Roy Montgomery - R M H Q: Headquarters 4xLP (Grapefruit)

Our Review:

Much of Roy Montgomery's music hangs suspended between the familiar and its estrangement, evocatively inhabiting the tension between rational thought and acute intuition. Montgomery returns with a tremendous 4LP set brimming with all-new recordings, collectively titled R M H Q: Headquarters, each record bearing a subtitle that reflects, or refracts, its content. The set's middle two discs work as interruptions or dilations of genre – Darkmotif Dancehall is reverb-drenched drum machines and crystalline layers of bled-out guitar, while Bender plays like an extended foray beyond Montgomery's 2012 release Hey Badfinger (the soundtrack for a film that doesn't exist) with tracks such as "Chasing Monica Vitti," "Cocktails With Can" and a pulsing ode to fallen compatriot Peter Gutteridge.

But it's the albums bookending R M H Q which at once channel and poignantly develop the very best of Montgomery's body of work. "Transient Global Amnesia" rounds out R M H Q with some of Montgomery's most affecting instrumental music to date – to wit, set-closer "Weathering Mortality," the capstone of a massive new work compelled by rounds of disaster natural and otherwise. "Tropic of Anodyne," meanwhile, harnesses a fierceness belying its title. The only record of the bunch to feature vocals, its standout track for this reviewer is "You Always Get What You Deserve," a woozy, oblique inversion of the Rolling Stones standby that serves up an acerbic commentary on Montgomery's own career and position in the international underground. Intoning "well, I woke wearing someone else's cliché/There were people staring at me gathered 'round," Montgomery goes on to parry anonymous recriminations ("you so rarely make a sound") and condemnations ("you say I reached my peak some years ago/and I never ran that deep") before rejecting any such baseless arbitration of talent or success and then dropping the hammer: "get back in your cages, my churlish little pets / you cannot live without me, I'm as something ... something ... something as it gets."

As far as this reviewer is concerned, he's right. For over thirty years, Roy Montgomery has fashioned a beautifully deliberate and indispensable body of work. Also deliberate is his hilariously cheeky refusal to predicate just what it is his work is ("something ... something ... something"). To borrow the title of one of his most arresting songs – one recorded, as it happens, in San Francisco – the Roy Montgomery sound suggests something submerged and colorful: familiar components (guitars, effects, sung-spoken vocals) so painstakingly and complexly layered that they take on entirely new shades of meaning and sound. It's tempting to think of Roy Montgomery as the thinking person's guitar hero. But his long (if fairly uncluttered) career offers a gently insistent reminder that too much thought – on the ideas a piece of music is intended to convey, rather than on the means of conveyance itself – comes at the cost of intuition and invention. Or, as he puts it on Tropic of Anodyne's title track: while "over and over the strumming repeats ... a new constellation is just round the bend." There are few starguides as patient and capable as Roy Montgomery; we remain gladly and gratefully under his tutelage.

Sonic Youth - Confusion Is Sex LP (Goofin')

Our Review:

Sonic Youth's 1984 album Confusion Is Sex is a vortex of bad juju and deliberately ugly atonality. The album stands both as a necessary defensive position upon confronting the bleakness of New York's ills at the time and as the emergent laboratory of avant-guitar experiments that would run through the Sonic Youth history. In shoving screwdrivers and drumsticks between the strings of guitars and bass, Sonic Youth crafted songs on Confusion Is Sex that were deliberately percussive and atonal, furthering and exaggerating the ideas that had come out those early Glenn Branca guitar-army symphonies (in which SY's Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo were early members). A rasping, acrid interplay of banged and bludgeoned instruments matches the barked monotone delivery from Moore and Kim Gordon, who empty themselves through the nihilist tone poems of "(She's In A) Bad Mood" and "Shaking Hell" only to crash through a manic cover of The Stooges "I Wanna Be A Dog" with an unhinged giddiness of self-immolation. Given how dissonant and percussive Sonic Youth were during their earliest incarnation, it's interesting that the band was rotating through drummers at such a rapid clip. Sonic Youth dropped Richard Edson after the eponymous debut, and for this recording they had No Wave stalwart Jim Sclavunos (of most all of Lydia Lunch's '70s bands) and Bob Bert alternating behind the drum kit. Perhaps this destabilization of the rhythm section played into Sonic Youth's cauldron of bracingly discordant revelry that made Confusion Is Sex so much a pivotal record in the history of the Lower East Side noise-rock bands. In all of the primitive punk demolition and uncontrolled pummel, Confusion Is Sex remains one of Sonic Youth's most confrontational recordings. Thurston has maintained that this is one of his favorite Sonic Youth records.

Murmer - Songs For Forgetting LP (Gruenrekorder)

Our Review:

The American ex-pat Patrick McGinley (aka Murmer) has now taken up residence in a rural village in Estonia after many years of wanderings and explorations. To this day, he continues to roam any and all environments, collecting field recordings and his own interventions with a particular place. It has been almost five years since his last solo work, but McGinley remains a steadfast champion the field recording within composition through his weekly Framework radio series, broadcast on Resonance FM and beyond through numerous radio and online outlets. Songs For Forgetting highlights McGinley's talents in molding and shaping tone and subtle melody from deep within the fundamental sounds of a particular environmental sound. At the same time, he'll interject actual instrumentation. The playful clatter of McGinley tinkering with a zither ringing in the vein of Harry Partch set in motion against a humid chorus of cicadas and spellbinding dronescaping. Witness the psalter-like halo blossoms on the second half of the record, where we find McGinley bowing a Soviet era antenna mounted at the top of an near-space observational telescope. The resulting harmonics and pastorally minimalist drones are drop-dead gorgeous, as richly sonorous as anything Pauline Oliveros and Charlemagne Palestine would compose through more conventional means. Songs For Forgetting manifests into a beautiful record, packaged in an suitably rough-hewn, embossed sleeve that was fabricated at the Rapina Paper Factory in southeast Estonia. McGinley has included considerable notes and ephemera, turning this into an wondrous objet d'art.

Oren Ambarchi - Hubris LP (Editions Mego)

Our Review:

The list of accompanists for Oren Ambarchi's Hubris amounts to a dauntingly large ensemble from lands far and wide. In alphabetical order, his players include Crys Cole, Mark Fell, Will Guthrie, Arto Lindsay, Jim O'Rourke, Konrad Sprenger, Joe Talia, Ricardo Villalobos and Keith Fullerton Whitman. Yeah, a who's-who of the avant-garde from the past four decades. All of these variables would lead a lesser composer into a muddle of too many divergent ideas from too many egos. Not so for The Australian avant-guitarist Ambarchi who delivers a slithering, brilliant album of polyrhythmic tangles and engineered precision. Ambarchi pursued a similar line of compositional thought on his 2014 Quixotic with his weighty ensemble of multi-national musicians, producing an elegant recapitulation of Krautrock hypno-groove.

