Summer Music pt. 2: XTC - "Skylarking"

What can I say? The most charming record ever. It was my summer 1987 LP, and if you don't know this one yet, it's bound to be your summer 2008 LP.
NOTE: this version contains the song 'Dear God' instead of 'Mermaid Smiled'. Anoyne to share the latter?

Summer Music pt. 1: JR

Wherever you guys can be, I am on the northern hemisphere and the summer has just begun. This here is the first instalment in my 'summer music' series. Quite literally: each of the albums featured here I was listening to on a one fine summer. This particular record made my summer 2002.
It's difficult to make out the basic info from the cover, especially if you don't speak Spanish. "127" is the title, and the name of the band is JR. The music is slow, scorching and suffocating, mostly acoustic, but with a few electronic touches. Not too far from what Calla or Songs:Ohia did at the time, but these Spanish guys were a year or so ahead of their American counterparts.
I was surprised to find this great disc from 1999 still in print (it's on Acuarela Records) and this great band still making records. Anyway, try this gem in my trusty ogg 500 format.

Mark Kozelek - Rock'n'Roll Singer, 2000

If you tend to agree with me that Sun Kil Moon's "April" is the weakest album from Mark Kozelek since 1996 (or maybe ever), please enjoy one of the man's moments of glory. When it came out, it was sort of a postcard to us, Red House Painters fans whose faith was just beginning to shake. 30 minutes, 7 songs including 4 unexpected covers (three songs by AC/DC and one by John Denver), but the originals keep the thing going. "Ruth Marie" and especially "Find Me, Ruben Olivares" make for some of the most essential shit from Koz.
Encoded in my trustworthy 500 kbs .ogg format. Get songs 1-6 here and the aforementioned "Ruth Marie" here.

Harmony of the Spheres - v/a, 1996

Somebody called this album 'the best drone compilation ever'; I'd say that Drunken Fish, the label behind this gem, could have named it 'The Shape of Music to Come'. In 1996, the artists featured were just a bunch of obscure psych acts defying the regimes of grunge, triphop, and post-rock equally successfully. A few years passed and they're all household names; moreover, everybody and their dog plays like one of them.
Originally released as a 3xLP edition, with each artist given one side; the thing was also available as a double CD.
A: Bardo Pond - "Sangh Seriatim"
B: Flying Saucer Attack - "Since When" pts. 1-4
C: Jessamine - "22:30"
D: Roy Montgomery - "Fantasia on a Theme by Sandy Bull"
E: Loren MazzaCane Connors - 4 songs
F: Charalambides - "Naked in Our Deathskins"
Get A and B here
Get C here
Get D, E and F here
and enjoy the sound quality of the .ogg files. The bitrate is somewhat lower than 500, though.

Tomasz Sikorski (1939-1988)

If Morton Feldman was contemporary music's Brian Eno, Sikorski, a Polish composer, should have been its Syd Barrett. An unsung proto-minimalist classic, an increasingly reclusive figure, died alone of alcohol O. D.
There is a strong obsessive quality to his music, which was his extremely singular take on minimalism. Absolutely essential stuff.
For an unknown reason, there are no CDs of his music. I found these files on soulseek, all of them are in 320 mp3. 9 compositions, 200 megabytes of stuff in three chunks which can be downloaded simultaneously.
Dig it.

PART 1 (divshare)
PART 2 (mediafire)
PART 3 (mediafire)