Cluster & Eno - s/t LP (Bureau B)

Our Review:

This is one of our favorite albums, in the first of two collaborations between art-rock genius / ambient pioneer Brian Eno and Krautrock electronics legends Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius aka Cluster! On it, they're joined by guests Asmus Tietchens and Can's Holger Czukay, and construct warm, organic instrumentals utilizing both acoustic instruments and analog synths. This is soft and mellow and melodic but at the same time these songs are no push-overs, however gentle.

Far Out - Nihonjin LP (Everland)

Some albums are certainly a kind of holy grail for music lovers and collectors of a certain genre, style and era. FAR OUT with their eponymous debut and unfortunately also farewell album from 1973 have created such a sacred gem. Original copies in good condition change hands for up to 2000 USD and there are certainly a few not so official reprints on vinyl and CD out on the market which do not even come close to do justice to the greatness of the old original black gold. But here we go with the first ever official vinyl reissue taken directly from the original mastertapes supplied by Nippon Columbia. Everland Music did a brilliant job as usual with their reissue.

Now for the most important part, the music. There are certainly not too many wild moments here since both long tracks "Too many people" and Nihonjin have a melancholic, dreamy approach with a desperately howling and sighing lead guitar that spouts some utterly intense melodies. These two tracks are epics in the pure sense of the word. They start both with a rather gentle part which develops into a journey of sound that bring either vast landscapes of enchanting beauty untouched by modern human life or quite dramatic scenes to your mind’s eye. The lead guitarist often uses some strange instrument which is a kind of electric sitar to add the atmosphere of eastern mystic. So while falling into a state of deep trance while letting the music rush through my ears into my brain my spirit that has left my body embarks on a trip from the smokey volcanic hills around Pompeji to the icy permafrost wastelands of the Northeastern lands and arrives somewhere in the East Asian jungle on a gold plated pyramid of an unspeakable age where laughing demons dance around mystic fireplaces. Yes, this is the real journey to the center of your mind and despite having no really abstract freak out parts, tricky instrumental runs and twisted rhythm figures this music will capture your whole existence for the next 38 minutes. The end of Nihonjin, the second tune, shows an ambient like section with synthesizer background, echoing atonal sitar, a brightly squeaking flute, organ carpet and some percussions. This is indeed a rather extreme part, due to the pointed tone of the flute but quite soon the music stops and leaves the listener back in reality. This second track later on got a kind of reappearance on the FAR EAST FAMILY album Nipponjin, also retitled as Nipponjin. Mastermind behind both acts is multi-instrumentalist Fumio Miyashita, so there is no wonder. The later version has more space rock elements and electronic sounds than the original FAR OUT tune and is a little bit shorter all in all. But I digress.

This is the real thing for those who still miss the melodies and atmosphere of the late 60s and very early 70s when people had a dream of a peaceful world and who enjoy early German cosmic kraut rock like Amon Düül II, Organisation (later to become Kraftwerk), the debut album by Tangerine Dream and more obscure stuff but also international bands like Pink Floyd, Gong, Twink and Hawkwind just as an East Asian version. A real gem and finally available with the real sound and package again.

Moggi - Tra Scienza e Fantascienza LP (Musica Per Immagini)

Our Review:

Even if we weren't already Umiliani fans, we'd have been sold on this from the cover art alone – the painting looks a bit like a still from some psychedelic science-fantasy animation, like La Planete Sauvage, and the creature in the foreground with the one big eye reminds us of a 'minion' from Despicable Me wearing a black leather/latex bondage suit! So there's that. And, there's the music – also cool and strange and not that far removed from La Planete Sauvage stuff either. This album, which was originally released circa 1980 (supposedly, though some sources state '81, and others 1976), was made by Italian soundtrack/library music composer Piero Umiliani, here operating under the "band" name Moggi. We've always loved Umiliani, best known for his nonsense hit "Mah Na Mah Na", made more famous by the Muppets. He's a 'Space Age Bachelor Pad' music maestro, and here, with drums, bass and hella Moog, gets especially spacey, these retro-futuristic ditties approaching kraut-electronica status (a la Cluster), often sounding quite ahead of their time. It's a real wondrous romp of experimental synthesizer poppiness, chock a block with quirky, groovy instrumentals, squelchy and super-catchy and synthed out to the max, with mesmeric melodies, percolating percussion and other splashes of jazziness along with the avant-garde electronics and FX. Utterly delightful.

Brainbombs - Inferno LP (Skrammel)

Our Review:

Eight brand new Brainbombs songs recorded in the end of 2016.

Those of you familiar with the brutal musical world of Brainbombs will know exactly what we're going on about. The rest of you, be very very careful. They traffic in a sludgy,  garage-rock scuzz stomp with repeated riffs, simple pounding drums and leering psychedelic dirges underpinning tales of murder and mayhem, murder and rape, death and dismemberment. All delivered in a sort of fey, heavily accented English. The lyrics are misogynistic, misanthropic and just plain messed up. The sound is like Melvins meets Whitehouse filtered through the fuzzy garage stomp of the Stooges but with a maniacally repetitive looped quality, that cranks up the tension, while the vocalist slowly unravels and gets meaner and meaner, more and more insane. And let's not forget the occasional warbly warped trumpet. What can we say? We love Brainbombs.

Nuno Canavarro - Plux Quba LP (Drag City)

Our Review:

Plux Quba is a record that after the nearly 30 years of its existence remains impossible to categorize. It's almost as if it was an alien broadcast beamed in from another planet. Little is known about its creator, Nuno Canavarro, outside of his native Portugal and its discovery is so unbelievably legendary and riddled with hearsay that it's easy to dismiss this as a probable hoax.

Recorded in 1988 and released on a private label, it was believed to be discovered in 1991 by Jim O'Rourke while traveling through Europe with Jan St. Werner (Microstoria, Mouse On Mars) and Carsten Schulz (C-Shultz and Hajsch). Liking what he heard, O'Rourke eventually started a label call Moikai in 1998 and the first release was Plux Quba remastered by Portuguese guitarist and composer Rafael Toral. That the sounds contained on Plux Quba would go on to heavily influence the sound of all three artists' later output (not to mention bearing a strong sonic forbearance to Aphex Twin's early ambient pieces, Boards of Canada's nostalgic filmstrip melodies and Christian Fennesz's sublime Endless Summer) is a bizarre case of cosmic synchronicity. Rumors that this was an elaborate prank by the three electronic artists have since been quelled by enough evidence of Canavarro's existence as an architectural student, a member of semi-popular Portuguese new wave bands and his subsequent compositional work in Portuguese cinema.

Indeed, the 15 tracks (8 of which are untitled - many clock in just over a minute) of Plux Quba can be seen as a bridge between the electro-acoustic computer-processing works of Robert Ashley (1979's Automatic Writing) and David Behrman (1984's Leapday Night) on the Lovely music label and the advent of laptop-based electronica of the '90s. Yet Plux Quba seems less aware than that, as if created in a total vacuum. Its mystery remains one of its key attractions. Each track is its own micro-universe of texture and mood. The first bursts of high piercing squelches, random cluster tones, bell drones and squeals, come off as abrasive and abstract, appear than disappear. Its soft-volume minimal experiments are heightened by pauses of pregnant silence that are not easy on casual listeners. It's not until about five short tracks in that processed disembodied voices, bird-like chirps and chord washes begin to emote a tangible melancholy melody and that's when Plux Quba begins to work its magic.

Made with electronics, melodica and pre-recorded tapes of acoustic instruments such as harp, flute, bells, marimbas, organ, an out of tune toy piano and accordion, the overall sound is augmented by whispered transmitted voices, abstracted squeals, glitchy computerized electronics, toy instruments, crying children, animal noises, Conet Project style shortwave babble and off-kilter hand percussion. It's almost as if a computer was fed some primitive bedroom recordings performed by children and asked to mimic the results. The cover art with its childlike drawing and strange font layouts doesn't offer any clues either, unless one is versed in Portuguese perhaps. But even then, Plux Quba seems to be mining a territory where language is useless as an orienting factor, but trades on a highly prevalent universality of emotion. It remains a singular and beguiling artifact that won't appeal to everybody, but offers massive rewards to the curious, adventurous and patient.

Nocturnal Emissions - s/t 2xLP (Mannequin)

Our Review:

This eponymous recording is an impressive anthology into the broad history of Nocturnal Emissions, which started as an oblique electronic project, immolating at first with an industrial fury and later gliding into supple ambient soundscapes. Nocturnal Emissions was birthed in 1980 by Nigel Ayers and Caroline K who also both ran the Sterile Records, which released highly influential records by Lustmord, M.B., SPK as well as many of the seminal Nocturnal Emissions albums.

This historical document tracks through the many impressive albums of the '80s, including Tissue Of Lies, Viral Shedding, the band's masterpiece Drowning In A Sea Of Bliss, Songs Of Love And Revolution, Spiritflesh and Stoneface. Nocturnal Emissions' earliest works are creeping mutations of primitive electonica implode into audio collages of overblown noise, distorted media cut-ups, and tape loops. Upon the adoption of more gear and technical prowess, the band began to embrace minimal-wave rhythms while keeping to their noise bursts and dead-eyed tonalities. By the late '80s, Ayers had re-invented Nocturnal Emissions through the strategies of ritualized ambient composition through accretions of loops cast in echo and delay, not dissimilar to the equally hermetic projects :zoviet*france: and Cranioclast.

The Dead C - Trouble 2xLP (Ba Da Bing)

Our Review:

The Dead C continue their immensely gratifying third act with Trouble, a double-LP which extends their nearly decade-long working relationship with New York City's Ba Da Bing label, home of the New Zealand trio's last full-length studio effort, 2013's Armed Courage. Eschewing a penchant for some of the greatest song titles in recent memory – e.g. "This Century Sucks" and "Permanent LSD" from 2014's epic 4LP live collection, The Twelfth Spectacle, or "The AMM Of Punk Rock" from 2007's Future Artists – Trouble comprises four side-long tracks and a short excursion into wasted, primitive doom metal that have been given numbers (1 through 5, though not exactly sequential) rather than names, further evidence of The Dead C's bloodyminded, elemental approach.

