…shining a little light on what we’re spinning on the office stereo.

Happy Ides of March! Today also marks the 14th anniversary of the Lehman Brothers Fixed-Income Internal Coup, when the late Chris Pettit was ousted. We all remember where we were on that day, no?

Rarely, for us, no one all-consuming musical obsession seems to be gripping us this week. We’ve been listening to our new Kevin Dunn anthology a lot – because we like it, really, not because we’re releasing it (although one sorta fuels the other, right?). “Oktyabrina” has become a real office favorite, to the point where we ordered a copy of the UK 45 from eBay the other day. It was an a-side over there (on Armageddon Records) but a b-side here (on DB Recs)…we’re thrilled that it’s on the anthology, and it should be heard…

A fair amount of dub spinning in the office these days. Good dub is conducive to the workplace, really, as you can get a lot out of paying careful attention to it, or you can use it as a sort of mental clothesline to suspend your actions and thoughts on. Our favorite dub LPs include anything involving the immortal Augustus Pablo (particularly King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown and the El Rocker’s compilation on Pressure Sounds), Dr. Alimatado’s Best Dressed Chicken In Town (which I guess is an intersection between dub and deejay), a two disk set on Moll-Selekta of the first two King Tubby LPs (Roots of Dub and Dub from the Roots), and Blood and Fire’s King Tubby’s Prophecy of Dub CD, which is made up of dubs of songs originally cut by the amazing Yabby You – whose own (non-dub) anthology Jesus Dread has also gotten some attention from us of late.

We’ve been chasing the dub with steady hits from an advance copy of Standard Fare’s debut The Noyelle Beat (which will be released by Bar-None tomorrow, March 16th). We first stumbled upon this young trio from Sheffield, UK, whilst in the UK ourselves. We caught them in London, and they knocked our sweaty socks off: hooky as hell, bright and bashy, but with a layer of complexity and craft that is rare in young acts these days. Guitarist Danny has a real knack for walking the line between slash and jangle that excites us to no end. A great ass-kicking-first-thing-in-the-morning disk.

Drummer Paul Motian, one of our absolute favorite jazz musicians, has a new disk out with the intriguing trio configuration of drums, piano (Jason Moran), and sax (Chris Potter). Hard to imagine a better lineup, and given our recent fascination with bass-less bands, this is right up our alley. Listened twice just far, and the interplay is staggering. We’re just scratching the surface on this one, and we’ll be listening more in the coming weeks. Also picked up a copy of the new Danger Mouse thing (Broken Bells), because we love the sounds he gets in the studio. First listen didn’t disappoint, but, again, we need more time.

We revisited Aquaduct’s Or Give Me Death album on Barsuk, and basked in leader David Terry’s warped post-Billy Joel piano pop. “As You Wish” was a favorite song back when this was released in 2007, and its charms have worn well.

We have George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass poised in the on-deck circle by the office stereo. Maybe we’ll follow it with Kramer’s The Guilt Trip, which is something to an homage to the legendary six-sider…