I have created a New Artillery Muxtape, which I’ll try to update every month or so with different songs. I’ve written about half of these bands a considerable amount in the last few months, so hopefully your interest is piqued. Many of the other selections are precursors for future posts. Muxtape #1 is subtitled “Now come days of begging, days of theft,” which is the first line of the second chapter of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. The novel has little to do with 1980s post-punk, American indie rock, or melodic electronic music and most of the songs lack insights into the American West in the middle of the nineteenth century.

1. Four Tet – “Hands”: I picked up Four Tet’s Rounds from the dollar bin of Reckless Records in Chicago a few years back. Although I was both surprised and delighted to find a recent, critically approved release in said bin, I put off actually listening to the album until “Hands” and “My Angel Rocks Back and Forth” came up on shuffle in my iTunes. Since then, Rounds has been in heavy rotation on my laptop and in my car stereo. The gentle pulse of “Hands” is still my favorite part of Rounds, which outdoes most of the organically inclined entries into the IDM wing of electronic music.

2. Colin Newman – “& Jury”: I’ve already written about my fondness for Colin Newman’s solo work, especially 1980’s A–Z and 1982’s Not To, which come closest to Wire’s art-punk. If you enjoy Wire’s first three albums or late ’70s and early ’80s post-punk and haven’t heard these records, track them down as soon as possible.

3. Frank Black – “Places Named After Numbers”: I remember seeing videos for Frank Black’s “Los Angeles” and “Men in Black” on 120 Minutes and taping the songs onto an audio cassette, but I never followed up on either record. Hell, I hadn’t gotten into the Pixies at that point. By the time I felt compelled to check out Frank Black’s solo albums, he already had far too many of them and I tossed off the whole enterprise. Whoops. Frank Black and Teenager of the Year have been making the rounds in iTunes lately and while both records could use some editing, gems like “Places Named After Numbers” make considerable sense in a post-Trompe le Monde context.

4. Accelera Deck – “Guided”: I first learned of Accelera Deck’s Narcotic Beats through Epitonic.com a year or so after its official release in 1998. At the time there were few, if any acts combining electronic beats and shoegaze guitar this effectively, so it’s a bit ironic that Chris Jeely abandoned this sound before its true emergence with M83, Ulrich Schnauss, Guitar, and similar new-gaze artists. Narcotic Beats may sound a bit dated nowadays since it’s not as polished as the aforementioned acts, but it’s hard to top the lilting melodies of “Guided,” “Greentone,” or “Drifting Out.” A career recap of Jeely’s output is long overdue, but if you ever come across Narcotic Beats or Exhalera Deck’s “Exhale” / “Inhale” LP, buy them and thank me later.

5. Smog – “Say Valley Maker”: I was officially chided by a friend of mine for not including A River Ain’t Too Much to Love on my best of 2005 list. My only excuse was that I was still digesting Smog’s Doctor Came at Dawn, Red Apple Falls, and Knock Knock and wanted to pace myself on Bill Callahan for a while. River now threatens Knock Knock for my favorite Smog LP and “Say Valley Maker” competes with “River Guard,” “I Break Horses (Peel Session),” and “All Your Women Things” for my favorite Smog song. I could quote every line from the song, but “And there is no love / In the unerring,” weighted with its extra syllable and fully breaking the rhyme of the verse, surpasses my other potential examples.

6. Wye Oak – “I Don’t Feel Young”: Wye Oak’s If Children comes together so strongly that it was hard to extract a single song to sample. While the guitar rush of “Warning” and the melancholic ache of “Family Glue” make solid cases for inclusion, the rising melody of “I Don’t Feel Young” grabbed me on the car ride back from New York this weekend.

7. C-Clamp – “Land Meets Sea”: Whenever I miss driving down I-57 to or from Chicago and passing a golden haze of nearly unbroken cornfields—yes, I actually enjoyed this drive—I think of C-Clamp’s guitar distortion and how perfectly it fits that mental image. “Land Meets Sea” adds an underbelly of acoustic guitar and an array of electric arpeggios to that distortion before pairing its closing feedback with descending harmonic chimes. It’s a multi-tracking extravaganza, but it’s handled with a remarkable amount of subtlety. I wish C-Clamp had recorded a third album, but Meander + Return and Longer Waves combine for a strong, if underappreciated legacy.

8. Silkworm – “Cannibal Cannibal”: Firewater will get its own post in the near future, but it took all of my strength not to put on one of Andy Cohen’s cathartic, solo-laden epics (“Slow Hands,” “Tarnished Angel,” “Don’t Make Plans This Friday”) in the interest of this mix’s pacing. Tim Midgett’s “Cannibal Cannibal” is much closer to the up-tempo classic rock of Lifestyle, but there’s certainly enough of Firewater’s relentless gravity in the pre-chorus couplet “It takes a lot of nerve / To get up in the morning.”

9. Wipers – “When It’s Over”: “When It’s Over” is a fine example of Greg Sage’s guitar pyrotechnics on Youth of America, an album I’ve covered several times.

10. Stars of the Lid – “Articulate Silences Part 2”: I wish they played Boston every month.

11. Lungfish – “Creation Story”: I have a larger post in the works on the rise in vintage vinyl prices, but Lungfish’s early records are a particularly curious example of inflation on eBay. The band has staunch devotees whose desire for early Lungfish records like Rainbows from Atoms and Pass & Stow has pushed me out of the market for the time being. Sixty bucks? I’ll wait and see if I see them in a used bin, thanks. Dischord did remaster and reissue the former record last year, tempting me to break my “If it’s on vinyl, buy it on vinyl policy,” but I’ve held out in the hopes that my search will bear LP fruit. “Creation Story” limits Lungfish’s trademark meditative repetition to the music, since Daniel Higgs opts for a gloriously rambling alternate take on creation/evolution: “…as a fish realized it held a monkey inside of itself / And expelled it on the beach in a larval, salamander form.” It almost acts as a template for the bizarre world Lungfish inhabits on their later records, particularly Indivisible, The Unanimous Hour, and Necrophones.

12. Deerhunter – “Spring Hall Convert”: Microcastle, Deerhunter’s follow-up to last year’s Cryptograms, magically appeared on the internet far in advance of its release date, but I’m still enjoying its predecessor. I finally grabbed the vinyl pressing of Cryptograms and Fluorescent Grey at Newbury Comics (20% off coupons are the devil on my shoulder) and splitting the album into three sides makes absolute sense.