Trouble begins with Bruce Russell and Michael Morley's snarling, dissonant guitar tones, laid over muffled, swirling pulses of what sounds for all the world like an Echoplex at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, while Robbie Yeats emerges from the squall as a lone drum battery, brandishing a metallic-tinged snare either as weapon or shield against his bandmates' determined onslaught. In fact, one of Trouble's most rewarding effects is that of highlighting his often seemingly desultory drum parts, as the rhythmic (yes! rhythmic!) pull of Yeats's glacial-jazz fills are continually (dutifully, properly) ignored by his compatriots (see especially "2" and "5" for evidence that Trouble is in fact Yeats's moment in the supernova). Ominous droney guitars latticed with piercing feedback tones and melodies disintegrating no sooner than they even consider announcing themselves, occasionally haunted by distant, inchoate vocals and anchored by Yeats's prominent and considerably varied percussion – this is what makes Trouble. Yet it's not all this particular kind of punishment: "3" offers itself as the eye of the storm, as what sound like bass chords ruminate alongside field recordings from guitars on the surface of Mars, woozily filling a space where once lay the entire history of twentieth-century music – all contributing to an extended moment that provokes a much-needed lexical shift in our understanding of how beautiful music can be or just how music can be beautiful.

To write of a new Dead C album in 2016 invites the sensation of a twice- or thrice-told tale; Trouble readily evokes comparisons to the band's early 90s apotheosis on such albums as Trapdoor Fucking Exit, Harsh 70s Reality, Clyma Est Mort and the Siltbreeze magnum opus Operation of the Sonne. But to cycle through such now-canonical titles ultimately serves simply to remind oneself that we've long been under the sway of The Dead C, that they long ago set – and then annihilated – the terms for any understanding of free or abstract guitar-based improvisatory music, have been running razor-edged circles around broad swathes of the contemporary underground and seem to have boundless energy to continue doing so. Trouble, for this listener, evoked nothing so much as a sense of exhilarated gratitude for The Dead C's epic career.

The Dead C are perhaps the only other group to whom the legendary encomium offered by John Peel to The Fall can deservedly be applied: "They are always different; they are always the same." We here at Stranded will exuberantly grasp at more of that difference-in-sameness for as long as Messrs. Morley, Yeats and Russell are generous enough to offer it. The C is Dead, long live The Dead C.

Stars Of The Lid - The Tired Sounds Of Stars Of The Lid 3xLP (Kranky)

Our Review:

The triple LP masterpiece from Austin, Texas' kings of the lullaby drone. Stars of the Lid's sound, while similar to past efforts, has undergone some pretty dramatic changes. Their multi-layered 4-tracked guitars are still present in all their serene beauty and dark tranquility, but the sound is more lush and more detailed. The treated strings, organs, backwards tubular bells and field recordings add even more depth to this already layered and impossible-to-grasp-in-one-listen recording. The Tired Sounds Of Stars Of The Lid is easily the their most obviously melodic record to date, thanks in no small part to the addition of strings, horns and piano. Dreamy nocturnal slow motion drones are the glorious backdrop to the ebb and flow of dark sonic swells and soaring strings. While lots of drone based music sounds sinister, threatening and often clinical, Stars Of The Lid manage to imbue their minimal soundscapes with warmth and a sort of hope and joy. When the mood does change, it's more melancholic, lost, maybe lonely, never evil. So much avant / experimental music is technical and electronic, but the shimmering ambience of the guitars and the grit and grime of the recording, as well as the perfect arrangements make this music transcend its contemporaries, filling your ears with thick slow sound, until it slowly spreads through your whole body. Think Angus Maclise, Terry Riley, Brian Eno, Low, Alan Lamb's wire recordings, Pauline Oliveros' deep listening recordings, John Cale, Godspeed You Black Emperor, the harmonium works of Hermann Nitsch or Tony Conrad. But mix in those magic (non-academic) ingredients (rock background, songs, melodies) and you have probably one of the most beautiful recordings we have ever heard.

Sonic Youth - EVOL LP (Goofin')

Our Review:

Evol – the fourth album by Sonic Youth – came out in 1986, and marked the debut of baby-faced SY drummer Steve Shelley. With Shelley's penchant for motorik rhythms and controlled velocity, the band began a trilogy of records that comprise what are arguably the three strongest records of their catalog: Evol, Sister, and Daydream Nation. Up until then, Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, and Lee Ranaldo had cycled through a number of percussionists with varying degrees of success. Shelley's ability to handle the pop-punk grooves and the avant-garde tumble with equal aplomb provided the foundation for Sonic Youth to begin to flower into the avant-pop iconoclastic band that we now know and love today. The album's highlights are numerous – "Tom Violence," "Starpower," "Expressway To Yr Skull" (probably, the best shorthand descriptor for a song, an attitude, a state of mind, a philosophy that could be distilled from Sonic Youth) – all of which are produced through a graceful dissonance of the amazing slipstream of noise and melody, atomized well beyond their punk-as-fuck origins but never far from a pop-crush chorus. Sonic Youth's omnivorous appetite for pretty much every form of music – Madonna, Glenn Branca, La Monte Young, Crime, Public Enemy, The Carpenters, Destroy All Monsters, etc. – was remarkably ahead of its time. For Sonic Youth, the intake of so many forms and their ability to synthesize such disparate elements was seen as a microcosm / macro-explosion of the Lower East Side as a wholesale form of arte povera. But some 30 years later, Evol is the kind of record that is expected for the contemporary audience, whereby every artist is supposed to know everything that came before and is completely aware of everything that is going on anywhere in the world. Logistical improbabilities of that being actualized by any current practitioner, Sonic Youth were able to see into the future beginning with Evol; and they achieved something that probably can't be replicated in the contemporary lens of social media. Here, punk rock has been rechristened as the combine, the assemblage, the collage – all of this goes into one of their legitimate masterpieces with a pitch-perfect sense of irony to match their non-pitch perfect anti-tunings. So what the fuck does all this mean? Just buy this goddamn record if you haven't already got it.

Look Blue Go Purple - Still Bewitched 2xLP (Flying Nun)

Our Review:

Look Blue Go Purple blossomed in Dunedin, New Zealand alongside many of the seminal Flying Nun bands (The Chills, The Clean, Bailter Space, etc.) of the mid-'80s. This quintet featured an impressive line-up of eccentric-pop ladies some of whom earned considerable credibility in their other projects. Denise Roughan went on to front the brilliantly shambolic 3Ds, Kathy Bull soon found herself on Xpressway and Norma O'Malley later founded Chug. But here in Look Blue Go Purple, the sound was very much of the quintessential bittersweet jangle-pop. Their strummed minor chords on multiple guitars gave further credence to the aphorism that everybody who bought a Velvet Underground album also started their own band. The vocal harmonies from Roughan, O'Malley and Kath Webster spiral around the rough and ready numbers float with an ethereal haunt that countered the laconic urgency of the arrangements. While Look Blue Go Purple were an all-women band and immensely inspired by the DIY prowess of The Slits and The Raincoats, they were irked to be lumped into the discourse of gender politics. No mere token chicks playing rock and roll with their boyfriends, Look Blue Go Purple were a great band that were prescient what came from Lush and Galaxie 500 and even the Ride-inspired shoegaze band Blind Mr. Jones (thanks to both bands exemplary use of the flute as an accompanying instrument).

The band produced three EPs for Flying Nun in the span of a couple years, then called it quits in 1988. All of the original EPs had become highly collectible; and this anthology marks their first collective return to vinyl.

Kandodo / McBain - Lost Chants / Last Chance 2xLP (Rooster)

Our Review:

Lost Chants / Last Chance is the heavy-as-fuck space-rock collaboration between The Heads’ Simon Price (aka Kandodo) and John McBain. The latter may be best known for his work in both Monster Magnet and Queens Of The Stone Age; but the album seems to fall closer to The Heads’ take on drug-addled hypnorock. The opening track is self-evidently titled "Blown Out" leaving us with one less way of describing the album. This track like whole album was cut at 45rpm, but Kandodo and McBain have actively encouraged their audience to play the album at 33. So much so, that they included the slo-mo versions on the digital downloads. At 45rpm, "Blown Out" is emblematic of the entire album, standing as an epic psychonaut odyssey whose swaggering riffs are heavy-lidded with equal amounts of drug use and supercharged effects. Wah-wah drenched freak-outs, stoned distorted rhythms, and drone-on hypnorock grooves mark some of the deliciously exploratory detours through this method acting excursion of taking drugs to make music to take drugs to. At 33, the album sinks into a monolithic torpor of tarpit miasma and ice-planet / doomscape dirges as an unhinged Loop meets Sleep. This reviewer kindly prefers the cut at 45, but it's great to have the slower option endorsed by the band. Highly recommended for fans of White Hills, Carlton Melton, Spacemen 3, Bardo Pond, and that whole ilk.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Skeleton Tree LP (Bad Seed Ltd)

Our Review:

Death and murder have long weighed heavily in Nick Cave's cautionary tales and allegorical anthems, but on the Skeleton Tree, such themes strike very close to home. In 2015, Cave's son Arthur died at the age of 15, falling off a cliff outside of Brighton, England. Cave and the Bad Seeds had yet to embark on the production of this album, though Cave had written much of the material that would get fleshed out in the studio when this tragic event happened. Knowing that he'd be confronted with questions about his son's death upon the release of the album, Cave and the band opted to film the making of the album under the directorial guidance of filmmaker Andrew Dominik. That film One More Time With Feeling was released at the same time the album to considerable critical acclaim. As for Skeleton Tree, the album is unsurprisingly a somber affair, laden with a grief that's weighty even for a Nick Cave outing. Cave's voice and piano are the central figures in this song cycle, curled into southern Gothic laments with his baritone stripped bare of all the bombast that he brought to The Birthday Party revealing considerable grief and sadness. Cave's vibrato on the title track seems to barely contain his tears, and the rumbling arrangement for "Anthrocene" sounds like a sustained earthquake as the emotional quicksand upon which Cave attempts to ground his song and by extension himself. Profound and heartbreaking.

