No downloads yet from Stephen "Cave In" Brodsky's solo/band album The Octave Museum -- which HydraHead, at least, is treating as an album title, not a band name -- but songs are streaming at their MySpace page. It's the best thing he's done since Static Intellect, which never came out so we don't know why we keep bringing it up, except that it's real good.

DOWNLOAD: DJ Mark E. Moon, "Kidzmix" (mp3)

In case you missed him spinning at the Children’s Museum a couple of weeks ago, DJ Mark E. Moon — the nom de guerre of a prominent local cartoonist/indie-rocker/party-rocker — has uploaded an ingenious mixtape that brings the anything-goes strategies of 2ManyDJs and Hollertronix to the Kidz Bop crowd.

Singing and dancing sock puppets, cartoons, inflatable lobsters, underground mutant prairie dogs from hell — expect the works this Sunday, June 4 at UNCLE MONSTERFACE's afternoon, all-ages “extravaganzathonarama” at the Middle East for their self-released debut full-length, letter green (i love you), a 25-minute synth-rock acid trip that you and your kid nephew alike will freak out to.

That dude DJ Mark E. Moon has been awful quiet lately -- too quiet, buried-in-the-lab quiet, building-birfday-mixtapes quiet. We should've known that he wasn't kidding when he told us his Dipset-ized Neutral Milk Hotel "King of Karat Flowers" remix was part of a longer suite. But after that, there was his baile-funk Belle and Sebastian remix and then .

All photos (c) Carina Mastrocola.

If you've got to have bands play in the sun -- and that's how it goes at the Best Music Poll -- then OK Go are a great fit. Upbeat tempos. Creative, thought-provoking lyrics. You know: good times. They were infectuous, and the audience (a mix of young and old) seemed to be catching their fever.

From top: Charlatans UK, Aberdeen City, Aberdeen City, Nada Surf. All photos (c) Carina Mastrocola.

(Second in a series of reports from last night's Phoenix/FNX Best Music Poll blowout on Lansdowne Street.)

The Charlatans haven’t really had the chance to jump the shark — not here, and not in the UK, where their songs never managed to plug into their homeland's gigantic hype machine.

With their laid-back hip-hop beats, pleasant electronic whir and thrum, and shimmering acoustic-guitar strum, MUS-OK sound like a late-night collaboration between Beck and Air with the Dust Brothers and Nigel Godrich taking turns at the board. Which to us is a very good thing. The band, whose members came together in Boston four years ago but are now scattered across the country, don’t play around too often, and what better event at which to see them than a stop-motion-animation fashion show/art exhibition/loft party with free booze? Birdhead Design is throwing just that sort of shindig on Saturday (May 6).