...until the weekend. But since your friend and mine was quickly gonna take me to her bookshop (that I was too stupid to find by myself) before she headed home, I figured I'd reciprocate by taking her to Synaesthesia, which is also rather hard to find unless you've been there before.

• I finally picked up a copy of the Rough Trade Electronic 01 compilation. All I've done so far is unwrap the plastic, 'cause I've been listening to the others.

• Merzbow - Hard lovin' man : I'm still pissed that I can't work out what the hell I did with my copy of door open at 8am, which had some really nice throbby bassy sounds when you fired it up. But anyway, I couldn't let a title like this go. Soary guitar samples over (under ?) digitalized (read: chunked up) insectoid noise.

• Merzbow - Merzbox Sampler : probably the closest I'll get to the box, and it was a mere $12.

• Songs: Ohia - Didn't It Rain : this came later, from Missing Link, where I ducked in to see if they had the Yuka Honda album (since they carry a fair number of Tzadik releases...). No luck yet. This was in the new releases section on the counter, though, and I wasn't gonna leave without one, having read the odd postitive review. And besides that, since Jason Molina good-naturedly put up with me wandering over and chatting to him after his gig in Melbourne for a while, I figure that's also worth buying a few more of his albums. Intial signs (i'm up to track 3) are quite encouraging.