Mamman Sani - La Musique Electronique du Niger LP (Sahel Sounds)

Our Review:

The Sahel Sounds label (responsible for Music From Saharan Cel Phones, Harafin So, and many more great lps of music from the Sahel region of Africa) strikes again with this amazing reissue of an uber-rare vintage cassette, the lone album circa 1978 by Nigerian "electronic music pioneer" Mammane Sani Abdullaye. We're told that if you live in West Africa, you'd likely be familiar with Mammane's instrumental music to some extent, as his tunes have apparently been used frequently in the background on radio and TV broadcasts over the past three decades. For us though, his sounds are an exciting discovery! Mammane plays the electric organ, in a fairly minimalistic and repetitive style, his music full of charming, simple melodies; it sounds very live and intimate, recorded with hardly any overdubs (it was done on a 2 track machine) and pleasingly lo-fi, with a little bit of tape hiss (just like we like it).

Some of the songs are woozy, sweetly dreamy sound paintings, others are more uptempo and percussive, with tick-tocking rhythm backing tracks, and Mammane joyously tickling the keys over top. Chiptune/skweee fans might enjoy the more video-game-y blip blip bleep of the calm yet jaunty "Bodo," while the laidback grooviness of the likes of "Tunan" should appeal to fans of the Ethiopiques series, even though this is from a completely different region of Africa. Many of the melodies are based on traditional Nigerian folk music - as the label's notes say, "Mammane electrifies the nomadic drum of the tende, the polyphonic ballads of the Woddaabe, and the pastoral hymns of the Sahelian herders." Others are entirely original. And all are quite lovely indeed. Such a find.

Highly recommended in particular to fans of Francis Bebey and his African Electronic Music 1975-1982 collection. An absolutely delightful record!

Jack Rose - Red Horse, White Mule LP (VHF)

Our Review:

Red Horse, White Mule was the 2002 solo debut for Jack Rose, who spent most of the late nineties and early 2000's as a member of Virginia drone-folk collective Pelt. Yet as that band drew deeper into free-form percussive raga workouts, Rose seemed to quietly slip out into his own introspective solo guitar extrapolations of deep folk-blues, perhaps as a tribute to John Fahey who had died at the tail-end of a huge career revival just months before these recordings were made. That revival spawned a renewed interest in Fahey's Takoma label which also released recordings by Robbie Basho, Leo Kottke and Max Ochs, influencing a new generation of solo guitar practitioners evolving from the indie underground or The New Weird America, as it was sometimes called. Among them Sir Richard Bishop from Sun City Girls, Jim O'Rourke from Gastr Del Sol and Glynn Jones from Cul-De-Sac.

Yet Rose out of them all seemed to embody Fahey the most, using the guitar as a divining rod to a soulful complexity of spiritual longing and release, no matter what the physical tolls that a hard life of soul-searching would bring. Rose's muscular playing style and deep dedication to his craft arrived fully-formed on these recordings and this is just the tremendous beginning of a brief but highly prolific solo career.

Jack Rose - Kensington Blues LP (VHF)

Our Review:

We have long been mesmerized by Jack Rose's unique take on Fahey-esque neo-Appalachia. It's unbelievable how in the right hands just a guitar can conjure up such a massive sound and so much emotion and Mr. Rose was definitely one of the finest examples at the time. If you're familiar with the music of John Fahey you have a good idea of Rose's basic sound (he even covers Fahey's "Sunflower River Blues" here), but his years spent in the free drone group Pelt has definitely informed not only his guitar playing, but also his song writing. Some of the tracks on Kensington Blues are straight up stompers, sounding like they have to be standards, foot tapping hand clapping classic backwoods frontporch folk/blues. But others are dark and brooding, with intricate finger picking, producing all manner of buzzing overtones and subtle harmonic coloring. Those are the tracks where Rose shines the most, when he digs deep and explores the darker side of this music, and lets the notes stretch and buzz, sliding and scraping, letting notes drift and hover and eventually blur into shimmery drones and hypnotic stretches of cycle and repetition. A stone classic!

Grouper - Ruins LP (Kranky)

Our Review:

Piano and voice. That's what we encounter in the latest incantation from Liz Harris, once again recording as Grouper. Chillingly beautiful smears from dankly shoegazing guitars, loop-station electronics, mumbled vocals, and a near constant wash of stoned introspection were the common elements of those albums of hers that captured our imagination like Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill and AIA: Dream Loss. She's eschewed pretty much all of the gauzy blur and the narcotic diffusion that runs through all of her previous albums; but the delicacy of these songs on Ruins and beguiling poetry of sadness makes this very much another fantastic Grouper album.

Harris wrote all of the material for Ruins during a residency in Portugal back in 2011. There, she made full use of an upright piano, recording these songs onto a four-track with occasional overdubs, just for an additional layer voice here and there in order to harmonize with herself. Without all of the fuzz and drone, Harris' lyrics enjoy a bit more clarity, though she has long been one to slur the syllables into a cooing gasp of pitch-perfect intoxication. Her songs arpeggiate on simple piano chords evolving the minor key repetition into secretive, plaintive lullabies, slowly tapped out to match the torpor of her voice. The album is starkly naked in the emotional fragility of these arrangements, but Harris is very much in control of the poetics calmly painting her songs in a sonic palette of rainy-day blues and greys. It's much closer to the under appreciated Mirroring collaboration that hopefully wasn't just a one-off with Tiny Vipers' Jesy Fortino. Yes, another gem from the wintery soul of Liz Harris.

Guru Guru - UFO LP (Play Loud)

Our Review:

This legendary krautrock jam finally available again on vinyl!! What it is exactly that constitutes Krautrock is definitely up for debate. It seems often largely construed to be the insistent, motorik pulses of Neu! and Can. But to limit the genre to just that would be a mistake. Bands like Guru Guru and Ash Ra Tempel were also present, bringing some of the heaviest psychedelia ever recorded. UFO is the former band's debut effort. Fans of heavy psych, German rock of the '70s, and free improv jams will consider this absolutely essential. And chances are, those fans already own this, or they simply haven't found a copy yet. Repetitive, hypnotic, transcendent. And at the same time jarring. This is a fist full of mushrooms being shoved through the speakers. Embrace it.

Felicia Atkinson - Hand In Hand 2xLP (Shelter Press)

Our Review:

Hand In Hand begins and ends with the support of two stately institutions of avant-garde electronic music. The French polyglot Félicia Atkinson began composing this album while in residence at EMS in Stockholm in 2016; and upon completion of the work, she exhibited a seven hour extended version the following year at GRM in Paris. Lucid, yet cracked, Hand In Hand emerges as an enchanting fever-dream of telepathic thought, disconnected desire and acute emotion which all expand from a myriad of appropriated and detourned texts.

In years past she first began recording under the moniker Je Suis Le Petit Chevalier, whose droning plainsongs paralleled those of Natural Snow Buildings and Motion Sickness Of Time Travel. The somnolent ambience of her first fruits has gradually slipped away amidst an intimate, idiosyncratic hybrid of spoken text, deconstructed electronica and hypnotic abstractions. Where there once were songs buried under six feet of snow, there are now asymmetrical sounds upon which balance Atkinson's sibilant whisperings in English. She quotes wholesale from J.G. Ballard, Phillip K. Dick, architectural manuals, instructions on caring for house plants and texts of her own construct. Amidst the elegantly dismal arrangements for rhodes organ motifs (think Dirty Harry) and the filagrees of spluttered waveform table cycles, these texts hang a constellations in the night sky. Infinitely detailed references with their contexts voided through the power of the razor blade. Brilliant.

Demdike Stare - Wonderland 2xLP (Modern Love)

Our Review:

To state the obvious, Demdike Stare are fucking brilliant. Since their inception at the end of the first decade of the millennium, Demdike Stare has conjured their electronic hybrids of concretized dub and gracefully muscular techno through a byzantine network of extant forms and deliberately obtuse pluckings from one hell of a record collection. The name of the project harkens from one of the more well-known chronicles of English witchcraft, and the sense that Demdike Stare are conducting a modern-day divination makes for a very apt analysis. Early on, Demdike rendered a RD Burman Bollywood sample as a dessicated disco-funk dripping with post-colonial dread for the best cut on their iconic debut album Symbiosis. As the duo of Miles Whittaker and Sean Canty has honed their craft, the necessity of locating the origins to their assemblage is no longer relevant, though they maintain the psychogeographical wanderings of an intrepid situationist where all signifiers are free to exploit.

2016's Wonderland is the most rhythmic work of their full albums, continuing the abstracted drum & bass and polymorphous techno they delivered on a 12" series of 'test pressings' that were released from 2013 to 2015. Demdike Snare somewhat sidesteps the cinematic grandeur of the previous full albums in favor skittering, dynamic deconstructions of the quintessential Amen break. The snaking rhythms evolve and erupt along Demdike's malleable latticework that spiral into futurist dervishes as on "Animal Style" or into the blopring acid trax of a tuned up Plus 8 / Plastikman techno of "Hardnoise" and "FullEdge." For all of the swagger and bombast these rhythms has, Demdike Stare propels these a hypercomplex jigjaw puzzle of sound that has way more in common with the electic convolutions of Bernard Parmegiani and Francois Bayle than a bangin' floorfiller merchants. Throw in some urban gamelan, Shangaan electro and ghost-dub fright and Demdike Stare emerge with one hell of a great record. Let's restate the obvious, fucking brilliant.

Colin Newman - Provisionally Entitled The Singing Fish LP (Sentient Sonics)

Our Review:

The strength of 1980's A-Z particularly impressed Ivo Watts-Russell who quickly invited Colin Newman to join his erstwhile bandmates Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis on the burgeoning 4AD roster. Provisionally Entitled The Singing Fish stands as Newman's only true solo outing, him alone shouldering writing, performance and production (save for Robert Gotobed's "backing drums" on "Fish 9"). A collection of instrumental pieces offered as the soundtrack to an imaginary movie, a formal conceit with particular caché in the wake of Eno, Fish is an exercise in patient accretion, synthesized polyrhythms and wordless vocal chants braided into short avant-pop airs that emphasize the importance of detail and texture in Newman's body of work, regardless of the name under which it appears.

