I walked home from the U-Bahn listening to this song tonight, and it took me through the corridor, across the courtyard, up the stairs, into my apartment; and it continued while I took my heart medicine and got a glass of water and removed my wristwatch.

Getting a new Des Ark song is like that last cigarette as the sun comes up.

I've been listening quite a lot to the record from which this is taken. Good beat-downs, great flinging scream, and just the right side of thrash.

My friend, Richard, played this song at my leaving party.

La Dispute are painfully emo: the strangled shouting, the talking, the abortive screams. But the album from which this song is taken is incredibly compelling. It's been my soundtrack for walking and U-Bahning around Berlin, my inner-head background humming for drinking in bars, the counter-tone to the creaking of the snow under my shoes. The record is very well crafted: it has a symmetry to it that had formerly only been achieved by Circle Takes the Square, and there is an unusual elegance to the shifts from youth crew to spoken-word to beat-down to space rock.

I used to listen to this as I drove to my gap year web-development job in Cambridge.

The first song on this mp3 is an achingly sad, beautiful live performance. I like how Isaac Brock twists and elongates his words in frustration.

The first time, Miller starts the set up and hands over the drum machine - another voice, really. The second time, Miller gets closer to what he means and then the drum machine comes in again to finish his sentence and blow you away.

I love the quiet harmony that Karen O sings a few semi-tones up from the main melody.

Last week, I saw The Paper Chase live for the third time. When they played this song, John C excorcised me mid-song, laying his hand on my head and singing, "God is everywhere."

"You're the one who's riding around on a leopard. You're the one who's throwing dead birds in the air."

I first heard this song when I was visiting my friend, Tamar, at the squat where she used to live. We were planning their eviction party and smoking cigarettes. The party coincided with me leaving Leeds, and was also the first time I played live as my solo music project. I walked home through the woods around five o'clock that morning after it had got light again and bought something at the shop that had had time to sell me something else the previous evening, close and then re-open.

This band played in the foyer of The Barbican before the Efterklang gig. In many ways, they were my favourite part of the evening: lots of people sitting on the floor and drinking beer as they listened to folk music played like nothing really mattered. Then, the tremulous whistling comes in, and everything gets very serious.

"You've gone to far. Despite my city walls." I recorded this tonight at The Barbican. At the beginning of their set, an idea popped into my head about changing something, and by the end, I had decided to do it. The little pause and laugh you hear at the beginning is in response to the bass player forgetting where he was supposed to be and running across the stage to get into position. The venue and orchestra were all wrong: Efterklang were much better a few weeks ago with a drum kit, more thump and a dancing audience, and without an orchestra and the constraint of having to play the lesser songs on Parades. Nonetheless, as this song slowly rose, and when the singer squeaked out the little "Woop!" at 2m 40s, I wept tears of joy.

I know Tim slightly. He gave me his first solo CD just after I moved with Rob and Jon into my second and last house in Leeds. Something about my attic room, and the musical atmosphere in our house, meant that I wrote a lot of songs that year. I love how mournful this song is.

This song starts a beautiful group on Frances The Mute. I love the way the muted trumpet comes in to introduce everything. Then there is Cedric all tortured and melodic and Omar all spazzy guitar solos and letskeepthepace.

Funeral, the album this song is from, is one of the few modern mainstream records I really like. The song does the slow build up so well, until, by the end, I always imagine the singer shaking someone by the collar as he says, "Then we think of our parents. Well, whatever happened to them?"

A cover of the Johnny Cash song by my friend, Max, and his old band. The vocal melody is mostly different from the original. This recording was made in The Common Place, a social centre that Max and I used to volunteer at.

"Having a heart gets in my way. So I rip it out every day."

"Another man has come to take my place next to you. So sad to see you go. My heart says nothing is over. But you know what they say: it's too late for me."

Awad introduces me to dub-step.

Between 12 and 16, I was obsessed with Tricky. In 1997, I taped the radio broadcast of a gig he played at the Leeds Town And Country Club. I used to listen to this song over and over - it was my first exposure to drum and bass, hardcore and the idea that live renditions could be a completely different song. I made a short film about the bit where Tricky says, "Just the drums". I lost the cassette years ago, but, today, I found a set of mp3s of the gig.

