Record Store Day previews

"Feistodon" 7"
Mastodon and Feist

When Atlanta prog-metal crew Mastodon and Canadian singer-songwriter Leslie Feist played on the same episode of “Later ... with Jools Holland” in October, the mutually admiring parties discussed in passing the possibility of covering one another for a split. Six months later, it’s a reality; Feist will cover Mastodon’s “Black Tongue” and Mastodon will cover Feist’s “A Commotion” for a Record Store Day-exclusive 7”. It’s currently unknown whether Mastodon wore sundresses or Feist grew a beard during the recording sessions.
  — Brad Sanders

"The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends" double 12"
The Flaming Lips

The Flaming Lips have produced a double-vinyl album, “The Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends,” that is loaded with outlandish surprises for their fans in honor of Record Store Day. The record features collaborations with Bon Iver, Ke$ha, Coldplay’s Chris Martin, Erykah Badu, Neon Indian, Yoko Ono, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros and Biz Markie, among others. As if this enticing list of featured artists wasn’t enough to reel listeners in, the Flaming Lips have decided to release a few special records with an embedded vial of the collaborators’ blood in the center. In an interview with MTV, eccentric Lips frontman Wayne Coyne said he expects the individually made bloody records to be snatched up by the extremely dedicated and extremely wealthy sector of the group's fan base.
  — Megan Walschlager

"Transverse Temporal Gyrus" 12"
Animal Collective

Animal Collective hasn’t released a proper full-length record since 2009. In the meantime, the band has instead opted to tour the world, record EPs and singles, make a visual album called “Oddsac” and create a special exhibit at the world-renowned Guggenheim Museum in New York City. That last project, called “Transverse Temporal Gyrus,” is an experimental collaboration with “Oddsac” director Danny Perez. It features contributions from each band member randomly channeled throughout the museum’s performance space, and it’s now being released as a limited 12” vinyl that collects the individual tracks, in addition to live recordings of the piece. “Transverse Temporal Gyrus” should feature the band at its most bewitched with heavy doses of choppy samples and pitch-shifted incantations. Brace yourself.
  — Patrick Beane

“A.D.D. Complete” 7”
Chuck Persons

Last year, sample mastermind Daniel Lopatin, better known as Oneohtrix Point Never, released the sonic gem “Replica” to critical acclaim. Before that, however, Lopatin recorded underground cassettes that reworked FM radio hits into deliriously noisy and catchy loops, which he dubbed “eccojams,” under the pseudonym Chuck Persons. Lopatin is bringing that alter ego back with his upcoming 7” vinyl release, “A.D.D. Complete,” which compiles new “eccojams,” along with samples used to make “Replica.” Unfortunately, the release is limited to 120 hand-numbered copies, only available in-store at Piccadilly Records in Manchester, England. At least you can soon look forward to copping a guilt-free vinyl rip.
  — Patrick Beane

“One Drop” 12”
Public Image Ltd.

It’s been 20 years since former Sex Pistols provocateur John Lydon churned out any new material with his seminal post-punk outfit Public Image Ltd., but that will change this Saturday with the release of the “One Drop” EP. Lydon calls the title track a “reflection of where I grew up in Finsbury Park, London. The area that shaped me and influenced me culturally and musically, a place I will forever feel connected to.”
  — Brad Sanders

“Mermaid Avenue: The Complete Sessions” box set
Billy Bragg and Wilco

In the spring of 1992, Woody Guthrie’s daughter, Nora, contacted English folk-punk musician Billy Bragg about putting music to thousands of sets of lyrics that filled her father’s notebooks before his death in 1967. Bragg subsequently reached out to then-up-and-coming alt-country group Wilco, and they collaborated on two critically acclaimed compilations, “Mermaid Avenue” volumes 1 and 2, that came out in 1998 and 2000. Appropriately, these sessions spawned many unfinalized tracks of their own, as well as a limited-release documentary film, “Man in the Sand.” More than a decade later, all the aforementioned material is coming out in one big package that will also include a 48-page book of photographs and reproductions of Guthrie’s lyric sheets and sketches.
  — Steven Arroyo

“Do Ya Thang” 10”
Gorillaz, André 3000 and James Murphy

Converse’s “Three Artists, One Song” series has produced a handful of curious collaborations in the past two years, but none more so than its most recent edition, which put Outkast’s André 3000, LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy and Damon Albarn of Gorillaz and Blur in a studio together. An abridged version of “Do Ya Thang” was released as a free download on Feb. 23, but the original ran more than 13 minutes, and it will see the light of day Saturday. “André just goes off,” Albarn said of the full version in a recent interview with Pitchfork. “And what he’s saying just gets more and more ridiculous. It finished on its own will, we really had nothing to do with it.”
  — Steven Arroyo