I’m not a man that purchases singles, whole albums are what captivate me. To hear an artist’s vision across an hour or so is to be transported for a moment into their world, which is something singles, 12″, and EPs often cannot do. However, when it comes to listening I prefer to toss all those tracks in the air and hear them as they flutter back down.
The beauty of random play is just that: it’s random. All sorts of serendipitous connections are made between what might otherwise be construed as disparate pieces of music. Can a Bach Cantata really flow into an Ellington Ballad to only shift course into a Cumbia number? Only random listening will tell you (for the record it does and amazingly at that). Music becomes a joyous process of rediscovery as artists and songs take on new meaning through different associations and contexts.
The unfamiliar can drive some to distraction. My wife in fact hates random playback as she finds comfort in the anticipation of what song follows; music is linear and therefore should be heard in an obviously sequential manner. Order rules her listening habits. Throw caution to the wind, I say. Two-Step Garage numbers should be allowed to precede Swing, and by all means Post-Rock can follow an flowing organic Ambient piece. Live your life a little less certain and you could be surprised by what you find.
There’s a really interesting feature at Pop Matters called
Poirier is back and this time is slinging beats for himself under his own label, 
I caught the tail end of 
Cheap Trick have soldiered on for more than thirty years now but their output has been pretty spotty since 1979’s Dream Police. I had heard a lot of good things about