Brother Ah - Move Ever Onward LP (Manufactured Recordings)

Our Review:

This is a long lost classic (originally released in 1975) from ex-Sun Ra band member Brother Ah, and features a 25 piece ensemble and a vast array of exotic instruments such as shakuhachi flute, gong, space beam (?!), koto, pan flute, french horn, sitar, kiti kup (?!), tabla, oboe, shawn (?!), as well as various vocalists chanting, singing, shouting, and pre-recorded nature sounds. Sound far out? Well, it is, even by Sun Ra standards. Starting out with an Eastern-tinged spaced out raga, with buzzing sitars and subtle percussion underneath spoken word, then to a dreamy flute-flecked jazz number with Ethel Merman-ish operatic vocals over the top, on to funky African percussion workouts to chanted almost liturgical sounding afro-jazz-pop.... Weird but definitely cool. For VERY adventurous fans of afro-rock as well as fans of Sun Ra and that sort of out-there-jazz.

Broadcast - Haha Sound LP (Warp)

Our Review:

Vocalist Trish Keenan murmurs and sings in her wistful, lullaby-perfect voice that nears the clarity and sweetness of Karen Carpenter or Julee Cruise. It's the perfect foil for the fizzing and churning backdrop of analog synths, guitars, bass and percussion created by Roj Stevens, Tim Felton, James Cargill and Steve Perkins – tipping their collective hat to '60s Brill Building girl groups, the grand sentimental lovey-dovey-ness of Bacharach, and Esquivelian space age bachelor pads everywhere. Broadcast skillfully craft glistening, starry-eyed music that swirls and creaks like an old carousel, but just as ably veer off into more eccentric, trippy territory a la Bruce Haack, Raymond Scott and Joe Meek (psst, this contrast is perfectly exemplified at the meeting between songs 7 and 8 – "Lunch Hour Pops" and "Black Umbrellas" – check 'em out!). Perhaps the time has come that the occlusive "Stereolab Jr." tag they've been saddled with (granted, quite aptly so) may be tossed in the trash. Very recommended!

Ata Kak - Obaa Sima LP (Awesome Tapes From Africa)

Our Review:

Wow! This is one of the most ecstatically strange recordings of hip hop dance music we've heard in quite awhile and it is no wonder that its elusive existence was the spark that inspired Brian Shimkovich's Awesome Tapes From Africa blog (and subsequent label) a decade ago. After years of searching for the man behind the music and eventually getting permission for the reissue, Awesome Tapes' hard work does not go unnoticed on this left-field reissue.

Hailing from Ghana, Ata Kak Yaw Atta-Owusu released this cassette in 1994, an awesome tape indeed of homegrown African Hip-house - a hybrid genre of high energy disco, b-boy hip hop and off-kilter rap-singing, that we weren't sure even existed. Only 50 tapes were originally made and out of them, only 3 sold, making its rediscovery that so much more remarkable. Made with a synthesizer, a 12 track recorder and Notator Atari software, Obaa Sima is like no African hip hop we've heard before. Tinny drum machines, fast-paced babble-rapping, helium voiced back-up vocals, infectious bass grooves and a beamed-in-from-outer-space soulfulness that somehow makes this all work. Seriously, it's as much fun as the craziest Bollywood disco stuff. Get in on this party train! Super recommended!!

Annie Anxiety - Soul Possession LP (Dais)

Our Review:

An unmistakable voice in the art-punk community throughout the '80s, Annie Anxiety has been best known as freeform punk poet contributing vocals to the likes of Coil, The Wolfgang Press, and various Adrian Sherwood's On-U Sound productions. Her roots harken further back to the nascent punk days when she fronted her band Annie and The Asexuals before she took off from New York to Germany around 1980. She never made it to Berlin. Instead, she found herself in England on the doorstep of Penny Rimbaud and was welcomed into the extended Crass family. Her first single was published through Crass' in-house label, informed less by anarcho-punk than by a dada approach to dub deconstruction through tape-loops and junkyard tribal percussion. Her voice – with a Nuyorican accent that sharpens aggressively upon the more strident consonants and purrs through the softer ones – boldly stands as a commanding presence even against the vitriolic bark of Steve Ignorant or the growled enunciation from David Tibet. She can be sensual, she can be schizoid, she can shriek, she can sing weirdo Dada cabaret songs.

Soul Possession is her debut LP from 1984, produced by Adrian Sherwood and published by Crass though their Corpus Christi imprint. A deliberate chimera of punk iconoclasm, deranged industrial dub experiments and brash American theatricality, the nevertheless album ascribes to a minimalist structure. In doing so, Anxiety's arrangements recall those of The Slits, The Pop Group, Danielle Dax's Pop-Eyes and early Vivien Goldman singles. At the same time, the stripped down rhythms lend plenty of space for Anxiety to take the reins. In all of her sneers, snarls and croons, Anxiety guides the loping, lurching songs down the rabbit-hole of her bizarrely psychosexual / Lynchian narratives. The lyrics pour out in semi-melodic song-speak, seeming to be snippets of a broader encyclopedia of personal madness. It all comes together into another bold fracturing of British punk into something astonishingly unclean and unkempt.

Bill Orcutt & Chris Corsano - Live At Various / Various Live 2xLP (Palilalia)

Our Review:

When Bill Orcutt and Chris Corsano first joined forces, comparisons were inevitably made to Orcutt's previous guitar-drums band Harry Pussy. However, the Orcutt/Corsano collaboration is something else entirely. While the private, longing blues of Orcutt's solo work at first seems nowhere to be found, Corsano's vertiginous drumming is the perfect complement to Orcutt's gnarled, ascending leads. Indeed, the duo take the ecstatic heights of American colloquial forms on a deep dive into the contemporary underground.

Compiling two cassettes of live performances, Live At Various / Various Live strips rock 'n' roll tropes to their barest essence. As its low-concept cover art suggests, this collection not-very-subtly flirts with the crassness of pop music and rockstar culture, but only to disassemble and overturn it. Parts channel the Ayler brothers at their 1966 European-tour peak – music of triumphant joy – while echoes of familiar blues forms are twisted into shapes we never thought possible. This is the sound of two visionaries destroying the world and building a new one from the detritus. We're lucky to call it home, even if just for the duration of these LPs.

Limited to 500 copies.

Arthur Russell - Tower Of Meaning LP (Audika)

Our Review:

Finally reissued on vinyl!! Twenty-two years after his death, the music of Arthur Russell is more alive than ever. Mostly known as a left-field disco producer and classically trained cellist, Russell was also an accomplished avant-garde composer, as evidenced here. Listed by us recently on limited cassette, and once reissued on cd in 2006 as part of the Audika collection First Thought Best Thought that documented his orchestral work with luminaries of the New York Downtown Scene (Rhys Chatham, Jon Gibson and Peter Gordon) following his stint as musical director at The Kitchen in New York, Tower Of Meaning was originally released on Philip Glass's new music label, Chatham Square in 1983.

A suite of seven movements performed by an ensemble of horn players and conducted by Julius Eastman (whom like Russell, was a gay modern classical iconoclast), Tower Of Meaning has a slow epic funereal vibe reminiscent of Gavin Bryars' The Sinking of The Titanic, or indeed like a Philip Glass piece in slow motion. While not quite as emotionally devastating as the Bryars piece, the horns in Tower Of Meaning play out long plaintive tones simultaneously resulting in unusual intonations and harmonics as the tones overlap creating modalities of clustering chords that aurally seem to both march forward and float upward without ever quite resolving itself, the "meaning" in the title forever remaining elusive and out of reach.

The Bryars connection is a bit ironic, however, because Tower Of Meaning was originally intended as incidental music to accompany a staging of Robert Wilson's Medea, but creative squabbling between the two forced Russell out and Gavin Bryars took over the project. The resultant recording is only a fraction of Russell's score which included voices and other instrumentation as well. Embittered by the experience, it was sadly Russell's final orchestral effort.

Brian Eno - Discreet Music 2xLP (Virgin EMI)

Half Speed Mastering edition. Two records at 45 RPM.

Our Review:

The second wave of Brian Eno reissues covers his genre-defining ambient albums from 1975 to 1982. The first in the series is 1975's Discreet Music, which Eno describes as the genesis for his ambient music. While recouperating in the hospital after being struck by a car, Eno found himself inspired through another type of accident. He had been brought a record of 18th century harp music to listen to; after struggling to put the record on in his weakened state, he found the amplifier levels way too low and one channel of the recording completely missing. Thus, he was forced to strain to hear anything but the loudest notes above the ambient din in the room. Add to this Eno's admission that he considers himself a better conceiver of plans than executor of ideas, and you have the foundations for Discreet Music. Eno's goal was to set up a system that generates music with as little input from him as possible. To this end, he created a feedback loop into which he could insert pairs of notes and let the ensuing echo box and delay do the rest. The album's flipside is a suite entitled "Three Variations On the Canon In D Major By Johann Pachelbel." For this piece, Eno took different sections of the original composition and directed the musicians with various instructions for the treatment of their parts, resulting in beautiful deconstructions of a once-familiar canon.

Brainticket - Cottonwoodhill LP (Cleopatra)

Our Review:

Cottonwoodhill, originally released in 1971, the debut from Swiss psychedelic groove-meisters Brainticket, is simply one of the freakiest, LSD-trip inspired slabs of groovy musick of all times. Up there with Funkadelic's Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow, even.

The first two tracks on side one, "Black Sand" and "Places Of Light", ease you into it, being laidback groovers laced with stabs of distortion; then the true "trip" begins, the utterly over the top, three-part "Brainticket", that starts on side one and spreads over all of side two, dense and propulsive and repetitive through the maddeningly-catchy psychedelic throb. The vocalist Dawn Muir exasperatingly recites in real-time an acid trip in full bloom, with orgasmic yelps and uncomfortably numb sermonizing. It's the perfect soundtrack to completely mad. In addition to wah-wah guitar, organ, flute, tabla, and sci-fi electronics, there's layers of musique concrete through tapes of car-crashes, explosions, clanging bells, clattering trains, cheering crowds and a panoply of noise panic.

