The 2xCD compilation Love and Circuits does not represent the best of the best, or the pick of some unrepresented litter. It is not going to clue you into the new hot scene. It was not "curated" by a major magazine, PR company, or Devendra Banhart. It does not even hope to hang together as a cohesive album; its 57 contributors are presented in alphabetical order. Many of the bands are from the Cardboard label's home of Brooklyn, but on the whole the record has no geographical center. Given that the contribution from Trey Told 'Em (Greg Gillis aka Girl Talk and Frank Musarra) is a mashup of the record's other 56 tracks, the compilation is almost a love letter to overstimulation and information paralysis.

I've seen the words "scene report" around Love and Circuits, and while there are some similarities to be drawn between the bands-- kinda punk, kinda dipping their toes into noise or drone or folk or or experimental music or muscular rock-- its overwhelming diversity is its highest strength. By abandoning notions of scenes, enclaves, genre, and anything else but bands still plugging away at a (mostly) small DIY model, it's a much more accurate representation of whatever passes for "indie." I mean, I guess it could have No Age on it, come with a bonus DVD, and could give you beer candy every time you played it, but otherwise it's pretty hard collection to fault. Its compilers, Dan Friel and BJ Warshaw of Parts & Labor, say he hopes you find your new favorite band here. If you have any taste for left-of-center punk and indie, you likely will.

Most of the artists tend towards the more discernibly melodic side of the noise spectrum, and no one's afraid of electronics (no matter how cheap they sound), but there's plenty of room here for variation. Arch hypnotists like Fuck Buttons or These Are Powers (both among the few who contribute previously released songs, alas) go up against pagan primitivists like Fathers Day, offering up the desperately ironic "I Have So Much Respect for Women". Relative OGs of the indie underbelly like the mighty Oneida or Japanther turn in exemplary tracks, making sense of incidental noise within their own skewered yet effective songwriting, while newcomers like Bipolar Bear and their crumbling swagger or indie's latest soundtrack for finger-painting, High Places, put forth fine arguments for why they belong in this company. Treble-heavy Big Black acolytes like Action Beat or Tunnel of Love sit next to blink-and-you'll-miss-them Casio workouts, one of which is called "I Smell Poop Gub". It sounds like every support act Parts & Labor ever shared a bill with, and that turns out to be a great thing.

While Love and Circuits ranges from ear-splitting upstarts like Jerk to the sunny one-finger keyboard anthems of Best Fwends or Matt & Kim, it might be the artists actually repping Cardboard who make the biggest impact: Parts & Labor turn in more gritty synth-punk with supercharged straight-ahead rhythms on "No Night", while P&L offshoot Shooting Spires cover Bad Brains' "Sailin' On" in ominous washed-out electronics. New signeess Ecstatic Sunshine coast further on the quirky charm of their guitar-duet debut on "Crystal in the Sky", and Pterodactyl provide another gleeful slice of squealing psychedelic noise on "5 Minutes in 2 Minutes". Gowns, however, add the sparest bit of electric guitar to serve as a downbeat to their painfully austere horror folk, and the result, "What if Not You", is their very own "Under Pressure".

Chaotic or serene, minimalist or balls-to-the-wall, there's a similarity between these disparate artists that's hard to define-- and maybe for the better, Love and Circuits doesn't try. A new prefix or genre tag belittles the diversity of this compilation, as well as the eclectic scene that inspired it. Market-clogging compilations like Next can make some forget that there's more to indie than adult-contempo for snobs, but the interesting bands just below the surface of that are legion-- and Love and Circuits offers curious listeners a running start.