Kracfive MP3

By chance or design, the latest entry in the kracfive.com collective’s monthly “MP3 rotor” of free downloads clocks in at three minutes and 33 seconds, which means it makes you picture a spinning chunk of vinyl even before you enter its scratchy little sonic world, in which an LP’s surface noise clip-clops like a sodden horse and voices echo past like a lo-fi poltergeist, all edited and sequenced to maximize the sense of moldy continuity. The song is “Atomsk” (MP3) by Octopus Inc. and Le Gun, who have found a unique way to share credit: in the file name, Octopus gets listed first, but in the MP3 file’s artist tag, Le Gun gets top billing. There’s a point about a minute in that exemplifies their ace sense of timing, when the whole thing takes a deep breath of space for all of about a tenth of a second, before rebooting. The looped guitar, the distant squawks, the hoarse whistles — “Atomsk” has all this and more, packed tight as a suitcase. Check it out at kracfive.com.