A hand adjustment on a drum kit, a suggestive slow bass-snare groove, a rubbery bottom-strings jive and then the voice—all late-night, hushed and come here, girl—before the sinewy trumpet lines lock it in. So begins the drawers

 Congas, shakers, marimbas, udu drums, something called a karkabou, something else called a bendir—all populate the world music, Afrobeat and spacey postmodern grooves of Mop Mop. But any disc that even moderately features

 With nearly all the news filtering out of North Africa these days concerned with the anti-groove, zero-fun Islamic extremists holding Mali’s rich tradition hostage, a new release of sunny Afrobeat and the very first outside-of-Nigeria

 In the crowded, mystical jungle of Nashville studio musicians, Buddy Miller may currently have rightful claim to the title of king. His guitar and various string work, production expertise and writing have all featured prominently in the work of Robert Plant, Levon Helm, Willie Nelson and Elvis Costello.

 Hulking, aggressive, overlong and practically dripping with sun-baked, redneck testosterone, this six-disc, seven-hour package acts as an apt metaphor for the band itself. And what with this Allman Brothers-spinoff

 Continuing the trend of high-minded jazzers toying with pop cover tunes (see The Bad Plus and Soulive), Brad Mehldau goes the way of Sufjan Stevens, Elvis Costello, Nick Drake and even Jimi Hendrix for his latest batch

Other than the archaic notions of paying for music or actually listening to full albums, today's music-digging vanguard is obsessive about all things old. Whether it's the retro soul of Sharon Jones, the vintage grease...

 Harlem-folkie-wonder-cum-Chicago-blues-badass Taj Mahal gets the legend treatment as Columbia honors the singer/songwriter/storyteller’s back pages with a hidden treasures/stuff-we-haven’t-made-money...