LCD Soundsystem mastermind James Murphy will soon be marketing his own espresso blend, and he probably blazed up a blammo batch of it for this zippy future-freak soul summit. Putting this many visionary types in one studio could’ve made for a mess, but they lock in for a three-man weave – like the Bird-McHale-Parish of avant-R&B. Damon Albarn lays down a double-time funk charge and lyrical patter about being a "pale imitator of a boy in the sky," while Murphy unspools tweak-y falsetto silliness and Andre 3000 drops a devastating freestyle – "I’m an Outkast but you’re into me/Summer got mad 'cause winter blew me" – before taking us to the rivers of Mars like a sweetly zonked Al Green. The comedown from this must've been brutal.

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• Photos: Random Notes

“Let My Love Open the Door”

A peppy, hopeful love song, "Let My Love Open the Door" became a U. S. Top Ten hit for Pete Townshend in 1980, anchored by the kind of repeating synthesizer figures that he'd used in some of the Who's recordings in the previous decade. Although Townshend brushed the song off as "just a ditty" in Rolling Stone shortly after its release, in 1996 he revealed it was about love of the holiest sort. "It's supposed to be about the power of God's love," he remarked. "That when you're in difficulty, whether it's major or minor, God's love is always there for you."