With our concentration spans having taken a battering over the past decade what with facebook/twitter/blah blah and the random plays of the iPod you would expect the traditional long player format to have bit the dust. If anything though, it seems in rude health in 2010 with artists on the fringes of beat/electronic music happy to make the traditional transition from 12 to LP.

Its always bizarre that you can't be taken seriously until you have an LP, moreso when you consider that the killer what-the-fuck -&-who-was-that 12 is so much rarer than the "not bad" LP but flicking through the Beat Classic compilation an eccentric mix of 80’s hip hop oddities and lost classics, David Toop makes the point on the liner notes that the genre flourished for these few years solely on 12 inch, away from the glare of the major labels and as the music moves from the margins funded by mavericks, money launderers and entrepreneurs into the mainstream where economic necessity entails its get marketed and hyped and the bloated the LP is born. The music becomes secondary to the rules and formats of the industry. According to this theory then, hip hop died sometime around 84 with the arrival of Run DMC as ‘serious’ artists and I guess it gives every genre a life span of around 2/3 years.

While it’s true that the vast majority of LPs could be compressed to EP length with no great loss there’s something soothing about loading up the VLC player - or any media player of your choice - with 16 tracks and letting it go. Listening to them on double LP means a whole another level of engagement as you're forced to leave your chair every 12-14 minutes so you cant really get into that background muzak state. Not to mention the compilation double LP heavyweight, which have now moved on to, some beautifully obscure areas.

It is not surprising that the dusty molemen of Stones Throw get the first shout here for their fascinating curveball the Minimal Waves Tape LP. No better time to revisit the DIY ish of the 70s/80s so shortly after McClaren exited the stage. Punk funk, proto techno, gothic - there’s no real unifying thread running through this record other than its DIY-ness which has tracks from Belgium to NY.

80s kids who remember Frankie goes to hollywood/human league pop weirdness need to check this track by Oppenheimer Analysis describing a post nuclear holocaust world. Addictive is not the word! I've had this on repeat for about 2 months now!

Staying in Cali - and I really don’t need to be doing any more fanboy ish for Stones Throw - but the Jazzman/Now Again California Funk comp is another incredible slice of American culture. Jazzman Gerald and Malcolm Catto have been working on this for time - they have the phone bills to prove it – they’re probably a couple of years too late cos funk is a dirty word these days but don’t sleep on this record. Check out Apple & three Oranges - this caused earthquakes when it hit ebay a few years ago. If you can’t see the power in this record - move on there’s nowt for you to see here but if it means something to you, cop this comp quick and enjoy the liner notes! Funk existed outside the LP mainstream and was certainly the better for it and these tracks are as odd and special as those early 80s hip hop bits.

Staying in California we wander upstate to Oxnard where unsung hero of the beats world Oh No has just released his Ethiopian journey via the archives of Egon's extensive Afro collection. Oh No is a proper computer game junkie - collector of consoles, games & 8 hour a day cat and its usually impossible to talk about the whole Lotus / LA thing without a mention of blips and bleeps but there’s no doubt he takes that the disjointed, stuttery nature of the gaming experience (!) on board when releasing records. Kind of beattapeesque, it moseys all over the place with tones of ideas, samples and tunes (over 40) the record changes up every 90 seconds or so - bar the annoying promo-esque "Dr No” voiceover going through it - can you use these things now? Check Jadakiss Ah-ah's on Donuts - Dilla killed that shit!! Benji has been rinsing the best track of the LP – Crazzzy- I couldn’t find anything else online so check it out here