Hubris synchronizes percolated electronics and tightly-woven guitar ellipses to muscular monophunk grooves. Ambarchi is unafraid to pronounce his influences of Can, E2-E4 and Gunter Schickert. He even slyly states that the Wang Chung soundtrack to Live And Die In L.A. also factored into the construction of Hubris. He ain't lying about Wang Chung, as the shadows through the bamboo and wicker latticework of Wang Chung's romantic machismo can be heard through Ambarchi's work, composed without a lick of irony and with considerable panache. All of this spirals into two long-form, organically groovy tracks, with a brief acoustic ditty between Ambarchi and O'Rourke to break the spell. It makes for one hell of a great record.

Omar Souleyman - Haflat Gharbia: The Western Concerts 2xLP (Sublime Frequencies)

Our Review:

We're not sure how a live Omar Souleyman record differs from any of his other records, which were all essentially recorded live. But these shows are distinctive for one reason in particular - they all took place in the West, in front of audiences outside of the Middle East, who most likely had never seen anything like it. And we were lucky enough to see Souleyman perform here in San Francisco, and we were blown away. The sound was incredible - that tangled Eastern psychedelic sound which is already so propulsive and rhythmic and mesmerizing. To see a whole sweaty throng of SF hipsters, punks and metalheads losing their shit, and dancing wildly to these weird and wonderful sounds, it was pretty inspiring. We couldn't help but wonder how Souleyman felt, performing in these big dance clubs, maybe it just seemed strange to us, cuz really we can't imagine any crowd, no matter how big or small resisting these incredible grooves. So here are a handful of live performances, from America, Australia, Germany, Spain, Belgium, the UK and Denmark, all of the tracks here finding Souleyman in fine form, the music lively and wildly chaotic, psychedelic and groovy. One thing this live record does gives us the chance to focus on is Souleyman's keyboardist / percussionist, Rizan Sa'id, who when we saw Souleyman, almost stole the show. Sure, Souleyman was the master of ceremonies, pacing the stage, clapping and singing, hyping the crowd. But off to the side was Sa'id, going totally nuts on the keyboard and providing all of the music. He's a veritable one man band, playing wild melodies, looping rhythms, triggering big rib-cage rattling beats. The best part was that all of those flurries of Middle Eastern percussion, those are actually being played live, his hands a blur over the keyboard's drum pads. We literally could not take our eyes off him. On these tracks, those two are joined by an electric saz player, who adds another glorious layer of psychedelic buzz, and as you might imagine, this is incredible, and fantastic and totally and utterly transcendent. Fans will want this for sure, and it's definitely a perfect introduction to Souleyman's spiritual sonic magic, and by all means, if you get the chance to see this stuff live, you won't be sorry.

Hailu Mergia & His Classical Instrument - Shemonmuanaye 2xLP (Awesome Tapes From Africa)

Our Review:

Among Ethiopian Jazz aficionados, Hailu Mergia may not have as big of a name as Mulutu Astatke or Mahmoud Ahmed, but this 1985 recording of traditional Ethiopian jazz pieces played on analog synth, piano and accordion could have easily been part of the great Ethiopiques series. Mergia cut his teeth with The Walliaa Band, the legendary group founded by Mulatu Astake, and has backed many of Ethiopia's greatest bandleaders (the band still performs to this day at the Addis Ababa Hilton). But it's this solo excursion, played in true one-man-band style that takes the sensual loping rhythms of Ethio-jazz into realms so warm and personal and utterly unique. Recommended!

HTRK - Work (Work, Work) LP (Ghostly International)

Our Review:

It's a bleak world for HTRK, as tragedy and death has surrounded this outfit which has only been around for a couple of years. In 2010, the band's bassist Sean Stewart passed away unexpectedly and the producer of their haunted album Marry Me Tonight, Rowland S. Howard, died of cancer a year earlier. All of these elements make the connection to The Birthday Party almost inevitable, especially given their historical mirroring in relocation from Melbourne to Berlin and the manifestation of the id through a very raw sound. But where The Birthday Party was an expression of violence, HTRK are in constant search of desire, occasionally finding it only to have it frustratingly fizzle out before anything ecstatic can be achieved. As a result, HTRK's sensual bleariness is in an emotional feedback loop that never can spiral beyond the longing for sex, love, a relationship, etc. without anything ever attained. HTRK's existential portraits of being trapped by one's own desires are in direct opposition to the hedonism found in most electronica. Here on Work (Work, Work), the band parallels some of the horror-affected reverberation of the flash-in-the-pan Witch House crowd, but instead of drawing on unremembered memories of the forgotten '80s, HTRK has profound pain to draw upon ... and they want their audience to feel that too.

HTRK had been shifting their sound even before Stewart's death – with a greater reliance on electronics and subharmonic tones girding the spindly guitar work from Nigel Yang and the self-composed breathiness of Jonnine Standish. The band was moving away from the rock trio and towards a miasma of voice, guitar, bass and electronics with boundaries between these sounds far more permeable. The closest references to HTRK's sound would be Ike Yard and Dome, although HTRK are much more interested in building tension with their teasing melodies through droning electronics. The first track on the album features a weird collage that Stewart had made of late nite TV sex ads in Berlin amidst slow-motion sighs caught in a half-melodic drone and crawling drum machine pulse. "Eat Yr Heart" ramps a quarter-speed Giorgio Moroder sequence above heroin-paced rhythm with Jonnine crooning a sultry melody counterpointed by breathy exhalations. Sexually charged yes, but more of a downward spiral into dejection rather than release. "Poison" is more in keeping with the bass and guitar structures found on Marry Me Tonight with Sean Stewart's bass clearly present next to the twilight flickering drone-riffs from Yang. "Body Double" overhauls Suicide's classic sound of metallic synth/drum interplay with undulating melodies that stretch into a magnificent coda of cascading melancholy for what amounts to a masterful album. Highly recommended.

Joanna Brouk - Hearing Music 2xLP (Numero Group)

Our Review:

Third in The Numero Group's archival series of obscure California modernist new age composers following the incredible Iasos and Jordan De La Sierra releases, comes this breathtaking anthology of works from Robert Ashley and Terry Riley protege Joanna Brouk. Hearing Music collects little heard recordings from this Mills College Center for Contemporary Music graduate who was inspired by the frequencies of sound occurring in nature. Approaching sound composition more as a conduit than a willful subjection of ideas, Brouk used recordings of nature, especially of bees and crickets, slowing them down and finding the underlying drones from which to build long-form evocative pieces involving piano, flute, horns, gongs and voice. Brouk found that the sustained drone had a universal connection from sounds of nature to chanting of monks to the overtones heard on a piano, and by just listening to the frequencies of a tone, she could channel the right space and atmosphere for what the composition would end up becoming. Hearing Music is a brilliant and beautiful introduction into the reclusive sound world of a truly remarkable composer.

