Other Music's Michael Stasiak and his pick

Welcome to our newish weekly column, "Staff Picks," in which we ask the staffers at our favorite book, music, and movie stores around to town to share with us what they're reading, listening to, and watching this week. We figure they're good people to ask. Last week we talked to Stephanie Anderson at WORD bookstore, and this week it's over to NoHo indie record mainstay Other Music (an Amanda Palmer favorite), to chat with clerk Michael Stasiak about what he's been listening to lately.

Michael says: "It’s tough to wrench myself away from the raw, electric garage rock that I usually listen to— in that vein, Crystal Stilts and The Babies both released great records this year. But this new FabricLive mix, from British producer David Kennedy (who records under the names Pearson Sound and Ramadanman), pierces through my skuzzy, six-string armor and has all of us at the shop straight grooving.

At 30 tracks, Kennedy’s mix (#56 in their ongoing series) is nimble in spirit and heavy on the cross-fades and layering. On a bed of eclectic samples—from Pangaea to Pinch to Burial—Kennedy’s approach to this collection of kinda dubby, kinda funky house and bass beats is to shoot first and never ask questions. The most outstanding feature of the mix is how well the tracks flow, seeming to expand and contract time itself simultaneously--when we were jamming this record in the shop, I didn’t know and didn’t care if the mix was just beginning or ending. We’re currently selling the CD at the shop for $17.99."