The works of composer and blogger John Mackey are shorter than most pieces I post here, but they’re awesome, so screw it. I’ll count them collectively as one album, okay? His music reminds me of John Adams and many others. Some of my favorites:

Breakdown Tango is a tango gloriously riven by overpowering, darkly thrashing music. It’s also the source material for Redline Tango, a quite different but even better piece with lots of energy, passion, and mayhem.

Concerto for Percussion is well-described by Mackey himself: “In the first [movement], the soloist primarily provides rhythmic accompaniment for the orchestra… largely inspired by Indian and African folk music… The second movement… owes a lot to rock music. The movement maintains the same meter, tempo, and phrase length throughout and demands that the soloist play a large percussion setup with the ease of a much smaller trap set.” Trust me, it’s freakin’ great.

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night is amateurly named after the Dylan Thomas poem without thematic connection, but the music is great. Amazingly, Mackey was only 21 when he wrote it.

Juba is rockish and could belong on Renegade Heaven. Sasparilla and Under the Rug sound just like Copland. Voice and Echoes isn’t very ambitious, but still good. Annuals is great but not available in complete form.

The 160kbps Mp3s are available from the pages for each specific piece linked from the download page below.

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