What comes is better than what came before.

I went to see Zach Hill play about six months ago. The support were the awesome munch munch. Hill performed this 32 minute track, then stood up and gave a sweet speech about how touching he finds it that people come to his gigs, then it was over. The actual music is an unrelenting assault of his usual skittery drumming with some disembodied synths and gongs and bells and vocal samples. The track is disc two of his first release, Astrological Straights, and is far better than disc one.

When you take your hands away from your ears and shrug her arms away it's cold.

This song was a highlight from yesterday's Wolf Parade gig, as was the band's particularly unhinged rendition of Kissing The Beehive. I also enjoyed watching the super tough guys in front of me bob their heads like tulips in the wind.

This song makes me dance around the room.

The new record is my hospital broken-sleep-time soundtrack. Spencer, name the day.

Lee Marvin introduces the end of the world.

My friend, Sherry, released her new album in February. On earlier records, she used amps and tons of effects. On this one, it's just her and an acoustic, steel-body guitar.

I got into math-rock well before I understood Slint. I liked Good Morning, Captain, along with the rest of the world, but couldn't get along with the other songs. It was Washer and a bout of earache that had me lying on my side in bed for a day that were the bridge to the rest of the album. I understood that it was about quietness and strangeness, rather than beautiful melodies; the shiffing grass, rather than the red setting sun. Thus, Spiderland is the album that makes me wonder whether music recommendation services make any sense: it took maybe fifteen or twenty listens, and a whole day, before I got into Slint. A half listen to a half-track on the perceptron would not have done it.

I love the way this song keeps on finding new painful melodies, new ways to twist the knife.

I used to listen to this song when I was walking home from Uni before I knew it was OK to be queer and not gay.

Writing blog posts, listening to the incredible Stand and unwinding from #openhacklondon 2009.

Listened to this smoking a cigarette sat on a railing outside Peterborough station on my way home from darling Bradford.

Weekend with angelic EJ, book-ended by visits to my folks'. More to say.

Another beautifully static song. As Cedric sings, "Kicking in these windows, kicking in these windows. It's on the roof of my mouth i'm gonna bark the words on the roof of my mouth", it's like he's inside a glass box convulsing but going nowhere: everything stays in the same place, at the same tone.

This song is just a guy talking over a beat, but I've always loved how it just goes on and on and lets you just be content to sit and listen. The constancy is, somehow, comforting.

"I remember back when we started, my kisses used to turn you inside out."

Sometimes, hopes can be so far from reality that the transition is like jerking awake from a dream.

Pretty soon, you'll be able to have songs that you play a lot automatically added to your playmary. This is my first one.

Today, I went to Rewired State / Hack The Government 2009 and built Voxpomp and felt totally inspired. This song makes me think of having a shower in the dusty, summery, airy, lovely house I lived in during my last year in Leeds.

I used to sing along to this when I drove in my car (shame on me) to a job I hated (shame on me).

The first song in my iPhone DJ set at my birthday party.

Frog Eyes's magnum opus. The rest of their songs are about forty fathoms below. This reminds of being in Scarborough with my girl as we demolished and then rebuilt our relationship. "When am I ever gonna feel the sting of your sun?" You don't know what he's talking about, but you know precisely what he means.

The last song in my iPhone DJ set at my birthday party.

I like the languid way Sue P. Fox sings/speaks this song. I like the Phil Collinsy song that's in the background like it's being played at a party that the protagonist is not at, or like he's put it on after he's come home to an empty house.

Lying in hospital, waiting for a cardioversion; locking up my bike outside the offices where I worked during my gap year; being beside myself with laughter as I drank a Bloody Mary and read Coe's The Dwarves Of Death in a bar after work; first year of University.

"The schools look like prisons. And the prisons look like malls. Downtown's just a sick parade where no one cares at all."

Saw this band play tonight. This song is off their EP, which is not nearly as good as their subsequent album. However, this track does have the most monstrous beat-down. They played it as an encore.

Apparently, Brian Wilson listens to this song every day. I did a cover of it for my band, We're Not The Cool Kids. I read somewhere that Phil Spector used to get five drummers or five guitarists all playing together live in a room and walk around, whispering in their ears, "Play dumb."

