Casey Foubert & James McAllister

Asthmatic Kitty instructs us to employ their three-volume library series as an "accompaniment to cooking, eating, sculpting, exercising, high stakes poker, soaking, panoramic landscapes, cuddling, car chases, drawing, knitting, bandaging, romance, playing chess, or planning the rest of your life, of which this is the first day." Volume 3: Music For Drums is suitable for such tasks but also great listening in its own right. Composed and performed by Casey Foubert and James McAllister, the twists and turns range from out-and-out hip-hop breaks to minimal drum machine experiments to Harry Partch-like harmonies in percussion. As with so much library music, it's recorded in a most awesome manner ― certainly a lot of the fun comes from the sheer sonic immediacy of the drums and the constantly changing rhythms. Some examples: "C v. J v. X" is a rocking backbeat at heart but is overlaid with ticking clock-type polyrhythms that march to the centre of the mix then back again. "Dung Beetle" appropriately starts with buzzing noises before finding a slacker Martin Denny motif, complete with "jungle" accents. Best of all, it's hard to stop listening once you've started.