The year 2010 has brought not only a wealth of extended digital audio to the consumer market, but vinyl has become an integral part of many a deluxe edition. Clarity may not yet have won over quantity, but as far as this gift guide is concerned, the industry is finally getting on the same wavelength and the same frequency as collectors. Here are some fine examples of what to get for the music-loving technophile that has everything—except that one raw take from that one aborted session that’s only now received official reference-grade remastering. more

Sometimes its not the thought that counts; sometimes its the size of the package. Lets admit it, Christmas is for the size queens, recession or no. Especially when it comes to music fans: You now need a present bulging with features to compete with the convenience of an iTunes card. more

The first thing you notice is the air, and how it pulses. It’s the mark of a irresistible album opener, the persuasive swagger passed down from “Brown Sugar” and “Baba O’Riley” to “London Calling” and “I Will Follow.” And it’s the hallmark of “Harborcoat,” the syncopation-enhanced introduction to R.E.M.’s second full-length, 1984’s Reckoning. more

Animal Collective is not a wild bunch.Though the quartet—partially associated with the same sequencerabraded scene as Brooklyn’s alkaline cell-fueled antagonists Black Dice—did manage to whip the hype machine into a frenzy preceding the release of the group’s ninth and latest full-length, Merriweather Park Pavilion. Through a series of capacity-controlled listening previews, withheld promos, minor leaks and live performances administering an almost shamanistic sway, talk of Merriweather Post Pavilion garnered the kind of high-pitched, cartoonish mania usually reserved for an airtight trailer of helium huffers.The creative process, however, turns out to not be nearly as rabid as the anticipation it reaps, though is equally revealing as any message board’s frothing at the mouth. more

You’ve got this friend who’s got this problem with music. She can’t be satisfied with just the songs; she needs to live the band: books, videos and auctioned undershirt. For the severely afflicted, we bring a list of music gifts that go beyond studio releases and B-sides to offer a multidimensional musical experience. more

Arthur Russell lived in a New York as artistically wide open as the Iowa prairies from which he fled as a young adult. Finding himself as an artist in the heart of the 1970s and ’80s downtown arts and club scene, Russell still managed to remain displaced from his contemporaries’ anxieties, spending his prolific career concerned solely with the reverb in his own head before it was cut short. Following the Beat Generation to the Lower East Side and Greenwich Village of the mid-’70s, Russell experimented with communes before finding his community alongside Allen Ginsberg, Philip Glass, David Mancuso and so many more. And with his music – cello-anchored, often drum machine-buoyed and always gently compelling – he embodied the best of these experiences, bringing together individual talents that lent rather than bent their personalities to his purposes prior to his passing in 1992. more

BARCELONA IS A misunderstood city. Some folks believe that the entire town drinks wine all day. But really they don’t start till 11 a.m. And everyone thinks people party all night in Barcelona.They usually only stay out till around 6 a.m. One thing, however, is a stone fact:To survive complete immersion into the Barcelona lifestyle you’re probably going to need a Red Bull. So when the Austrian energy drink announced that the heart of Catalunya would be the site of the 10th annual Red Bull Music Academy—a yearly, month-long open-ended global exchange—it seemed like a natural synergy. In Barcelona—where primitive and postmodern occupy the same block, and “artisan” has been a constant flavor (not a recent fad)—innovation congregates with ease. For the Barcelona 2008 edition, which hosted 60 handpicked international participants mid-September through mid-October, Red Bull’s local scouts came upon a former textile factory in the Sant Andreu district.Thanks to the location, metaphors abound, as there’s no doubt that the Music Academy weaves together an international cast in order to find the common threads. more

Insular indie rock, however, changes with the time. Is it punk-ish? Folk-ish? What does the artfully rumpled guy on the J train think this week? Who cares, he traded his prized trucker hat for a Keffiyeh without a second thought. And those unkempt indie beards. more

Conflict has always been part of being “punk,” and not just physical conflicts. In the mid- to late-’90s I knew a struggling musician, Elliott, and—burning through a series of pop-punk bands, part Kiss and part The Queers—he was struggling in more than the economic sense. Elliott was struggling with his identity. And as I watch The Future Is Unwritten, a lovingly assembled collage commemorating—and at times even criticizing—Joe Strummer of the Clash, who more