Free Moral Agents

This CD offers strong proof that the late-2000s LA underground music scene is vibrant. From the space-age desert psyche of Nobody's "All the Shallow Deep" to the baroque soul of A Race of Angel's "Just Begin," the compilation traffics in rickety, lo-fi head music. It's the sort of basement experimentalism that privileges novelty over polish and is best played in a late-night haze. Madlib pops up with Yesterdays New Quintet for "I Remember John W. Coltrane," and Exile delivers the lanky, goofy "In the Night 22."