Grouper - Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill LP (Kranky)

Our Review:

Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill opens with an entirely characteristic yet coy swell of effected elemental smear, crumbling delicately yet forcefully, until giving way to what is the coy part – Liz Harris' most structured and least opaque album. As opposed to the rich swaths of drone that up until now defined her sound, Harris has shifted from the abstract towards a more distinct and figurative sound. True to the title, the record unfolds like a sort of mysterious and morbid fairytale, innocent in its elegant melodies yet creepy in its more droning, sublime interludes. For the most part, her guitar playing is laid bare, removed from the dense fog of effects that typically occlude them. And what we discover is actually plenty of clean guitar articulation though the aura of her previous echoplex heavy approach remains. At times, she reverts back to the gorgeous icy crunchy string attack of some previous efforts. With so much space liberated in the absence of drones, we also get to hear her stunning voice. Furthermore, the occasional audible lyric creeps to the surface, one standout fragment being "Love Is Enormous," a somewhat shockingly affirmative sentiment from an otherwise darkly mysterious and abstract persona. From start to finish Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill lulls you into its graceful murmurings and hypnotic thrumming. An exquisite addition to an already compelling discography. Recommended.

Group Doueh - Zayna Jumma LP (Sublime Frequencies)

Our Review:

Another record from this incredible Saharan outfit, crafting their own wild guitar driven African folk. The previous recordings are rhythmic and percussive - all very hypnotic and mesmerizing, trancelike for sure, with some incredible vocalizing, soulful and emotional. It wound into some of the most jubilant, energetic, emotional and original music we've ever heard.

Our first impulse this time around was to say that Zayna Jumma was simply more of the same. In fact, the sound has definitely changed, due in no small part to what seems to be an expanded lineup. The elder Doueh has enlisted his next oldest sons, on synth and drum kit, and it's really the drums that are the big difference. "Super rocking" might just be the best way to describe the whole record. The drums are powerful and ever present, and the guitars remain impossibly wild, wooly and wonderful, drenched in effects, wah and flanger, making the notes and riffs twist into fantastic new shapes. The keyboards add all sorts of texture, and the trio of female backup singers adds even more oomph, with choruses and call and response vocal harmonies that are so rich and lush. There are a couple tracks that stand out, where the band set aside their new rocking-ness. Instead, they unfurl gorgeous hazily psychedelic expanses of guitar buzz, sounding more like a sitar. The melodies tangled amidst the percussive deep resonant pulse, and the vocals wail passionately way down in the mix. Here it's about the crazy intricate dense guitar playing, which is incredible, so hypnotic and utterly mesmerizing. The record finishes off with a lengthy jam that is definitely another of our favorites, sounding a bit more laid back than the rest of the record and more warm and washed out. The guitars unfurling gorgeous little flurries of notes. The rhythms and main riff locked tight so that it almost sounds looped and at times like the record must be skipping. Those moments eventually blossom into synth laden, softly droney stretches of strummy folk and sun dappled Afro-pop bliss, dreamy and so divine. Utterly fantastic.

Jack Rose - s/t LP (Three Lobed)

Our Review:

By now, Mr. Jack Rose should need no introduction. Numerous releases on Eclipse, VHF, Tequila Sunrise, tons of amazing shows, every performance totally spellbinding, with a repertoire that runs the gamut from classic bluegrass to drone drenched ragas to neo-Appalachia and probably to some styles of playing he just made up. In fact Rose was seemingly the first to not just ape the music and style of John Fahey, instead choosing to create his own sound and style, due in no small part we'd guess, to his continuing membership in drone-raga ensemble Pelt and that raga vibe most certainly informs all of his playing, which just might explain why we find Rose so much more interesting than many of his contemporaries.

This record collects a handful of studio recordings from 2005, featuring Rose exploring the slide guitar, and as always, it's positively divine. From twangy countrified bluegrass breakdowns, to dense tangles of elaborate finger picking, his slide so slippery and fluid, totally emotional and moving, every song so complex and technical, but at the same time so goddamn simple and beautiful. The highlight would have to be the 12+ minute "Spirits In The House," with its amazing harmonics over a warm backdrop of buzzing low end overtones. The main melody so completely captivating, shimmery and wavery, sounding very Eastern and very much like a sitar, the perfect blend of wistful bluegrass melancholia and buzzing Eastern style raga. So gorgeous. And as with pretty much every Rose record, absolutely essential.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Songs Of Remembrance LP (Pre-Echo)

Our Review:

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma has always been a musical chameleon. Aside from loose adjectives like "dreamy" and "ethereal," the aesthetic framework for each of his albums is slippery, although the quality is always topnotch. This would include the expansive avant-shoegazing propositions for his work in Tarentel or the cinematic psychedelia from The Alps or gossamer-crush from his dream-pop distillations in Raum or that Love Is A Stream album he did for Type a while back. Songs Of Remembrance collects half-forgotten / half-dreamt / half-remembered melodies and builds hazy, gauzy fragments of songs, set along the oceanic current of the '80s synth ballad, draped with maudlin electronics and murky guitar smears. The sounds are cinematic and melancholy, and most are fused to primitive drum machine rhythms. Lovely Durutti Column like guitar figures dot hushed dronescapes, which in turn are peppered with strange electronics and bits of glitch, with some of this sounding like an alternate soundtrack to Twin Peaks, check out the brief opening few minutes, with its very eighties sounding, reverb heavy drift, echoey guitars floating above loping programmed rhythms, and laced with mysterious almost 8-bit sounding sonic filigree, and it continues to drift dreamily from there, the sound a woozy sprawl of chiming distant chords, and barely there melodies, minus the strange squelches, it would be downright tranquil and serene, the drum machines swoop back in throughout, and again, each time, we're transported back to some alternate universe eighties, all dark streets and cloud choked skies, dingy all-night dives and late night wandering. The 'songs' here are ultra brief, some barely a minute or two, playing more like a strange compilation of sonic vignettes, musical short stories, Cantu-Ledesma displaying a knack for creating lush atmospheres in a matter of seconds, and then letting them fade into nothingness just as we're getting settled in. It says something that we wish almost every track here kept going and going and going.

Lots of the tracks here have a very M83 feel to them as well, lost in time, faded memories, soundtracky, but seventies art film soundtracky, long Super-8 shots of the landscape rushing by through a train window, of glittering city lights, we find ourselves imagining this music set to the films of Paul Clipson, Cantu's long time collaborator, the sounds here evoking similarly abstract and melancholic visuals. There are some 'noise' pieces too, but even then, it's more soft noise, and usually those segue right back into some reverby eighties drum machine drift.

Songs Of Remembrance seems to reprise the fictional USSR electronica of Oneohtrix Point Never, the unintentionally brilliant moments of hypnogogic-pop from James Ferrara, and of course, the delusional, sunshine-noir aspirations from Ensemble Economique!