One of the most intense albums from the Krautrock scene (even as this ensemble was Swiss) and was huge inspiration on Steven Stapleton. Not only did Brainticket make it onto the legendary NWW-list that accompanied his first record, but he also covered the almight "Brainticket" suite. We have to admit Stapleton's version pales in comparison to the original!

Along with Nurse With Wound, fans of Amon Duul II, Gunter Schickert, A.R. & The Machines and the more cosmic Funkadelic facets will be well served in checking this one out.

Andrew Chalk - Ghosts Of Nakhodka LP (Faraway Press)

Our Review:

You may be thinking, there was an album by Andrew Chalk with this exact same title. And you would be correct but for one small distinction - the 2009 album was called Ghost Of Nakhodka and this 2015 album is Ghosts Of Nakhodka. Ah, the difference of plurality! The album is pegged as a sister to that 2009 album though Chalk has implemented a different set of tools on this one. Instead of piano and guitar laced with placid droning effects that was found on the singular Ghost album, here he's using a monophonic synthesizer occasionally dappled with field recordings and a few choice effects. It becomes very clear this a Chalk record through the albums' impressionist fragments spilled across 13 tracks, each rich with his languid sense of space and his elegant timing in placing this free-roaming kosmische blorp here and that swollen ambient blur over there. Brian Eno's Discreet Music and Apollo would be the closest references to what Chalk is up to here, though his production methods are qualitatively rough hewn in the synth manifestation of melancholic nostalgia with little of the portent that Eno imbues into his work. The miniatures presented are exquisite jewels coming from a craftsman keen on showcasing his work to a select few and within an deliberately intimate setting. It would seem far out of Chalk's character to broadcast works such as these at the Guggenheim or even the ICA. Instead, a humble English cottage with a sod roof and a console-sized cathode ray television as the only means of transmission. Ah, the wonders of Andrew Chalk never cease.

Xordox - Neospection LP (Editions Mego)

Our Review:

William Basinski - The Deluge LP (Temporary Residence Ltd.)

Our Review:

William Basinski - 92982 2xLP (Temporary Residence Ltd.)

Our Review:

These 4 tracks, built upon signature William Basinksi loops date back to September 29, 1982 (hence the title), and like so many of his recent releases of archival material, they ask the question, "why did it take you so long?" The answer may not be as interesting as the question itself, but the nostalgic look back for Basinski to his own past certainly resonates beyond any notions of solipsism and speaks to something downright universal: an optimism of a half-remembered past. Unlike the masterpiece of The Disintegration Loops, the tracks on 92982 don't crackle and crumble apart as the pieces move forward; but the dust, hiss, and fuzz that have been the trademarks of Basinski loops are all present. The first track centers on a loop of a spacious piano waltzing out of the softened drones of accumulated hiss and soft focus white noise pushed deep into the shadows. The second is a graceful swoon of a composition with delayed rhythmic pock that phases against a swelling ambient loop and occasional interjections of police sirens and helicopters, presumably recorded directly out of Basinski's open window. Another piano loop grounds the third track; this one painfully sad and lilting and made more so by the patina of tape hiss, soft static, and degradation of the source material. An elegant two note loop with a hallowed drone of floating dust completes yet another fantastic William Basinski record. Fans will not be disappointed!

Tim Hecker - Dropped Pianos LP (Kranky)

Our Review:

Canadian ambient deconstructionist Tim Hecker has tapped into a unique sound that manages to evoke feelings of loss and memory, of some otherworld, of some other time. His music is modern and experimental, but still classic and timeless, deftly casting ambient music as something so much more than simple ambience. Lush and textural. Haunting and emotional. Dropped Pianos is yet another remarkable feat, offering a glimpse into the process Hecker goes through to create his record, in the form of this series of sketches.

As the title suggests, the focus here is on the piano. The sound is minimal and spare by Hecker's standards, trading the often think gristly walls of buzz and crumbling thrum, for something much more stately, sparse, washed out and delicate. But even so, this is not a collection of raw piano recordings. The sounds are already blurred and bleary, sun dappled and crystalline. It seems impossible these could be untouched original recordings. But even with Heckers's minimal amount of processing, the tracks here have already been transformed, gauzy soft focus squalls of haunted funereal ballads. There are what appear to be solo piano pieces, though closer listening reveals all manner of subtle sonic weirdness just below the surface. Often, those strange subtleties taking over completely, swallowing the piano whole, while other times the notes seem to bleed into one another, blurring into dramatic swirls of sound, tense and dark and very cinematic. Most of the pieces here are brief, all of them could have been stretched out to fill up the whole record. Thankfully, Dropped Pianos does not sound fragmented. The various sketches are woven into an album in its own right, fused into something darkly divine.

Various - Killed By Deathrock Volume 2 LP (Sacred Bones)

Our Review:

Copping the name of this series from the infamous Killed By Death bootlegs of punk obscurities, Sacred Bones mines the equally fertile historical archives of the early goth days in the early to mid '80s. As on the first Killed By Deathrock compilation, the curation slants heavily towards the driving, danse macabre grooves of the Bauhaus/Joy Division/Christian Death axis of post-punk. The smeared mascara gems are plenty including a couple from relatively well-known acts. Red Temple Spirits are probably the best known of the lot, hailing from Los Angeles from the the late '80s and maintaining a solid connection to Savage Republic. Their contribution is the cracklingly great "Dark Spirits" from their debut album where the band's yelping doomsayer William Faircloth fronts a diabolically intense take on The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn-era Pink Floyd. Skeletal Family and Red Zebra are the only other bands here who had released anything beyond a single, a cassette or a mini-LP. The Siouxsie-esque contribution from Skeletal Family must be remarked upon as one hell of a great batcave number, as one of the highlights of this particular comp. Another Killed By Deathrock 2 contributor Vita Noctis didn't have a bunch of releases back when they were active in the '80s, but Dark Entries issued a double LP of their weirdo synth-punk angularity. So, the rest of track-listing from Gatecrashers, Middle Class, ADS, Veda, Flowers For Agatha and Crank Call Love Affair is more than likely an introduction to bands who may have imploded or failed to catch a break, despite writing some damn great driving post-punk tracks.

True Widow - Avvolgere 2x12" (Relapse)

Our Review:

What a great fucking record! But when has True Widow failed to deliver a great fucking record? Nope, that's never happened in the past, and unless they drastically change course, it's unlikely to happen in the future. Over their past three albums, this Texan trio has mastered a slow-crawl songwriting that touches on a number of the well-known idioms of stoner rock, doom, shoegaze and plenty of good old rock 'n' roll outlaw bravado. True Widow distills the basic building blocks from these pre-existent forms and shape them into an economical yet mesmerizing sound. These songs can be so simple and effective that it seems impossible that they've not been written before, locked into a torpor groove from the black-tar pit rhythm section and the down-tuned buzzsaw riffage from Dan Phillips guitar. Vocals are typically handled by Phillips, whose tongue this reviewer has always likened to the mumble-mouthed drawl that Kurt Cobain could muster in striking his bluesman pose. On the occasion when bassist Nicole Estill steps to the mic, True Widow really shine with her angelic vocal harmonies encircling the world-weariness of Phillips' voice. The slow pace and the drowsy moodiness of Avvolgere follow that of Codeine and Low, with remarkable panache. True Widow eschew the loud-quite dynamics of their antecedents, preferring a long-haul swagger of the purposeful amble that would guide them from one side of Texas to the other.

Roe Enney - Glare LP (Root Strata)

Our Review

In a word, Roe Enney is cryptic. So much so, that she could be actually be a hologram or an android's dream or a ball of ectoplasm half-materialized between this world and the next. Her smattering of cassette recordings disappeared as quickly as the were announced, with those lucky enough to hear them to always refer to them in hushed, reverent tones, lest the physical copies blink themselves out of existence.

Without the knowledge of her cassette recordings, Glare may seem a spartan production of vaporously deconstructed post-punk electronica, but these are considerably fleshed out from what she had previously produced. Her songs all lumber with a narcoleptic plod through ultra primitive drum machines and asynchronous electronic sequences as she sings her monotone lullabies and lurches upon bass. It makes for an eerie, emotionally detached atmosphere that harkens to the grim simplicity of Dark Day's no wave electronics, Carla Dal Forno's equally narcotized songwriting and even The Cure's oft forgotten instrumental mind-fuck Carnage Visors.

Certainly to be this one of this reviewer's favorite recordings produced in 2017.

Ramleh - A Return To Slavery LP (Harbinger Sound)

Our review:

Harbinger Sound revisits two classic recordings from the early power electronic facet to Ramleh, the heavy-as-fuck British outfit spearheaded by Gary Mundy. A Return To Slavery was originally a split LP released in 1983 on Mundy's seminal Broken Flag imprint with the one-off Phillip Best alter-ego Libertarian Recordings on the flip. The sound is a murky wall of gravel throated noise pocked with distant yelps from Mundy in sonic fisticuffs with variety of cassette sampled political speeches, whose content and context are garbled through the noise. Grim. Devastating. Utterly compelling. In lieu of the Best material, the flip side contains all of the material from the equally impressive The Hand Of Glory single also from that same year, though those recordings were later reissued as 12" through a Hospital Productions / Harbinger Sound venture. It too is a tangled clog of aggressive noise, voice and throttled distortion with Mundy's existential shrieks and moans posited within the morass of noise. Through recordings such as this, Ramleh established a template for noise art that embraced the corrosive aspects of sound only touched upon at the time by contemporaries such as Merzbow and Whitehouse (though both later employed the full-frequency noise assault within a few years).

Leyland Kirby - Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was (Part Two) 2xLP (History Always Favours The Winners)

Our Review:

Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was is the second chapter in a trilogy of releases from the drone haze ambient masterpiece from the man behind the Caretaker, first released in 2009. Beginning in the mid '00s, Leyland James Kirby began releasing a highly acclaimed catalog of maudlin ambient recordings culled from melodic phrases looped and blurred from old 78s. The bulk of these recordings (typically released under the Caretaker moniker) find Kirby living under the grey skies of Berlin having relocated from grey skied Manchester; lo and behold, he's still making cold, rainy grey music for cold, rainy days. And yeah, he's pretty damn good at it.

