Like most people, I've normally got a churning selection of things that are getting a lot of play. The way the shuffle works, a CD - even a CD I don't even love absolutely - can find itself living near enough to the stereo to become part of my aural life. Equally, in the age of the MP3, something sitting on my hard-drive usually gets played more often than something that involves that tiresome trudge across the room to the towering pile of compact discs. And since, like most men of a certain age, disposition and lack of genuine emotions, I have really quite a lot of CDs, far too many never get listened to at all.

I've been raiding the vaults, deliberately heading towards the more shady elements of the collection to see what I find. Some stuff I love, and played until the ones embedded in the plastic were worn down to mere fractions. Some stuff I bought on a whim and barely paid any attention to. And other stuff I bought, hated and filed.

It's been educational.

(Calexico? I mean... why? What were we thinking? BORING! BORING! BORING!)

Today I've been working my way through Husker DU's "Warehouse", Joy Division's "Closer", Eve's "Scorpion" and - via the single "Just for a second"'s perfectly melodramatic cry of "I'm not part of your world. Which is fine, 'cos you're not part of mine. You want no part in mine? SO DO I!"- to Orlando's "Passive Soul".

I recommend all four, and the direct equivalent to "those four" needing to be brought up into the light in your own collections.