Deathprod - Morals And Dogma 2xLP (Smalltown Supersound)

Our Review:

Deathprod is the existentially bleak solo project of Helge Sten, who is also a key member of both Supersilent and Motorpsycho. In 2004, Rune Grammofon published a 4CD box-set compendium of Deathprod's work that was recorded between 1991 and 2000. Housed in an matte black box with a all black artwork and the sparest of text, this anthology presented itself as a semantic void, with nothing but the harrowing orchestrations of controlled noise and brooding atmosphere into Deathprod's oeuvre. This reissue campaign from Smalltown Supersound marks the first time any of these recordings have been on vinyl. Like before with the CD box-set, this too is enshrouded in matte black packaging.

Working with old magnetic tape recorders, hand made delay and sundry other electronic devices, Sten manipulates fragments of sound (e.g. a two note melodic interval or a final orchestral cadence) into brooding dark soundscapes, rich with overtones from feedback and often overlaid with guest performances from fellow Supersilent members. It is the very limitations of the equipment that Sten uses that become the sources for the beautiful timbres he produces: an over-saturated tape input, a primitive sampler that never reproduces the same note the same way twice or the uneven decay from primitive tape delays. Typical are tracks which blossom out from a single cell of an idea: one chord, or one blast of noise. At times Deathprod sounds almost like an attempt at recreating Thomas Koner's soundscapes using the audio palette of Maurizio Bianchi.

Morals And Dogma ranks as his best work through his elegantly desolate dronescapes. On "Dead People's Things," the most sorrowful of melodies is played on a Theremin over a foundation of delicate, scratchy bowing of violin and a deep bass throbbing drone. "Orgone Donor" consists of a slowly shifting chordal drone of whispy violins, harmonium and saw, with each instrument leading and then resolving the chord in turn.

Drinks - Hermits On Holiday LP (Birth)

Our Review:

Drinks sports the angular songwriting one-two punch of Tim Presley (aka White Fence) and the beguiling Welsh chanteuse Cate Le Bon. The result of their collaboration is sheer post-punk perfection. Taking turns on vocals, the interplay between Tim and Cate through these minimal and infectious songs works so well. There is not a wasted note or wasted second on this record. Think of the best parts of Young Marble Giants and Deerhoof coming together, and you might start to get a sense of the vibrant sounds that Drinks create. Art-damaged, punchy and stripped down sounds that ring with an immediacy that is so damn refreshing. Hermits On Holiday also recalls a long and super underrated record that was the only recording by a band named Klang who featured an ex-member of Elastica. If you ever heard that record, No Sound Is Heard, you know the greatness it contained and we were so stoked to finally hear a brand new record that taps into that same sound, and likewise channels early Rough Trade output in all its brilliant post-punk glory. Recommended!

Forests - Dead Species LP (Forests)

Our Review:

We've said it many times before, but the best album discoveries are the ones that come totally out of nowhere. Forests came to us on a tip from a friend, a Taiwanese band with little in the way of press or internet presence, and one minute into the first track we heard and we were hooked. Think Mix-Up-era Cabaret Voltaire, but with the a drummer that falls somewhere between the skeletal pulse of Disappears and the repurposed junk-drumming of Einsturzende Neubauten. A lysergic swirl of strange, effects-laden synths and electronics, dark, brooding post-punk bass lines, hypnotic rhythms, and monotone vocals, all with a kind of outsider approach that makes you wonder if they've even heard the bands they sound like. Quite a welcome departure from their previous incarnation as a more Sebadoh/Pavement style indie rock band, we must say. Weird, awesome, and highly recommended!

Comets On Fire - s/t LP (Comets On Fire)

Our Review:

Psychedelic speed garage punk from Santa Cruz! Comets On Fire fuse the amphetamine energy of High Rise with hyper-distorted vocals and electronic tweakery. The SF/Bay Area has been sprouting lots of intense garage-punk acts lately, most of which (try to) rehash the sound of the MC5 and cop the style of the Stooges (it's hard not to), but what really sets these boys ahead of all the others is the use of noise and effects – thanks to electronics tweak-maestro Noel Harmonson (of Santa Cruz no-wave rascals The Lowdown) on an Echoplex! If you edited out the actual rock songs on here, and just left the noises of their track endings and segues, you could create what would sound like a pretty interesting experimental abstract electronica album. But, with the rock, it's even better. A really fucking excellent debut from outta nowhere!

Bruce Haack - Electric Lucifer LP (Telephone Explosion)

Our Review:

Can you imagine if "Music To Moog By" maestro Gershon Kingsley had dropped acid, joined a commune, got religion, and jammed with the Silver Apples. That might approximate what the unique, wondrous psych-pop "Mooglove" of 1969's The Electric Lucifer sounds like! Well it's about as psychedelic as you can get, a concept album that's futuristic and Biblically ancient at the same time. Haack used an electronic "computer voice" (long before it was cliche) that he named FARAD, as well as regular human vocals, to convey deep Age of Aquarius astrological/philosophical concepts, sometimes in the form of sinister liturgies, at others like playful rhyming lullabies. These Moog-y, moody and groovy compositions feature churchy organ sounds, bleeps and bloops, and rhythmic percolations that wouldn't sound out of place in the Star Wars cantina. There's lugubrious droney passages, mechanical beats, switched-on classical flourishes and musique concrete style sound collage. Very weird yet oh-so-catchy. Highest recommendation. Listen to the love angel, people!

Brian Eno & David Byrne - My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts 2xLP (Nonesuch)

Our Review:

Mixing elements of world, funk, dub and electronic music has for the most part turned out to be a recipe for disaster. All too many have attempted this mix with a glossy shine and a clumsy hand and without fail have produced pretty tepid attempts at cross cultural imagination. From 1979-1980, Brian Eno and David Byrne recorded their take on this fusion, years before it became chic. Of course with just the right kind of careful and talented hands, they were actually able to make those elements come together and create a brand new language. What's so nice about hearing this reissue is how it's both ahead of its time but also so contemporary of the early '80s as well. With moments that bring you back to the bits on early Talking Heads records and with a recording quality so refreshingly raw and primitive. This record was recorded by a large ensemble cast including Bill Laswell who was just then starting his band Material with lots of the same ideas and elements. While not totally related in exact sound, we can totally see how many of today's cross cultural sonic explorers were influenced by this record. There's no doubt these were sounds soaked up by the best hip-hop & electronic producers of the '80s and '90s as well as folks like Animal Collective and Excepeter. Essential.

