No updates for the last while, since I was temporarily banished to a land where the dialup is slow. Fortunately, this faraway land is the state of California, best known for its recall elections, fine weather and cheap music.

I've written about how one can find amazing music for next to nothing out there, and have provided a couple of examples, but for those who have never stepped foot in these bargain CD havens, I don't feel I've accurately portrayed just how incredibly cheap and good this music is. I believe more detail is needed.

First, a few introductory notes. I) I am always getting poorer, and thus, I resolve to spend less money each time. However, somehow I keep spending LESS, but return with MORE music. Chew on that one for a while. II) Officially, I now have more music than I know what to do with. Literally and figuratively: I have run out of space in my apartment for all this stuff, and I keep buying it faster than I can absorb it. I've barely had the chance to drill the recent spread of late summer/early fall releases into my head, and I'm barely through getting my teeth into my early summer trips to Montreal and the good old West Coast. Kazaa has served me well for previewing the stuff I'm curious about and am considering buying, but when you can get a CD for two bucks, it's practically free already. III) Sometimes I fear I'm becoming too repetitive on these pages, always writing about Kevin Shields and Jason Pierce are so great. The following project will allow me to write about a wide variety of artists in a short amount of time. I'll get to write about several forgotten and under-appreciated artists, and in doing so I'll get to show off how much I (think I?) know.

So, I'm going to list every one of the 44 CDs I bought, along with comments and pricing. I haven't heard everything yet, so there will be more than one post on this subject. Thus, items will be listed as I hear them, not in the order I bought them, which may become a bit confusing, but hopefully the following coding system will be of assistance. If the coding system merely adds confusion, then you'll still get an idea of how confusing and disorganized things can get when 44 new CDs plop into your lap during a ten day span.

There were four purchasing sprees: Amoeba (San Fran) on Sept 13 (A), Rasputin (Campbell) on 9/16 (B), Rasputin (Campbell), 9/18 (C); Amoeba (Berkeley), 9/22 (D). Each disc will be labeled by the corresponding letter. The prices are in USD. If there was a particular special (buy three, get one free, for example), the price of each CD will be adjusted accordingly to reflect the percentage saved. So if four CDs cost three, two, two and two dollars; then I'll have spent seven dollars on nine dollars worth of music, therefore each disc’s price will be adjusted by 22%. That makes $2.33, and 3 x $1.56 for the example above. I'm sure nobody except for me truly cares about the number crunching, so don't worry about the exact numerical details and just trust that I'm not making things up. It's the *deal* itself which is important, the buy three get one free stuff that you’d want to know about, and those will be explained in the text.

Last, I'm going to use a crude trinomial rating system for these discs. E -- music exceeded my expectations. M -- music met my expectations. L -- music is below my expectations. The key word is, of course, "music". Once you've bought a piece of music, you really don't care about the price anymore. That is, I don’t expect more from a ten dollar CD than I do from a two dollar one, but I do expect more from something on Mille Plateaux than I would from an impulse buy (although I reserve the right to make a couple of exceptions). Most of these comments are first impressions, gleaned from many quiet afternoons and a five disc changer perpetually on random play. So let the fun begin ...

1. Soul Center -- Soul Center (III). This was one of eight clearance discs from the SF Amoeba, therefore, with their standing "buy three get one free" offer on the clearance bins, two of them were free. Sometimes, the clearance bins are loads of slim pickings. It was certainly not the case this time. That's why I bought 19 CDs on 9/13 at Amoeba, and those choices were edited down from a group twice that size.

I'd thought that Soul Center was Brinkmann's dabblings in house music. I suppose it's reasonably to insist that techno shouldn't focus on samples or hooks. So if Soul Center is house, then so be it -- but it's one hundred percent pure Thomas Brinkmann: stripped and minimal up the wazoo, yet catchy. A, $1.46, E.

