THE first instalment of Shakey's archives project is a scintillating showcase of the Buffalo Springfield album Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and kicks off with that album's title track. Polite applause greets the country folk of 'Wonderin' and 'Winterlong' before the heavyweight tunes kick in: 'Down By The River' and 'Cowgirl In The Sand' take up over half the running time. The inclusion of Danny Whitten's cowritten 'Come On Baby Let's Go Downtown' from Tonight's The Night is an ironic tribute to the late guitarist.

Download: 'Come On Baby Let's Go Downtown', 'Cowgirl In The Sand', 'Down By The River' Neil Dunphy U218 Singles Island (78m 12s) . .SEVEN-and-a-half of the near 80 minutes of music here is new. Why on earth would you buy every single U2 have released, or even listen to them when not in chronological order? 'The Saints Are Coming' with Green Day features a reworking of every budding guitarist's first lesson . . . ie 'House of the Rising Sun' . . . but a good tune all the same. And 'Window In The Skies', which will probably be released early next year, is as safe a U2 song as you could get. Both are produced by Rick Rubin. Only for non iPod-owning people who have been living in Bhutan for the past 25 years.

Download: 'The Saints Are Coming', 'Window In The Skies' ND Josef K Entomology Domino (65m 28s) . . .

FOR a post-punk band that emerged from Glasgow around the same time as their better-known and more-celebrated peers, Orange Juice, Josef K remain a little known enigma. The four-piece split after a couple of studio albums in the early 1980s but their sound was lovingly recreated recently by a certain Franz Ferdinand. While the austere soundscapes and downbeat vocals befit a band named after the protagonist in Kafka's The Trial, the music is a confusing cacophony of dissonant anti-punk funk. This 'best of', complete with 1981 Peel session, is well worth the effort.

Download: 'The Missionary', 'Heads Watch', 'Fun 'N' Frenzy' ND The Beatles Love Apple (78m 51s) . . . . .

MAYBE it's because you don't get to listen to them that much anymore (radio retro seems to be exclusively focused on the 1980s) or maybe it's because none of the Beatles' back catalogue has been digitally remastered, but this mash-up, which contains no new material per se, sounds so fresh it's hard to stop listening. Perhaps it succeeds because the Beatles were art-rock progenitors (you could never attempt this with the Stones) but George Martin and his son Giles have given us a new Beatles album.

Download: 'Eleanor Rigby/Julia', 'Blackbird/Yesterday', 'Within You Without You/Tomorrow Never Knows' ND Jazz Sami Moukadem Resistance: Soul Food Self released . . .

LEBANESE-born, Irish-resident guitarist Sami Moukadem's latest album is a timely meditation on his troubled homeland, charged with an understandable sense of defiance but leavened also by hope for the survival of a rich and ancient culture.

Through a series of poetic sleeve notes, Moukadem puts the music in the context of his own personal history and gives another layer of meaning to his particular hybrid of jazz and Arabic music. The fact that the group includes Brendan Doyle, one of Ireland's most talented saxophonists, means that there is plenty of music here that works well, even without the context.

Cormac Larkin Classical Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Francois-Frederic Guy Naive Records (73m) . . . . .

ANNUAL visitors to the National Concert Hall will be familiar with the magic of this French man. The Everest of piano sonatas, the 'Hammerklavier', Op 106, is here, well-framed by early Beethoven, the 'Pathetique' and the first Op 49, both of which date to 1798/99. Guy reveals an infinite palette of shades and textures, coupled with a rapturous ability to endlessly change gears, sometimes in and for only milliseconds. In this respect, his Op 106 leans on its Romantic foot a little more. The good people at Naive have produced this to perfection . . .

the overall sound is always welltempered.

Karen Dervan