Can - Delay 1968 LP (Mute/Spoon)

Our Review:

Children Of Alice - s/t LP (Warp)

Our Review:

It's been 6 years since Trish Keenan's shocking untimely death and we have about lost all hope for any posthumous Broadcast release (their various tour-only releases and remixes of other groups have sadly yet to be anthologized). Yet, what we do have finally is this first widely-released foray into a post-Broadcast sound-world made by surviving member and partner James Cargill, former Broadcast keyboardist Roj Stevens and Ghost Box founder Julian House, also of The Focus Group. Like a counterpoint to the group's final release, Broadcast And The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of The Radio Age, Children of Alice channel a mesmerizing sound-world of curious wonder through four labyrinthine tracks. Plundering down the rabbit hole through radio-phonic textures, eldritch mystery and dreamy hypnotic electronics, the effect of this new project is toward a different kind of life-altering endgame than the dark turns and consequences of the previous Broadcast release. Instead, it seeks a mirroring lightness, a ghost chase in the form of bittersweet memories of innocence being brought to life in refracting crystalline hues. A beautiful tribute to one of our most missed fallen treasures.

Broadcast - Work And Non Work LP (Warp)

Our Review:

Work And Non-Work was the first introduction of the group to a larger audience, collecting their first two singles and an ep previously released on the labels Wurlitzer Jukebox and Stereolab's Duophonic imprint between 1995 and 1996. Their songcraft, which would be honed and evolve over their next four albums, arrived nearly fully formed, though they do wear their influences most outwardly on this collection than any other release. Staking a firm spot between Stereolab's retrofuturism and Portishead's emotively sonic trip-hop formalism, while also mining altered-consciousness music from the margins of sixties psychedelia, like United States of America, White Noise and Elephants Memory. In fact, "The World Backwards" is nearly a remake of Elephants Memory's "Old Man Willow," a song most famously heard in the druggy party scene in the movie Midnight Cowboy. But Broadcast never tried to hide their influences always exposing a narrow-trodden path for listeners to find little known treasures from the past. Leading the way for bands like Death and Vanilla, The Sound Carriers and Jane Weaver to carry the torch into the future. A perfect place to start for the uninitiated.

A Winged Victory For The Sullen - s/t LP (Kranky)

Our Review:

Debut release from this duo, featuring Adam Wiltzie of the beloved dronescapers Stars Of The Lid. He's teamed up with composer Dustin O'Halloran, for a suite of songs that doesn't veer to far from recent Stars Of The Lid releases, but focus on the piano as the main instrument, with the duo seeking out large spaces and grand pianos, with which to fully realize their sonic vision.

The opening track, far too humbly titled "We Played Some Open Chords", lets chords on the piano ring out. The natural reverb carries the notes off and lets them gradually fade. The piano is underpinned with some sweetly sorrowful strings, and some mournful horns, all laid atop Wiltzie's masterful and subtle guitar drone shimmer. The two part "Requiem For The Static King" could be an imagined soundtrack, all soaring strings, dramatic melodies, veering into slightly darker territory. "Minuet For A Cheap Piano" sounds to be just that. The sound is slightly muted and subtly distorted, again wreathed in what sounds like strings but could very well be the swirl of droned out guitars, hushed and delicate and dreamlike.

"A Symphony Pathetique" the longest track at nearly 13 minutes, seems to be the record's centerpiece, that piano suspended in a field of gauzy dronemusic, the track is epic and gorgeous, a sprawling stretch of hushed minimal beauty, the background sounds in constant motion, shimmering and undulating, overtones loosed to drift dreamily, all the while the piano plucks out painterly melodies, and like all the best songs, we would have been happy to have this stretch out and fill up the entire rest of the disc. Instead, the song fades gradually into the ether, from which drifts "All Farewells Are Sudden", a very UN-sudden sonic farewell, all slow swirling swells, hazy ambience and female vocals, creating a lush lovely droning harmony with the strings that gradually unfurl into a darkly moody soft-focus piano coda. So gorgeous. Fans of recent Stars Of The Lid will be in heaven, and anyone into dreamy mysterious ambience, minimal drones and avant chamber music will definitely find much to love here.

Boards Of Canada - Music Has The Right To Children 2xLP (Warp)

Our Review:

Having released a couple of obscure singles and a hard-to find full length, Boards of Canada seemed to have come out of nowhere when they made their debut. Named after and inspired by the seventies documentary film company The National Film Board of Canada, this band of Scottish brothers Marcus Eoin and Mike Sandison created one of the first IDM outfits that built off the futuristic electronic and downtempo beatscapery of genre pioneers Autechre and Aphex Twin while infusing their music with a warm, nostalgic and sun-dappled melancholy. It was hard at first to pinpoint what created that distinct nostalgic feeling, because back then not many folks were as clued into the world of library music (essentially instrumental soundtrack music made by private companies for use in commercial and industrial films including the educational-minded National Film Board of Canada) as we are now. Many of the melodies and themes on Music Has the Right to Children seem to be lifted straight from those elementary school educational films, the type that inhabited our childhoods as well. The music gives off a warbled lilting pastoral vibe that prismatizes into a sunburst of kaleidoscopic reverie, evoking memories of hip educational graphics of basic science concepts like geometrical forms, color spectrums and weather patterns that would allude to a larger sense of wonder that we, as adult listeners, no longer seemed to have. How it was made, whether through instrumental musicianship, a sophisticated sampling and filtering process, or a combination of both remains mysterious today. A few years back when the philosophic concept of Hauntology (a past premonition of a future that never was, to put it very simply) was being bandied about a lot with groups like Broadcast & The Focus Group and The Caretaker, many have spoken of this album as a key musical touchstone. It does indeed have a strange quality of being both of and beyond its time, a quality in turn that continues to bedazzle, beguile and bewitch. Essential!

Aeolus - A Retrospective LP (Aloha Got Soul)

Our Review:

Robert "Aeolus" Myers is a composer and performer who began recording new age music in Honolulu, Hawaii in the early 1980s, first performing on Bob Kindler's rare and sought after cassette, Music From The Matrix I and later on his own releases. While living in Hawaii, Myers was a pivotal member of the Hawaiian avant-garde performance arts and modern dance scene, collaborating with numerous dance and theater companies, and often featuring modern dancers in his own live performance. He is also a classically trained bassoonist who performed with the Honolulu Symphony and others.

While the recordings featured here - compiled from his four long out of print solo releases - fall under the umbrella of new age, his experience in the world of classical music and avant-garde theater inform the pieces and elevate them far beyond your standard crystal shop background music. Working with flute, synthesizer and percussion Aeolus at times brings to mind Jon Hassell's Fourth World, the layered repetition of minimalists like Reich and Glass, impressionist composers and even the smoother side of 80s soul. Compiled by the artist himself and Roger Bong of the great Hawaii-centic label Aloha Got Soul, Aeolus: A Retrospective, is a beautiful collection that will appeal to fans of Eno and Iasos alike.