Just like all of Kirby's other records, the album works as an endless loop of flipping the two records, forgetting which track you've drifted in and out of, and wondering where to start next. These pieces of blurred ambience, obfuscated field recordings, and sad piano melodies hint at the furniture music of Erik Satie, the mood engineering of Angelo Badalamenti and the emotional resonance of William Basinski.

Laraaji - Celestial Vibration LP (Soul Jazz)

Our Review:

Previously released under the name, Edward Larry Gordon, Celestial Vibrations is the progressive new-age legend Laraaji's debut album from 1978. Laraaji creates long-form trance-inducing compositions using electronically enhanced zithers, auto-harps, kalimbas and other acoustic instruments that shimmer and radiate in beautifully meditative pulses. This record comprised of two thirty minute tracks, "All Pervading" and "Bethlehem" gained little notice upon its initial release, but thankfully it caught the attention of Brian Eno who subsequently produced his follow-up Days of Radiance for the EG Editions Ambient series in 1980 to wider acclaim. You can tell that Gordon was much inspired by earlier progenitors of cosmic music from Sun Ra to John and Alice Coltrane. You can especially hear the harp-like shimmer of Alice Coltrane in his treatments of the open tuned zither that he plays while in a complete meditative state. Really gorgeous stuff!

Gunter Schickert - Uberfallig LP (Bureau B)

Our Review:

Uberfallig was Schickert's second album, originally issued in 1979 on the Sky label and the follow up to his 1974 Brain debut Samtvogel. We've been in love with this record forever, referencing it and Schickert plenty of times in other reviews when we want to cite something incredibly atmospheric and minimalistically trance inducing from deep in the krautrock zone. Here on Uberfallig, Schickert's exceptionally hypnotic space-echo guitar work, similar to Manuel Gottsching of Ashra, is matched by fascinating rhythmic pulsations, at times recalling prime Can-like velocities or the circular bubbliness of AR & Machines and some Pink Floyd Meddle era pastoral psych vibes as well. And it's mostly just Schickert (guitar, voice) and a few friends (drums and vocals) plus nature sounds, deftly deployed.

It builds from calmly rhythmic beginnings to pure hypno-guitar bliss, mixed with subtle, splashy, sploshy field recordings - evoking the idea of Schickert and his drummer colleague Charles M. Heuer wading upstream in the wilds somewhere as their music plays. That begins the recurrent watery theme found on this album, an ever present liquid watery ambience, the sounds of wind and rain and surf and babbling brooks woven in among the "actual" instruments.

It's all druggy and delicate, moody and mesmeric. Quite the tour de force, coming to a close with strange samples and lovely crackling.

Goat - Requiem 2xLP (Sub Pop)

Our Review:

The back-story to the Swedish collective Goat is so implausible that it must be the stuff of fiction. The group has laid claim to hailing from an isolated Swedish village with a convoluted history of numerous, constantly evolving incarnations of a band called Goat all loosely aligned with a voodoo rituals that were imported aeons ago from Africa. Regardless of the truthiness to such a tall tale, Goat is a formidable polyglot of psychedelic hypnosis, fuzzed-out garage pop and Afro-rock melodies. On their first album World Music, Goat ripped though their voodoo grooves of impossibly catchy tunes that melded the Stooges and Fela Kuti into a seamless tangle of darkly ritual incantations and libidinal frenzy. Requiem marks the third album for this incarnation of Goat, who've stated that this is their "folk" record. Goat may have unplugged from many of their amps, but there's still quite a dervish of energy through their hypnotic tracks. Instead of many of the Zamrock heaviness which were found on World Music, Goat pick up highlife and desert blues structures in their brighter, sunnier grooves. Much of the work is instrumental and sprawl across the rhythmic complexities that harkens to other occidental adventurers of the Empty Quarter, especially the more sensible aspects of the Sun City Girls and Master Musicians of Bukkake.

Harmonia - Deluxe LP (Groenland)

Our Review:

Newly reissued on vinyl: Harmonia's 2nd album, from 1975, Deluxe. Although we loved Harmonia's first album, Musik Von Harmonia, Deluxe is, dare we say, even better!! Made up of Michael Rother from Neu! and Moebius and Roedelius from Cluster, on Deluxe they are joined on a few songs by Mani Neumeier from Guru Guru, making the line up on this record a kosmiche supergroup of epic proportions! While the first record was tipped in its balance towards the Cluster side of things in terms of sound and the improvised process in which it was made, Deluxe has more of a Neu! feel as the tracks are more composed and song oriented, and for the first time contain vocal elements. Plus the motorik grooves are more rocking, with a real drum kit used more often than the drum machines creating a pulsating drive on par with Neu! 75, recorded that same year. But that's not to say Deluxe doesn't have its Cluster moments, as the two final tracks bring us down into some beautiful pastoral territory with the sounds of a stream with ducks and frogs near the Cluster studio in Forst can be heard amongst the warm and percolating analog synths. An essential.

David Lynch & Alan R. Splet - Eraserhead OST LP+7"+Book (Sacred Bones)

Our Review:

Here's the soundtrack to David Lynch's infamous, career defining early cult film Eraserhead. It's a work so claustrophobic, nightmarish, perverse, anxiety ridden, bleak and black humor heavy that it continues to this day to be unsurpassed in many strange and wonderful ways. Many movie soundtrack are just glorified rock compilations. Not this one! In Eraserhead, Lynch began working with sound designer Alan Splet, who followed Lynch throughout his career, with both fully aware that sound, noise and silence were an intrinsic part to constructing the film. Filled with intrusive industrial scrapes and discomfiting drones, the soundtrack to Eraserhead unquestionably plays an integral role in brewing up the unsettling atmospheres that Lynch navigates with an unchartered dream logic. Unfriendly cold sweat ambiance, prickly electrical charges, choked guttural gurgles, distant echoes of carnival organ melodies and dialogue snippets lurch in and out of focus. And of course the out of the grey dankness emerges the Lady in the Radiator's "In Heaven (Everything Is Fine)," as sung by Lynch himself with his peculiar, signature falsetto. Long been a cult classic soundtrack, not just a cult classic film, for a reason. The 7" features tune "Pete's Boogie" (written by Lynch and Peter Ivers) which was unreleased up until the Sacred Bones reissue.

Dead Can Dance - s/t LP (4AD)

Our Review:

Perhaps more so than the revolving door project This Mortal Coil, there was no other band in the '80s that embodied the 4AD sound more so than Dead Can Dance. Their labored, heavily orchestrated songs hinged upon a dark, neo-romantic reading of medieval leitmotifs and Renaissance melody with plenty of Celtic flourishes tossed in for good measure. Firmly linked to the Dead Can Dance sound were the voices of Lisa Gerrard and Brendan Perry - the former epitomizing an ethereal swoon counterpointed by the latter's exacting baritone. Their first album found the two Australian transplants living in London and showcasing much more of their Australian post-punk roots than on later albums. Gerrard had recorded a couple of singles with her unfortunately forgotten band Microfilm, and Perry had a stint in a band called The Scavengers.

Joy Division and 154-era Wire were the springboard for much of Dead Can Dance's ideas on this album through the bass-driven post-punk songs dappled with spectral guitar work and primitive electronic underpinnings. If it weren't for the instantly recognizable twin vocals from Gerrard and Perry (the latter of whom carries the bulk of this album), Dead Can Dance's debut could be mistaken for anything that would have come out on Factory at that time. Hints of their more well-known orchestrated sound appear on this album in the form of some hammered dulcimers and tribal percussion spiraling around their songs. Altogether, it holds up surprisingly well.

Current 93 - Swastikas For Noddy / Crooked Crosses For The Nodding God 2xLP (The Spheres)

Our Review:

Here is the necessary reissue of Current 93's masterpieces Swastikas For Noddy and Crooked Crosses For The Nodding God - two albums that solidified the apocalyptic folk songwriting for David Tibet and company. Tibet's sergeant-at-arms for these sessions was Douglas P of Death In June with the ghostly presence of Steven Stapleton felt through sporadically through the mix; and a rather large cast of characters involved in making what are minimal neofolk albums. Swastikas For Noddy at the time of release in 1988 was quipped as "the pop album" for Current 93. Compared to the Crowleyian chants and nightmarish bricolage of Nature Unveiled and Dogs Blood , this would certainly ring true; but in the light of the entire C93 oeuvre, Swastikas For Nodd is a feral scrabbling of the more baroque orchestrations and arrangements that Tibet would coax out of his musical troupe. Noddy is a British children's character from the mid-century and in the fluid pantheon of godheads that Tibet worked into his cryptic poetry and revelations, Noddy had become a semi-deity which he figured into a canon of his own making alongside Christ, Crowley and Lucifer. It's an absurd declaration; and the whimsy that Current 93 can muster in such jaunty numbers as "Beau Soleil" and "Hey Ho The Noddy Oh" acquire a sinister irony to them. Current 93 offers their version of "Oh Coal Black Smith" which had been a British folk staple dating back to the early 19th Century under the title "The Two Magicians", matching Current 93's then infatuation of Comus with the wild-eyed psych-folk mania and urgent, two-note acoustic guitar strum alongside Tibet's feral vocals.

Crooked Crosses For The Nodding God is an album that originally came out in 1989 on Stapleton's United Dairies, as remixed, restructured and rerecorded versions of many of the songs that went into Swastikas For Noddy. These versions are much more skewed, demented and psychedelic, showing much more of Stapleton's penchant for dislocating the minimal folk arrangements and singsong tunes with warped effects, drones, cloak and dagger. Included here is a version of Current 93's "Looney Runes" with its glam-goth guitar riff and early Alice Cooper vibe, amidst Tibet's freakish chanting. It makes perfect sense to bind these two albums together, with the latter as the lysergic mind-fuck version of the former.

