I'm always trawling the web for music news and unusual sound files, but I find myself visiting the following four sites repeatedly.

No print or web calendar has yet to surpass the late, lamented Tentacle's comprehensive coverage of experimental music gigs; however, the Cog-Dis calendar at www.cog-dis.org/calendar.html shows promise. Chiefly covering Seattle, each listing has a handy genre key—treble clef for "New Composition," a star for "Weird Rock/Pop," a diving WWII Corsair for "Free Improvisation," and so forth—along with a short description of the performers and the requisite date/venue information.

For classical music news, I hit www.artsjournal.com, which collates pertinent articles from newspapers around the world. Alas, it can be somewhat depressing, as almost every week brings a write-up recounting the shuttering of some orchestra or ensemble. ArtsJournal also is a portal for several must-read blogs, including Doug Ramsey's Rifftides, which covers "jazz and other matters," and PostClassic by composer/critic Kyle Gann.

Although Usenet remains the best source for finding music, most of us don't have time to wade through newsgroups and dally with potentially bogus audio files. I remain enamored of www.ubu.com, which is fast becoming an informal encyclopedia of sound art. Rare audio by Glenn Gould, Charles Amirkhanian, Vito Acconci, Cornelius Cardew, John Cage, Marcel Duchamp, and many, many others makes this site essential.

You'll find more rare audio at www.earlabs.org. First head for the historical section, "Laboratoire Historique," and feast on early electronic music from Japan, Poland, Holland, Iran, and France. My favorite so far is the 1960s compilation of work made at the Siemens Electronic Music Studio. Earlabs has lots of new stuff to explore in their "Laboratoire Moderne" section, too, including mp3 releases by John Kannenberg, Roel Meelkop, and Kapotte Muziek. CHRISTOPHER DELAURENTI