by SHANE SINNOTT

“Operation, cover your ears/You’re not gonna like what you’re gonna hear/I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.” So sings Bradford Cox on the bonus disc, Weird Era Cont., to Deerhunter’s much anticipated third album, Microcastle, released last week. Microcastle has been available online forever, so interest-wise, I’m like whatevs, but Weird Era Cont. is worth checking out. An unmastered copy was inadvertently leaked by Cox on the band’s blog a couple months ago, and so Kranky is including it with the Microcastle disc. It’s got a bedroom feel to it, and I like that guys are releasing albums in 2008 that sound like cassettes from 1992—only way easier to get your hands on. Download “Operation,” which contains the lyrics quoted above, at tinyurl.com/5ceo9t. Be sure, as well, to keep up with Deerhunter’s blog at deerhuntertheband.blogspot.com, where new content, in the form of songs recorded and offered to you for free, is posted every few days.

Do you remember a while ago when I was telling you about that guy Cliff Bolling, who was digitizing his massive collection of 78 rpm records and putting them online for free? Well, at the time, it was probably impossible to access his site as it kept being shut down by his provider for all the attention he was getting. After receiving some donations, the site is back up, with the annoying but necessary provision that you put in a password to access it. Visit 78records.cdbpdx.com to get temporary access to the collection. Even cooler is that someone has created a massive torrent of every record on the site, with Bolling’s blessing, which you can find, provided you’re up to speed with the torrent thing, at www.mininova.org/tor/1697139. It’s huge—over 10 gigs, a little more than two DVDs, an incredible thing to have. As Mr. Bolling told Wired, “There’s a whole world of music that you don’t hear anymore, and it’s on 78 rpm records.”

So there you go, kids—Bradford Cox and Cliff Bolling, two guys offering up music to the world from their bedrooms. Take your pick.