Eliane Radigue - Opus 17 2xLP (Alga Marghen)

Our Review:

The French minimalist Eliane Radigue studied electro-acoustic composition, beginning in the late '50s under the tutelage of Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry. By the end of the next decade, her research lead her to investigate the possibilities of electric feedback as a principle source material in composition. Opus 17 marked the final composition in her feedback studies, one that she had finished prior to a year-long tenure in New York in 1970. Then and there, she met Rhys Chatham who cited this piece in particular as the touchstone for him to begin his storied career of quicksilver minimalism through sheer volume and sonic density. In the liner notes, Chatham recalls: "One day, while gossiping, she invited me to her loft, which was just on the corner. She had me listen to a piece composed in France; the piece called Opus 17. What I heard changed to course of my life as a composer. That piece, that impressive source of inspiration, gave the impression of being in a grand cathedral, both for the sensation of immensity of being in such a large cathedral, as for the effect of being so close to God."

It should be noted that Radigue was about to embark on a series of works that would stand as the most recognizable of her career, notably, the Adnos trilogy. Through all of the work in the '70s, Radigue employed the ARP synthesizer as the instrument, slowly rotating with graceful steeliness through layered tone and frequency. Many of these same compositional techniques are at work in Opus 17, made all the more malleable through the unpredictability of feedback. Hypnotic yet slightly disquieting, Radigue's Opus 17 glides upon nuanced patterns that evolve, transform and mutate very slowly upon her time suspension compositions, dappled with a grizzled energy. The work predates the equally iconic glassine feedback works of Arcane Device in the late '80s and Toshimaru Nakamura's no input mixer techniques from the late '90s, though was never published until Alga Marghen resurrected the material. Not just a necessary historical document, Opus 17 is a brilliant piece of electronic music.

Cube - My Cube LP (Left Hand Path)

Our Review:

Even before the label had broke ground with their first release, San Francisco's own Left Hand Path earned a feature in The Wire. The article highlighted their activities in hosting the infamous Surface Tension underground parties of jet-black techno and blistered EBM, and it also touched on the work of Cube, the pseudonym for Oakland's Adam Keith who received the honor for that first release on Left Hand Path. All of this is certainly a testament to Left Hand Path's Nihar Bhatt and Chris Zaldua in their steadfast dedication to Surface Tension, which has jumped from venue to venue in San Francisco as so many venues have been closed down. Just as Surface Tension celebrates a caustic marriage of techno, noise, minimal-wave and industrial rhythms, Cube's pressurized synth-punk is a thrilling recombinant of style. Strange lo-fi tape ruminations flicker in the throbbing sequences and chiseled rhythms, giving the aura of something that may have been uncovered from the vaults of early Severed Heads or Chris Watson-era Cabaret Voltaire crossed with some the tactile grit of Le Syndicat. The album is brimming with discordantly angular tracks, displayed on the throttled march of "Emblem" and the lurchingly elephantine "Safe World." The hypnotic, infectuous "Auto / Composite Face" is a downright killer track of reductive, noise-encrusted techno that wouldn't be out of place on Hospital alongside Exotico Continent and Vatican Shadow. Cube's aggregated electronics fit very nicely alongside the contemporary cadre of West Coast noisenik / techno chimeras (e.g. Oil Thief, LFA, Bonus Beast, Pure Ground, Inhalt, etc.). A great debut release from what has already proven to be a noble ambassador of San Francisco's current electronic music scene.

Caretaker - Everywhere At The End Of Time LP (History Always Favours The Winners)

Our Review:

The Caretaker (aka Leyland Kirby) continues to vamp as the ghost-bartender in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining through his eerie appropriation of maudlin waltzes bathed in reverb. All of The Caretaker LPs maintain a consistent aestheticized hauntology of an unremembered past and forgotten memories through his effective simplicity of playing scratchy shellac 78s through some effects. But with the release of Everywhere At The End Of Time, Kirby may be signaling the termination of his work as The Caretaker. This album marks the first of a six album series of ambient impressions on the multiple stages of early onset dementia. In his painterly taxonomy of mental / psychic / physical disintegration, Kirby intends to rotate through his collection of 78s, further blurring their edges and erasing chunks of sound throughout this three year song-cycle. On Everywhere At The End Of Time, the sounds from those 78s are wholly entact, occasionally looped and always soaked in his reverb pedals / VST patches. Kirby has already demonstrated the efficacy of these aesthetic practices; but like Basinski interweaving The Disintegration Loops with the horrors of 9/11, Kirby's contextualization shifts the material beyond the sentimental and into the tragic.

Circuit Des Yeux - Overdue LP (Ba Da Bing)

Our Review:

Overdue is probably our favorite album of brooding gothic balladry from Ms. Haley Fohr, aka Circuit Des Yeux. This album finds Fohr weaving lushly ominous landscapes of gloomy psychedelic folk and hushed minimalism. The opening track, "Lithonia," takes a striking stance, showing Zola Jesus just how it's done, at least when it comes to fusing symphonic strings with gothic songcraft. Fohr's voice is way up in the front – deep and lustrous, rich and nuanced – while swirling around these sinister strings which blossom from dramatic chamber music backdrop into a crescendo of Bernard Herrmann stabbings "Lithonia" had us wishing for an all orchestral / symphonic record from her. Although the rest of Overdue returns the Circuit Des Yeux of old – more stripped down and folky, mostly just guitar and vocals – but no less effective. The production on this record is fantastic – from the spare dubbed out apocalyptic folk of "Acarina" – with some truly anguished vocals, lots of tripped out effects, and loads of space – to the feral distorted blown out guitar heavy "I Am" that sounds like a meaner, more unhinged PJ Harvey. The FX heavy minimal dream folk of "My Name Is Rune" is replete with backwards tape loops, and woozy buried melodies. The sprawling nearly 9 minute closer, "Helen, You Bitch," swallows a rumbling drone in clouds of noise, crumbling guitar buzz and knuckle dragging tribal drumming. It makes for killer, near metallic, churning noise-psych-dirge finale.

Angel - 2017 LP (Faro)

Our Review:

2017 is the new dispatch from Adam Stonehouse, last heard from via The Hospitals' epic Hairdryer Peace (2008), an album that served as the last chapter for the band he helmed through much of the decade. With Angel, Stonehouse takes the treated, off-center production approach of Hairdryer Peace for a far-left turn, forging a collision between spiraling new age sounds and suspiciously sleazy 1980s glam rock. Augmenting all of this with forays toward severe dub and sample splicing, Angel also recalls the UK DIY excursions of the It's War Boys orbit and roster. Disparate influences aside, Angel is a work conjured and captured entirely via Stonehouse's inimitable vision, one of the most distinct and unruly out there today. With that, 2017 is a wholly unique, righteously complex record and one of this year's most puzzling and rewarding listens.

Adelbert Von Deyen - Sternzeit LP (Bureau B)

Our Review:

One of the more obscure names of the Berlin School, yet one of the more prolific kosmiche synth-wizards on the Sky label, it's surprising that it has taken this long for Adelbart Von Deyen's early recordings to be reissued. His first album Sternzeit (German for "stardate") released in 1978 seems right out of the Klaus Schultze / Tangerine Dream playbook: long-form sci-fi themed electronic journeys tinged with atmospheric longing and a vague glimmer of hope. Comprised of two sidelong tracks, the title piece a 25-minute opus of dark alien drones and John Carpenter-ish horror movie synthscapes counteracts the more airier and rhythmically spacey 3-part suite "Per Aspera Ad Astra."

Terry Allen & The Panhandle Mystery Band - Pedal Steal + Four Corners LP+3CD (Paradise Of Bachelors)

Our Review:

Terry Allen's curriculum vitae is enough to make even the most accomplished of artists' stop and take note. He's received a Guggenheim Fellowship and multiple NEA grants, taught art at UC Berkeley, among other institutions, has works in the collections of the New York MoMA, the Met, the SF MoMA, publicly funded installations in San Francisco, Kansas City (the controversial sculpture entitled Modern Communication), and the list goes on. This is all before even mentioning what he's perhaps best known for, his music career, which has spanned a dozen albums and 40+ years - kicked off by a 1965 performance on the legendary show Shindig! and most notably represented by his cult classic '70s country singer-songwriter albums Juarez, and Lubbock (on everything). Raised in Lubbock, TX, the son of a pianist and a former professional baseball player who, during Allen's childhood, ran a nightclub that hosted boxing and wrestling matches along with Ray Charles, Little Richard, and Elvis concerts. All of which is to say, this is a man who has lived a life, and seen his fair share of the world, especially the harsh, dry, desolate world that is West Texas.

That experience is palpable in his 1985 piece Pedal Steel, a work commissioned by the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, a post-modern company based out of San Francisco. Combining original songs, field recordings, and narration - described aptly by Paradise of Bachelors as "country-concrète sound collage" - Pedal Steel is unlike anything else in Allen's catalog; Navajo chants descend into pedal steel freak-outs, big rigs and crickets and thunder and a honky-tonk saxophone all underscore the haunting story, loosely based on the life of the Texas/New Mexico steel player, Wayne Gailey. Impeccably produced by Allen, this is arguably his finest work, and this set is the first ever vinyl release.

Also included in this new Paradise of Bachelors set are 3 CDs collecting his Four Corners - a series of 4 radio plays by Allen and his wife, Jo Harvey Allen, an accomplished artist in her own right, originally broadcast on NPR in the late '80s and early '90s - and a full-color booklet featuring an essay on the work, images of Allen's visual art, and the full scripts of all 5 pieces. A singular piece of work from an artist who embodies Americana in the fullest sense of the word; these are stories that transcend their populist origins, as Allen himself says in Pedal Steel, there's "a lot of ghosts" here.

Tashi Wada - FRKWYS Vol. 14: Nue LP (RVNG Intl.)

Our Review:

For much of the last decade, RVNG Intl.'s FRKWYS series has paired contemporary leftfield artists with their musical forebears, spurring first-time yet strongly intuitive collaborations. With Nue, Tashi Wada's ensemble – featuring his father, the famed sound artist Yoshi Wada – makes a strong play for the series's strongest and most engrossing title yet.

With titles referencing the geologic and the ritualistic – "Aubade," "Litany," "Niagara," "Fanfare" – the tracks on Nue amass and shed layers of drone and overtone, shades of melody and sheets of reverberating space. The pieces assemble themselves around the inexorable pull of Yoshi Wada's bagpipes, their reedy, earthen blare both tempered and enriched by quizzical, ascending keyboard phrases, undulating clouds of percussion, queasy electrical thrum, and wordless vocals. Wada's group has created a suite of music with the heft and depth of dub, densely detailed with fluttering blurs of string and drone, glissandi like shrieking tendrils of sound as they escape upward. And where are those klaxons coming from?