Body/Head - No Waves LP (Matador)

Our Review:

The Dead C scribbled "The AMM of Punk Rock" as the opening track on their 2007 Future Artists album. Whether their intent was sarcastically self-effacing or ignobly grandiose, that Dead C title makes for a pithy rejoinder in defining the blustery strategies not only for The Dead C, but also for what Kim Gordon has been up to since the tragic flame-out of Sonic Youth. That said, Body/Head is Gordon's sporadic improv-noise duo with Bill Nace. In studio and on stage, the two construct "scripted improvisations" through a churning wash of squalid feedback, heavy-lidded hypnosis and anti-rock form destruction. Gordon and Nace smear and slime their dronemusik with some classic Sonic Youth atonal confrontation and crumbled amp demolition. All of this sounds remarkably like a drumless version of The Dead C – with the notable exception of Gordon's off-kilter voice. On No Waves, she warbles even more like Jandek than she has in the past. These three long-form Body/Head pieces were recorded live at the 2014 Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, Tennessee. Given the approaches engaged with automatic writing and spontaneous effluvia of leaden sonic bluster, the raw immediacy of a live recording suits them just fine.

The Ex - 27 Passports LP (Ex)

Our Review:

Atop the "info" page of The Ex's website sits a deceptively simple credo: "Forward In All Directions!" Expansive, yet direct; not so much a command as an invitation, or a challenge; reflecting a radical openness to change and the new: there could be no more perfect summation of The Ex's modus vivendi, or of the effect they have had on listeners and audiences worldwide for nearly 40 years.

Following 2010's Catch My Shoe and collaborations with Getatchew Mekuria and Brass Unbound, 27 Passports is The Ex's second full-length with guitarist and vocalist Arnold de Boer, who in 2009 joined the band following the departure, after three decades, of co-founder and frontman GW Sok. It's an album that faithfully captures the mind-altering experience of The Ex in concert. Live, they are a band in constant motion, a tactile frenzy anchored by Kat Bornefeld's supple polyrhythmic churn. De Boer, Terrie Hessels and Andy Moor wield guitars aslant and malleable: they spin out spiderweb melodies, or channel the metallic peal of the electrified kalimba – a nod to the considerable time The Ex have spent performing in Central and West Africa – or gather the heft and density of storm systems. Ex guitars are a bracing thing, and in one sense their redoubled heaviness is the result of nothing so much as adaptation, adjustment to circumstance: absent a regular bass player since 2004's Turn, Moor plays a jury-rigged baritone guitar, low-end rumble tussling with rough-hewn chords to overwhelming effect.

Lyrically, de Boer delivers both continuity and contrast with Sok's trenchant anarcho-absurdism. His voice is wry and mistrustful, yet playful and free of cynicism, a sing-shout vocal chronicling the invasive, co-opting logic of capital and power, the treacherous physicality– but also transformative power – of everyday language, the monotony of labor and the lingering traces of histories long thought dormant, ready to erupt.

Fundamentally, 27 Passports is an album – and The Ex are a band – about endurance, care and regeneration, about spaces and ideas that have yet to be bought off or bludgeoned, and that might yet be salvaged. Rounding the corner on their fourth decade in existence, there is no band better suited than The Ex to guiding us through these sorrowful, compromised days. Long live The Ex.

Various - Bollywood Bloodbath: The B-Music of the Indian Horror Film Industry 2xLP (Finders Keepers)

Our Review:

Bollywood Bloodbath, as you may have guessed, is a collection all taken from the soundtracks to Hindi horror movies! Ghost stories, killer thrillers, zombiethons, that sort of thing... but unlike American slasher flicks and Italian giallo from the same period (the '70s mostly, though this disc ranges as far back as 1949, and up to the '80s), these Indian fright films are elaborate musicals like other Bollywood productions. So the bloodbath sounds like it's taking place at the discotheque!! It's a perfect mix of the over-the-top pop groove-a-delica of the best vintage Bollywood stuff, infused with the even weirder, wilder and wiggier sounds demanded by the horror movie genre, like shocking screams, stabbing cacophonous chords and impassioned female vocals pleading for mercy.

Yep, it's pretty brilliant the way this collection combines two of our favorite soundtrack genres into one. Gotta give it up to compiler Andy Votel and his diligent research (involving hours and hours of viewing cheap old VHS tapes found at the Indian grocery store, no doubt), as he's dug up a delightful 'best of' from a hybrid cinematic genre we've yet to explore ourselves. And even if these songs were sourced from Z-grade movies, there's for sure some top talent involved on soundtrack side of things, including even the legendary RD Burman.

Although there's a modicum of ominous, atmospheric creepiness to be found in most of these cuts, moments that are mystical and mysterious, truth be told it's not all that frightening, as the spookiest stuff always gives way to urgent uptempo beats and zipp-zapping "seance fiction" synths, lively rock/disco orchestration and spirited singing, i.e. typical Bollywood bombast!

John Duncan - Klaar LP (Black Truffle)

Our Review:

Sonic provocateur John Duncan has made a career through leaps into the unknown. During the heyday of Los Angeles performance art (i.e. Chris Burden, Paul McCarthey, etc.), Duncan conceived of a number of projects that deliberately antagonized his audience through perceived violence and shattered taboos. At the same time, he began exploring the empty channels on shortwave radio where unsettling noise, silence and crackle could propagate. He was particularly intrigued by the psychological colorings of the sounds that often reflected dread, anxiety and paranoia - themes that were commonplace in his performance pieces.

Duncan's first works were published in conjunction with the Los Angeles Free Music Society, with whom he performed on occasion in various ensembles. His work began to really blossom upon a decision around 1981 to leave America for Japan, a place where he knew no one and where he knew nothing of the language. His work with radio began in earnest both as a source material and as a platform for pirate radio broadcasts. By the end of the decade, he relocated once again, this time to Amsterdam to begin a fruitful series of collaborations with Andrew McKenzie (a.k.a. The Hafler Trio). Shortwave radio was still prominent, with his compositions becoming more complex and nuanced.

Klaar was first published on the Australian imprint Extreme in 1990. The aforementioned McKenzie contributes various field recordings, with Duncan lacing those amidst long-form collages of blank static, distant signals detuned into smeared vibration and swells of electric noise. The relative calm of the album's proceedings belie the implied threat within Klaar. Duncan actively seeks to reflect a psychic, subliminal violence within society through the unintended artifacts of commonplace technologies. Here, the existentially nihilist agenda is to spook through the haunted radio. Klaar, along with much of his catalogue that spans three decades, remains a remarkable work of spectral electro-acoustics. 

And for the first time, Klaar is pressed on vinyl. Highest recommendation.

