Constantines - "Time Can Be Overcome". Somewhere on the 33rd floor of a 51-storey apartment bloc in South Korea there is a man called Yes. He has dwelled on the 33rd floor for the past fourteen years, since he left his parents' home and went to work at the software company. Every day he has the Korean equivalent of a tuna sandwich for lunch, the Korean equivalent of chicken soup for dinner. Every night he looks out over the entire city, a city turned the colour of oyster-shell, and imagines how one day it will be nothing but dust. Yes has one friend, a violinist called Fei. Sometimes they go together to watch concerts. The best-ever concert was one on the beach, a viola-player standing on the sand and playing so hard that the strings fell out of its neck. At any second it looked like a wave could come and swallow the viola-player, take him away in a blink. The wave didn't come but at any moment it could have come. Yes bought an electric guitar thirteen years ago and every night since then he has spent learning a single song. He does not feel this is slow or fast; it is just right. One day he will play the song, play the whole thing. Meteorites will hammer the city and tsunamis will rise and his heart will come to life in his chest. [buy]

Withered Hand - "I Am Nothing". You know how some people, especially old-fashioned people, hang their carpets on clotheslines and then beat all the dust out of them? Or how some people knock their snowy boots against the side of the car before getting in? Here's Edinburgh's Withered Hand using mandolin, guitar, cello and his voice to shake all the dust from him, all the stray feelings, all the loose longings; so that at end of song he'll be just a body and the light in his eyes. It's a song beautiful and full. [buy for a song]

[photo by AFP, of the Congolese plane crash in October 08 07]