A great compilation makes sense of a world that rarely does. Wait, that kind of sounds over-the-top. But I mean it, which I realize makes me a giant dork but I’m none too worried about that. Whether it was made for you personally on a Maxell C90, burned onto a CD-R, or manufactured and pressed as a ready-made object, a great mix usually has two requirements: It should make connections you’d never considered before, and it should contain songs you’ve never heard but wonder how you ever lived without.

A great mix can open your palate to music you might have previously dismissed or just never explored, from the heavy African funk of the Ethiopiques series to the numerous punk bootlegs that carry the Killed by Death name. Some of the most vital palate-cleansing/changing mixes of the last decade have come from Seattle’s  Sublime Frequencies label, run by the Sun City Girls’ Alan Bishop with longtime friend Hisham Mayet. Most of it is highly obscure music from Asia, the Middle East and Africa. “Music thought not to exist is everywhere,” is their motto and it’s awesome, that motto. All of Sublime Frequencies’ CDs and DVDs have such a radically time/space-defying quality —seriously, everything they have done is amazing, forty-plus CDs, DVDs and LPs.

—DJ Yeti