Skinny Puppy - Remission LP (Nettwerk)

Our Review:

Beyond the buckets of fake blood and the recent publicity stunt in which they invoiced the US government $666,000 for unauthorized use of their music at Guantanamo Bay, Skinny Puppy's albums from the '80s remain an impressive hybrid of industrial grit and new wave programming. These albums became synonymous with the aggressive, industrial dance sound furthered by Ministry and Front 242. Skinny Puppy was founded by two Canadian young men both named Kevin, having grotesquely altered their names to avoid confusion. Principle technician cEvin Key was born Kevin Crompton, and vocalist Kevin Ogilvie rechristened himself Nivek Ogre. Skinny Puppy signed to Nettwerk upon the strength of their Back And Forth demo cassette, noted for its gloomy, punk approach to electronics. During this early incarnation, Ogre and Key were also joined by Bill Leeb, who later went to found Front Line Assembly. 1984's Remissions was the band's proper debut transmitted through Key's alien sequencing, Ogre's hoarse vocals and a confrontational use of sampled dialogue culled from art-house and b-movie horror films alike. Originally released as a six track EP, Remissions is replete with the bright timbres of galvanized synths lashed to beat-box aggression. Coupled with Orge's affected vocals, Skinny Puppy's sound is given an acid bath treatment through the generous use of a tinny flange that's at once sharp, clinical and distancing. The lead-track "Smothered Hope" found Skinny Puppy full-formed in their saw-tooth industrial dance idiom, with the slippery "Glass Houses" paralleling Severed Heads were doing down in Australia. This pressing restores Remission to its original track listing and design.

Various - SMM: Opiate LP (Ghostly International)

Our Review:

A pretty fucking choice compilation of wintery dronemuzik, post-classical bleariness and somber variations on the pop ambient theme divided equally between the heavy hitters and the newcomers. Slowdive drummer Simon Scott opens the album with a blissful shimmer of amorphous shoegazing blur'n'drone pocked with echoing synth tones twinkling like satellites glinting the suns rays back to earth. A Winged Victory For The Sullen (one of the projects that blossomed from the ashes of Stars Of The Lid) twinkles a series of heart-wrenching piano motifs laced with stringed orchestrations all bathed in a beautifully maudlin atmosphere. The lugubrious melodies from Black Swan reprise those hauntological strategies of Leyland Kirby's recontextualized 78s with equally emotive results. When it comes Jim Haynes' track, he quipped that he tried to make something pretty but the colors of the rest of the album rendered his track much more ominous than anticipated. A stealth mode piece of shortwave drone, billowing noise and scabrous textures, considerably darker than anything else on the compilation, but it's certainly a top shelf slab of isolationist griminess. Immediately following is En, who open their track with a bright strum across a koto, those plucked tones become the painterly gestures of a wintery landscape as seen from the comforts of a stone farmhouse surround by snow and frost. The Swedish outfit Pjusk slows down a monophunk bassline to an undanceably slow torpor, suspending deep-space ambient transmission pulses for a track that does remind us of the bleak atmospheres found on that fantastic Raime album Blackest Ever Black released in 2012. Noveller's take on the Durutti Column's guitar impressionism is a beautiful way to end this exceptional album. There is a very clear narrative arc that Ghostly International has scripted through these tracks, one that is evocative of the many moods of late autumn and early winter with grey skies and sheets of bone-chilling rain giving way to clear sky nights for winter solstice dreams.

Swans - The Seer 3xLP (Young God)

Our Review:

Swans, Version 2.0 continues with The Seer, and how could it not be monstrous, epic, and utterly all-consuming? When Michael Gira reactivated the Swans several years ago, he did so with the intent of constantly touring the band, who furiously and methodically pounded through every set with Gira devilishly commanding to his band "More, you fuckers, MORE!!!" The songs which dominated the universally acclaimed 2010 album My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky became grotesquely engorged during the live sets, with each track telescoping in length and straining with each note, each rhythmic smash made more intense than the previous one. The shows were exhausting from the perspective of the audience, and Gira's marathon-length sprint must have been hell on the band. But unlike previous incarnations of Swans, it was obvious that Michael Gira was full of joy in orchestrating all of this controlled mayhem.

So, we come to The Seer - an album devised as a template malleable to the pressures of the Swans live performances for their 2012 tour schedule. Even outside the context of the forecasted mutation, The Seer is a beast of an album. The opening number "Lunacy" is a brightly charged march through dissonant guitar monochords and militaristic snares, before giving over to a wild-eyed chorale featuring the vocal talents of Mimi and Alan Sparhawk of Low. With Gira in charge, the emotional fragility that's emblematic of Low becomes lupine in its collective howl. "Mother Of The World" reprises the jackbooted rhythms found on the first Swans records, with a jagged guitar chord scraping bloodily against the unrelenting groove. The title track itself is a 32 minute piece that lesser bands would have used as an entire album with its massive crescendos of drone-rock pummel crashing down to a doomic plod and extended passages of slumped distortion, as something of a breather before ripping into another frenzy of gleeful obliteration.

With the much ballyhooed appearance of Karen O on the brief, lilting number "Song For A Warrior," we have more of an intermission for the band to shake out their arms and ears before Gira launches into another lengthy percussive workout, which is exactly what he does on "Avatar." Lockstep grooves for drums and bells rise up through a drone-rock ascent of guitars, bass and vocals uttering languid melodies throughout before Gira commands the drummers into an furious crescendo of control, power and noise. "A Piece Of The Sky" slowly unfurls through a shimmering drone density with plenty of Ligetti references but is probably also a thoughtful homage to Gira's amphetamine driven deconstruction on the brilliant Body Lovers side project from 1998, with a temperate Swans lurching forward into a near symphonic ballad. The finale "The Apostate" is a 24-minute vehicle for the screeching drones of lapsteel player Kristof Hahn, emitting dive-bombing raids across the throttled basslines, yelped vocals and of course those interlocked rhythms.

So yeah, The Seer is just as good as everybody has been saying.

Tim Hecker - Ravedeath 1972 2xLP (Kranky)

Our Review:

When listening to Tim Hecker, it's practically impossible to hear samples, or instruments, or anything really, other than the amazing organic soundworld that Hecker has created. The constituent parts are rendered wholly unrecognizable. They are layers or colors or pieces of the new whole. Hecker's sound is transformative and transcendent, evocative of other times, other places, lost worlds, lost loves and forgotten memories. It does of course have elements of a forgotten past in it's crumbling decayed sound quality, and washed out ethereal ambience. It also manages to be melodic, active, and alive it its own way.

For Ravedeath 1972, Tim Hecker took up residence at a church in Iceland, using that building's pipe organ as its main instrument, augmented by synthesizer, piano, feedback. This is not just atmospheric but emotional and infused with a definite pathos. The record opens with a super corrosive bit of blurred ambience. The sound decays and crumbles. The melodies pulse and undulate just below the surface with a gorgeous balance between warm melodic drift and caustic psychedelic haze. From there on out, the album sprawls and shimmers in epic expanses of warm whirring melodies. The abstracted presence of the organ lends the sound a choral gravitas, rendering Ravedeath 1972 darkly cinematic. It's akin to a score for some lost art film, all deep shadows and strange shapes, of empty streets and abandoned cities, all the lens flares, and warm distorted flutter, the fuzzy out of focus over saturated colors. So utterly and breathtakingly gorgeous.