This is pretty fucking great. There is a great new feature on playmary.com Search for a song, select it, click Add, and, kazam!, it's in your audiography. Way quicker than uploading an mp3, way more choice than your lame music collection.

This song reminds me of second year of University. I was in the middle of an extended riot-grrl phase: Heavens To Betsy, Bikini Kill, Sleater Kinney, The Frumpies. Last night, I went out with a couple of my housemates from that year. We did a run-down of the accommodating girls who used to hang around with us in our house. Each party we had, each new vat of Will's Unholy Home Recipe Punch we concocted, each new horrendous, car crash of an evening, a few more would accumulate.

This song reminds me of the end of my time in Leeds. I spent a lot of evenings having friends around for supper and making them vegetable lasagne. And this song reminds me of the summer before that spring, when I went to the US and had that whole period of time coloured. I listened to The Paper Chase, too, whilst smoking cigarettes in the garden. And I read a book called Punk Like Me, and did a bunch of political stuff, and watched The Devil And Daniel Johnston.

Poppy metalcore is one of those difficult little vices, though some consolation is offered by the fact that it goes hand in hand with generic hardcore girls. And in the instance of Gospel, I'm only a little bit ashamed: the drumming is so tight, the tune so nice, the pace so on the point of falling over but somehow keeping its legs.

This band are one of the best noise introductions I was given on ask.metafilter.

I listened to this on the sofa at my folks' house and my siblings told me to turn it off because it was horrible noise. I listened to this on the train back to London as I read a David Foster Wallace essay and my head exploded. I listened to this at work as I bashed out weird code.

Listened to this tonight as I smiled my way home in the rain.

"I know her when she was nice." Side B of the first, and, by a jolly, jolly, jolly, jolly long chalk, best, Foals record.

"I know her when she was nice." Side A of the first, and, by a jolly, jolly, jolly, jolly long chalk, best, Foals record.

Speaking of sharing, here is one of my favourite RadioLab episodes.

A Radio Lab podcast about sharing things that mean a lot with people who mean a lot.

On Tuesday, I sent a text to my friend, Matthew: "I think that a) there should be a US election party b) you should throw it and c) you should invite me." He agreed that was an excellent set of notions. As I was leaving work that night, I said to a colleague that, broadly speaking, I am not a big fan of politicians. However, I have found myself bizarrely caught up in the fever of the centrist, pro-Afghan-war, pro-war-on-terror Obama. Thus, when I came into work on Wednesday morning, I listening to this song and a leaping heart.

Dilute's magnum opus. A live recording. Reminds me of having someone very special around for supper.

Though the afore-playmaryed Liger are excellent, just before arriving at work this morning, I needed to cleanse my palate of their hand-wringing.

Listened to this on my walk to work.

Over the summer, I took a three month sabbatical. I spent a lot of my time sat on the sofa in the Rough Trade record shop, watching episodes of The Wire, programming the perceptron, and listening to Horses In The Sky, the album from which this song is taken.

I listened to this a lot over the summer when I was recuperating from a stay in hospital. I love when the weird, cronish voice wavers in.

My band's latest song. Have been listening to it a lot over the last few months.

Reminds me of a very terrifying period of time about seven years ago. Since then, I have known that if I can listen to this song, I'm feeling good.

Reminds me of sitting in Trafalgar Square drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette in the cold Spring sun.

I listened to this a lot around the time my band played some gigs in Berlin. The girl I stayed with liked it too. Inspired our improvisation, Emile Hirche, You're Fit In Both Senses Of The Word

From their first and best album. Listen to Kim Gordon's shaking rage.

Pop perfection.

I bought the album from which this song is taken when I was in San Francisco. It conjures Lucky Strikes with a glass of Half And Half.

Whilst instrumental post-hardcore/rock is capable of emotional evocation, vocals sometimes have to come in and out one's brimming feelings.

Indeed.

The video of the live version plumbs the depths of honesty.

Similar to Be My Baby in its endlessly circular melody and structure. Reminds me of when I had short hair, knew what to wear, and didn't care.

My friend Pete's band.