Wada's ensemble swells and heaves and rests with a mesmerizing and sublime organicity and sense of mood. Much of Nue is a deeply unnerving listen, charting territory where curiosity curdles to dread, no less claustrophobic for all of its blasted space. As with its closest analogs – Tony Conrad, Phill Niblock, Ellen Arkbro – this is music best heard, and felt, loud.

Skinny Puppy - Bites LP (Nettwerk)

Our Review:

Bites marked the first full-length for Skinny Puppy, originally released on Nettwerk in 1985. It's a swaggering collection of electro-industrial programming and their signature horror-laden iconography. The band was formed a few years later by principle technician cEvin Key and Nivek Ogre, bastardized pseudonyms for two Canadian who were both graced with the first name of Kevin. This early incarnation of the band found them working alongside Bill Leeb, who would shortly found Front Line Assembly. Dave Ogilvie (no relation to Kevin "Nivek Ogre" Ogilvie) also began a long-term production relationship with the band, helping refine and expand their already caustic electronic sound. On Bites, Skinny Puppy followed the gloomy, aggressive sequencing of the earlier Remissions EP through bolstered propulsive rhythms. Both "Assimilate" and "Dead Lines" laid the groundwork for countless industrial dance projects to augment a streamlined techno rhythm with nervous-twitch sequencing and shards of synth-noise. Yet the remainder of the album shifts toward slower-paced dirges and more experimental sequencing structures. The case could be made that Skinny Puppy's "Icebreaker" is a distant response to SPK's "Despair" as both lumber with mutant monstrosities and eerie elliptical patterning; and "Basement" entirely eschews Orge's vocals for a Numanoid rhythm cloaked in a desolate synth drone and vampire-movie samples. This pressing restores Bites to its original track listing and design.

Einsturzende Neubauten - Kollaps LP (Potomak)

Our Review:

Kollaps. The first album from Einsturzende Neubauten, released back in 1981, found the band as a trio with the wild-throated frontman Blixa Bargeld buttressed by the anarcho-rhythmicists N.U. Unruh and F.M. Einheit. The band photo of Neubauten on Kollaps is quite telling, as a it parodies Pink Floyd's grand collection of instruments that emblazoned the back cover of Ummagumma. Instead of the marching band sized collection of drums and mallets, there's an assortment of hammers, pipes, a couple of drills, a cheap looking synth, an ax (yeah, there is a guitar, but there's also an ax!) and sheet metal twisted in the shape of drumheads. These are the instruments that Neubauten uses in the hyper-primitive, industrial-punk tracks found on Kollaps. Neubauten's amplified junkyard was a clearly a bold statement of DIY primitivism, this trio was not without their structural prowess, crafting anthemic blasts out of their rhythmic churns, bristling with sparkplug noise and rabid distortion. "Tanz Debil" is curiously catchy in its amplified shopping cart bashing which Unruh & Einheit hammer out to accompany the demon-then-zombie vocal delivery from Blixa Bargeld. The title track is a 8 minute monochord mantra, and the band actually pulls off an instrumental cover of Serge Gainsbourg's "Je T'Aime." Very rough around the edges, but there is a serious-minded, infernal poetry of pain, anger, and rage focused through these scrap metal arrangements. A tremendous record.

Various - Pomegranates 2xLP (Finders Keepers)

Our Review:

Pomegranates is an amazing compilation of "Persian pop, funk, and psych of the 60s and 70s" compiled by a pair of Iranian-American music lovers delving into the pop culture past of their parents' generation, prior to the fall of the Shah, an era of rapid Westernization, economic stratification, and eventual sociopolitical upheaval. Looking back with bittersweet nostalgia, enthusiasm, and curiosity, they've put together a dazzling array of music that's usually quite groovy, also often melancholic, and sometimes subversive. Several tracks are considered classics, some are total obscurities (same to us!), all are irresistible. It's a colorful hybrid of East and West, of Persian musical traditions (already a melting pot of international influences) and electric youth energy. You'll hear strains of Western psych-pop, James Brown funk, Indian raga, Gypsy flamenco, Turkish folk and other "exotic" Middle Eastern motifs.

The highlights include Googoosh's "Talagh", which sets her sweet voice soaring over an insidiously slinky grooves, pulsating with sinister fuzz-funk energy under flourishes of cinematic strings. She's got a couple more tracks on here, as befits her status as one of Iran's top pop stars of the day, a true sensation. If you like Turkey's Selda, you'll like what you'll hear here from Googoosh and this disc's other female vocalists. We also should note the zinging sitar funk of Abbass Mehrpouya's "Soul Raga", definitely another standout (it also appears on the full-length Mehrpouya reissue we raved about recently). But we haven't scratched the surface, the tracks by the other artists here, including Parva, Zia, Soli, Sima Bina, Ramesh, Noosh Afarin, Kourosh Yaghmaie, and others, are all awesome too, varying from groovy dancefloor workouts to aching love songs, sometimes both in one. Lots to enjoy, dive in!!

Ekin Fil - Ghosts Inside LP (Helen Scarsdale Agency)

Our Review:

Ekin Fil is the acclaimed drone-pop chanteuse working with the sparest of materials in her ethereal, shoegaze deconstructions. Her sound developed out of a healthy obsession with Cranes, Cocteau Twins, Slowdive and many other bands that she discovered in the tattered back issues of NME and the home-dubbed tapes that were passed around when she was growing up in Turkey. Upon a fortuitous invitation to perform alongside Grouper in Istanbul in the late oughts, Ekin Fil (nee Ekin Üzeltüzenci) began producing a series of hidden gems in the drone-rock underworld through releases on Root Strata, Students Of Decay, Bathetic and No Kings. Ghosts Inside continues to find Ekin coaxing somber melodies out of echo, shadow and whisper, even as she expands her arrangements to include piano and keyboards to accompany the guitar, voice and array of pedals that had been front and central on her previous recordings.

Ghosts Inside stands as her most arresting recordings to date, written during a period of personal despair with an oblique poetry of sadness cascading through the songs. It's an introspective sound, completely turned in on itself and tuning out the socio-political tumult of her native home in Istanbul. In confronting psychic distress, heartache and depression, Ekin Fil blocks out the rest of the world to concentrate on the immediate issues of human relationships and their many complications. Allusions to catharsis flicker through the sullen, narcotized beauty of Ghosts Inside, updating the mood found on those classic 4AD albums of the '80s (i.e. Garlands, It'll End In Tears, Lonely Is An Eyesore, etc.) orbiting the spheres of Grouper, lovesliescrushing and Stars Of The Lid.

Terry Allen - Juarez LP (Paradise Of Bachelors)

Our Review:

Juarez is legendary Texan artist and musician Terry Allen's debut recording from 1975. A spare and violently devastating song-cycle that took the outlaw country of Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard and merged it into the more nuanced singer-songwriter territory of Randy Newman, Neil Young and Leonard Cohen. A master story-teller, Allen just accompanied by piano and guitar essentially creates the alt-country genre or what would later be known as "Americana," through this story of a young couple on a crime-spree road trip trough the American Southwest and its borderlands. Reissued for the first time on vinyl with the original intended art work. A successful contemporary painter and sculptor, Allen's music and art, while being highly influential on both counts, have often been perceived as parallel practices and not always seen as a whole package. This Paradise of Bachlors reissue seeks to remedy that perception and rightly so. Allen is a keen observer and arch humorist into the delicate but absurd psyche of everyday people.

Raymond Scott - Manhattan Research Inc. 3xLP (Music On Vinyl)

Our Review:

The academic eggheads that congregate around the musical institutions of the globe have from time to time tried to bring elements of whimsical pop to the sonic weirdness of musique concrete and the electronic oscillators that have continued to gyrate since the 60s. For the most part, the experiments meshing pop & academic New Music have been pretty lame, but not those of Raymond Scott. The Manhattan Research Inc is a double cd which collects the "new plastic sounds and electronic abstractions" from Scott's idiosyncratic work from the 50's & 60's, which included space-age ditties for commercials and oddball electronic noodling. As weird as the 60's space electronics from Dick Hyman / Command Records, yet just as complex as Tod Dockstader or Vladimir Ussachevsky, but with Scott's previous work with Carl Stalling scoring cartoons, these recordings retain a solid grasp on the intrinsically catchy pop jingle. Top it all off with commercial voice-overs for detergent and chewing gum for a wonderful collection of electronic esoterica. It should also be noted that, if you didn't know any better, on first listen, there's a good chance you would mistake this for a Tape Beatles or Negativland record!

Puce Mary - The Spiral LP (Posh Isolation)

Our Review:

Her real name is Frederikke Hoffmeier; and she's a striking Dane who hails from the post-punk / art-noise collective Posh Isolation, which may be known best outside of Copenhagen through the retro charms of Lust For Youth and the punk snarl of Iceage. There are plenty of charms to the noise of Puce Mary, with those charms being nekromantically violent, libidinally impure and just fucking sick. The historical thread of Puce Mary's work traces all the way back to the true crime litanies of Throbbing Gristle's "Very Friendly" and "Hamburger Lady" cast upon bleak arrangements of nauseating electronics. There are also plenty of nods to the equally seminal works of SPK, Brighter Death Now, Premature Ejaculation, and Wolf Eyes; but all of most every major figure and visionary author of power electronics is a dude. Puce Mary / Hoffmeier represents one of the few great female artists wholly operating within this insular aesthetic.

The Spiral is a surgical album that applies the psychoacoustic investigations that John Duncan and Zbigniew Karkowski plumbed, fusing those to the industrial sermons barked by Consumer Electronics and Whitehouse, honed through a craftsmanship for perversity and transgression. The pure, piercing electronics superimpose into scalding walls of glassine noise and psychic negation amidst thrashes of machined lumbering rhythm and Puce Mary's yelped vocals cast as self-hypnotized chants in monotone through piles of effects that may obfuscate the content but none of the existential horror. One of the top contenders for experimental album of the year 2016.