by SHANE SINNOTT

A couple of weeks ago I was taking out my air conditioner for the winter and, in the process, knocked off the windowsill and destroyed one of my favourite things—my Buddha Machine, a plastic speaker box that plays loops designed by an outfit called FM3, who are Christiaan Virant and Zhang Jian. If it doesn’t already sound awesome, trust me, it is. You can select from a half-dozen loops that will play endlessly, and the speaker is crappy enough that you can completely distort the sound by increasing the volume. Lucky for me, the Buddha Machine 2.0 has just been released (fm3buddhamachine.com). More loops and colours, same aesthetic appeal. Scroll down the main page for samples, and get yourself to ordering in time for Christmas—these new ones have a pitch bend knob too.

Next, a good thing to listen to now that the air-conditioned days are over, and as you begin to realize just how long you will be trapped inside, might be some of the newly released BBC Sessions from Belle and Sebastian. The album offers nothing really new, but has some prime material from the Isobel Campbell days. My favourite is the ever melancholic “Slow Graffiti,” offered here from a 1997 session: tinyurl.com/6cbkca. In a similar vein, Rivers Cuomo gets all warm and cozy on his just-released Alone II: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo. “Come on in,” says Rivers, “let’s sit on my bed and listen to music.” There’s a nice fuzzy version of the Beach Boys’ “Don’t Worry Baby” on it that you can download at tinyurl.com/5qzhkh.

And finally, Pitchfork Media (pitchforkmedia.com) have been victims of a bit of a “leak.” Someone posted the entire Pitchfork 500 list, which is the basis of a book just released for the holidays, a “guide to the greatest songs” according to the, for better or worse, madly influential Web site. So if you want to save yourself $20 and just see what’s on it, the list has been posted at tinyurl.com/5dnbhu. And if you want to be your own judge, I bet, with some searching, you could find a torrent of ’em all, couldn’t you?