzz-tone blasts he's known for have rightfully earned comparisons to Cream era Clapton, Jimmy Page, and perhaps most of all the late great John Cipollina of Quicksilver Messenger Service. Virtually every one of Kurihara's performances over the years has reflected an innate understanding of the nature and energy of the chosen material. His abilities have graced classic albums by White Heaven, Marble Sheep, Ghost, The Stars (not to be confused with the Canadian band of the same name), Damon and Naomi, Yura

If there's a drawback to the ongoing deluge of musical riches in this microlabel networked post-whatever age, it would have to be the sheer difficulty of keeping up with all the wondrous and varied sounds emerging from all corners of the geo-musical spectrum. It's just too damn easy for quality to fall through the cracks, especially if it's not aligned with a currently "hip" label or scene (and yes, scene-herd thinking is as alive and well on the undergrounds as anywhere else). Take, for instance, Norman, OK's Anvil Salute, whose stellar second CDR release New Crusaders of the 11^th Commandment sat in a pile beside my stereo for nearly five months before I finally got around to hearing it - at which point it immediately shouldered its way into a spot on my best-of-2006 favorites list - and

Among a whole weekend of high musical points, one of our favorite experiences at last April's Terrastock 6 in Providence, RI was the festival's opening set by Tanakh. Their recently-released CD Ardent Fevers had really spun our heads, & it ended up being one of the real recorded highlights of 06. Tony Dale summed up our feelings in his 06-roundup rave, calling it "a sensory overload of songwriting classicism and rock dynamics, tightly controlled pop-songs and explosive guitar freak-outs ... Shattering the paradigm of the psychedelic underground, Ardent Fevers is a release that deserved to be heard by millions." So we were especially interested to see how they would work this stuff live, and fought our way through various (mostly self-created) potholes to be sure we were at the AS220 club in time for them to take the stage.

KM up first

The practice of looking back on a previous year's cultural output seems to be almost a necessary ritual among those who pay attention to such things, but 2006 highlighted a whole range of developments that make such attempts harder and harder to countenance and conceptualize. In music especially, most of my serious-listening friends and acquaintances seem to agree that this past year was one real damn doozy, and even kind of dizzying in some regards. The sheer abundance of music (available via microlabels, self-releases, downloads in addition to the usual channels) made it nearly impossible for any individual to keep up with new developments in any but the smallest corner of the world of sound. Plus, I mean, the whole concept of time as a linear count-up and count-down thing is starting to get pretty fuzzy in our

Back for more, with Tony Dale (Lee follows below)

This is the time of year I like to call "nailing smoke to a wall time". With the proliferation of releases on CD and LP on major and minor labels, and the explosion of artifacts issued by the handmade CD-R underground, chances of actually hearing more than an infinitesimal sample of what's going on are slim, and add to that the increasing impact of download only releases and you've got an exercise on par with sorting out the shenanigans of quantum particles. Nonetheless, here is a selection of ten releases that stayed with me more than briefly - works that in effect became invisible co-travelers in the hurtling rail cart that was my passage through 2006.