2. Various Artists -- A Brief History of Ambient volume 3. I’ve been holding out for a good price on Volume 4 for a while. That installment, subtitled "Isolationism", was key in refocusing the label of "ambient" toward proper, motionless, ambience as nature intended it (Aphex's "Selected Ambient Works II" played a similar role). After those two works, ambient returned to being ambient, and all the other non-rave electronic music fell under the "electronica" banner. I generally hate labels, but the "Isolationism" and the Aphex record were good ones.

For now, here's Volume 3, which suffers from the New Age bug, and Virgin’s understandable reliance on material on its own label: there's no way David Sylvian deserves four entries on any history of ambient. But there’s an impressive array of artists across these two discs, and the genre mish-mashing from rock to dub to drone makes for an engaging listen. A, $7.95, M.

3. Starfish Pool -- Kinetic. I wasn't planning a visit to the Berkeley Amoeba, but we ended up going to dinner right around the corner and I couldn’t resist finally completing the Amoeba trifecta. Having already bought 35 CDs to that point, I couldn't imagine what else I could (or should) possibly buy, but again the clearance bins were so good that I had no choice. "Interference '96" remains the only Starfish Pool release you really really ought to have (Koen Lybaert has never come close to reaching those heights before or since), but for any fan of minimalism, all of his stuff is worth having. D, $2.30, M.

4. Spectre -- Second Coming. One of Wordsound's many classics. I'd forgotten how awesome the Sensational track is. D, $1.62, M.

5. Flowchart -- Gee Bee. I keep finding Flowchart CDs for cheap on the West Coast. This EP seems to mark the start of their shift into house rhythms, which is mildly interesting in and of itself, but can't touch their earlier Stereolab fixations.

I wasn’t planning to visit Rasputin on that day, but two days earlier I’d noticed a sign saying you could buy one CD and get THREE free clearance CDs on your birthday (just for being you, said the placard). My Bday was coming on the 18th, unfortunately, I didn't notice that sign until I was already leaving with my ten CDs. I figured I'd already bought enough from that place, but two days later, I realized there was no way I could pass up free music. It wouldn't be right. And whaddaya know, I found a bunch of things I hadn't seen the day before. I bought a $7.95 Pluramon CD, plus two extra clearance discs, just because I'm me. C, $1.99, M.

6. John Cale -- Fragments of a Rainy Season. A word on Rasputin. If you buy five clearance CDs (ordinarily $3.95 each), the lot will set you back a mere fifteen bucks. Wow. There's a few in the Bay Area, this one is in Campbell, which is a suburb of San Jose. There aren't supposed to be any good music shops in the suburbs. Yet, I totaled sixteen CDs on my two excursions there. I don't think I've purchases sixteen CD's from Toronto suburbs in my entire life. If I have, then it's entirely due to those post-work Saturday afternoon swingbys of Sonic Temple in North York, covering roughly the years 1997-8.

This solo performance is a real gem. All tracks feature solo piano (except for guitar on two tracks) and singing. The playing is stellar (you'd expect nothing less from Cale) and the vocals more than hold up their half of the bargain (you never know what to expect there from Cale). Covering his entire career, from "Paris 1919" to "Guts" to a pristine "Style it Takes", incorporating covers (a nearly unrecognizable "Heartbreak Hotel", no shizzle), and poetry (Dylan Thomas set to music, as he'd done on his "Words for the Dying"). I can't say I've heard enough of his solo stuff, but this is the definitive John Cale album, from what I've heard.

I have to mention the ovation given to the opening lines of "Style it Takes", which was a recent release at the time. There is very little crowd noise on this album, but this crowd knows quality when it hears it. Kudos to them. It's got to be the best song Cale has ever sung on, and it's from one of the most underrated albums of the past twenty years -- the "Songs For Drella" record his did with Lou Reed. It's likely been forgotten because of the overshadowing of the following twin peaks, a) it doesn't stand up to the Velvets best work (but what can? It's way, way better than "Loaded", though), b) the Velvets reunion a couple of years later. B, $3.00, E.