Various - Molam: Thai Country Groove From Isan 2xLP (Sublime Frequencies)

Our Review:

Compiled by Mark Gergis from a multitude of sources, this collection of Molam music comes from a distinct window in Isan, Thailand history. Molam, which comes from the rural areas of Northeastern Thailand and neighboring Laos, was for many years generally characterized by male and female vocals backed by the khaen (a free-reed mouth organ). Migrating rural Thai and Laotian people to the cities modernized their Molam with electric guitars, bass, drums and keyboards and the music spread like wildfire to the urban population. Inevitably, through the ever changing nature of music and the economically driven producers, the electronic keyboard surpassed the need for a band and the music was more often than not reduced to the standard pop that is ubiquitous throughout Thailand. This is a time capsule of the glory days of Molam gone electric. Certainly fans of the Cambodian Rocks compilations should take heed here as well, but you will find a collection of tracks that are much more removed from Western rock. Firstly, there are no covers of popular rock songs, nor are the melodies here even related - except by chance - to Western pop. These are all traditional tunes that have merely been arranged with modern electric instrumentation (which isn't to say that you won't here any khaen on these tunes). It is the vocals though that are what really drive these songs, modernized or no. With melodies that seem utterly independent of what the band is playing, the lilting, almost yodelled, singing is unlike that of any other region in the world. Dare we say it's quite mysterious and sultry. Oh so very highly recommended.

Various - Princess Nicotine: Folk And Pop Sounds Of Myanmar (Burma) LP (Sublime Frequencies)

Our Review:

Princess Nicotine is a compilation that predates the inception of Sublime Frequencies. It was first published in 1994 by the exceptional imprint Majora, with nothing in the way of liner notes, track listings or even any origin to the musical wonders found within. All evidence pointed to Alan Bishop of the Sun City Girls being the curator of this collection of Burmese music from the past five decades. That information (and much more) became verified when he reissued the album through Sublime Frequencies. Even if you're not all that familiar with Burmese music, you'll find this compilation truly weird and wonderful. Unlike the handful of Burmese releases on other world music labels, this is something else entirely, a completely raw and unfettered, whole grain Burmese sonic assault. In other words: it's absolutely manic. At its most insane, it's akin to taking your standard, off-the-wall Bollywood arrangement and running it through a prog rock or free jazz filter. Nasal double reed instruments parallel vocal lines, clashing cymbals emphasize every beat, while the pat wain (a set of rice paste tuned drums which encircle the performer) smacks out its own melody like a set of out of tune roto-toms. On the mellower side of things there's strange hallucinogenic Appalachia featuring sudden bursts of piano, interjecting banjo, violin, flute, horn and most oddly: sultry female vocals offset by distorted male vocals. There's also hazy semi-Hawaiian psychedelia, with piano and keyboards pounding out the occasional random chord progression. So intense, and unique and utterly amazing. If you have to chose just one record to blow your mind, this could very well be the one.

Thomas Brinkmann - A 1000 Keys 2xLP (Editions Mego)

Our Review:

Let's start with the shorthand synopsis: if Carl Orff were given the task of scoring the psychedelically maddening movie The 5000 Fingers Of Dr. T and go from there. Thomas Brinkmann's techno minimalism translates to the piano in brutalist fashion, re-coding the conceptual and aesthetic rigor of mid-century serialism to a frenetic sustained crescendo through digital sequencing. The grand piano is the alpha and the omega for Brinkmann's 1000 Keys. Here, Brinkmann samples mostly from the lower registers of the piano, but when he jumps into the higher octaves such notes are almost always violently sharp; and nothing is played with anything less than full force. Brinkmann thrusts these sampled hammerings into rigid sequences designed to amplify the tonal dissonance and construct violently stroboscopic moire patterning. There's monomaniacal force to much of these recordings, with Brinkmann applying black-hole pressures of sheer willpower and might to the stuttering repetitiveness of the piano in the pursuit of adrenaline soaked hypnosis and delirium. Brinkmann may have been inspired by Conlan Nancarrow's polydactyl flourishes, but no one in their right mind would even consider trying to play Brinkmann's compositions on an actual piano. If one does, expect broken knuckles, acute tendonitis, and arthritic joints.

Varg - Star Alliance 2xLP (Posh Isolation)

Our Review:

Jonas Ronnberg is the Swedish electronic engineer operating under many banners for cold techno and black-noise drift, with Varg being one of those many guises. In 2015, Ronnberg published Star Alliance as a set that sprawled across a six cassette boxset through Posh Isolation. As an object, it disappeared so quickly as to not even seem to be real, making this double LP reissue all the more necessary. Varg's Star Alliance parallels the bleak rhythmist excursions that Dom Fernow has explored through Vactican Shadow. Shadowy acid percolations and muted monophunk thumps drive the rhythmic architecture, but it's mood that Varg is best at conjuring. An emotional torpor of emptiness weighs heavily upon the ambient hauntings and spectral drones, emerging through Varg's high altitude atmospheric disturbances and psychological dislocations. Fans of Gas, Thomas Koner / Porter Ricks, and Mika Vainio / Ø will be well served by Star Alliance!

Trad, Gras Och Stenar - Gardet 12.6.1970 2xLP (Subliminal Sounds)

Our Review:

If you're new to Trad Gras Och Stenar (Trees, Grass and Stones) you should read some of our other reviews of records by them and the other bands they morphed out of, like for instance their earliest incarnation as Parson Sound! In short, the whole TGOS/Parson Sound/Harvester/International Harvester thing was Sweden's answer to krautrock: droned out, rhythmic hippie hypnorock, representing radical politics and alternative lifestyles, in an almost proto-punk, or primitive prog style. Seriously, if they were German they'd be up there with Amon Duul I & II, Faust, Can, etc. And fans of Hawkwind also oughta check 'em out.

This live recording is an instant timewarp back to the pothaze atmosphere of the famous underground Gardet Festival in 1970, sorta the Swedish Woodstock, giving the listener a dose of TGOS's magic, live and raw. While there's other albums maybe we'd suggest for first timers, since this is a tad lo-fi, this WILL demonstrate their mesmeric majesty pretty darn well. Like we said, it's raw, and it rocks in its druggy dreamy hella distorted way. Oh, and it was recorded (on Nagra tape recorder, with one mic) by their fan, none other than Joakim Skogsberg, himself responsible for the amazing Jola Rota album.

Six songs here, almost an hour of music, including their oh-so-woozy cover of the Dylan by way of Hendrix classic "All Along The Watchtower" along with a wild nine-minute rave up on the Stones' "Satisfaction," and of course several lengthy, and equally wild, jamming originals, like the rollicking (and bluesy/folky) "In Kommer Gosta."

Must have been amazing to have been there that summer day. You can tell the audience is enjoying it. Rad it was recorded (thanks Mr. Skogsberg!).

The Peter Brotzmann Sextet / Quartet - Nipples LP (Cien Fuegos)

Our Review:

Free jazz fanciers rejoice, here's a long-overdue reissue of one of Teutonic sax titan Brotzmann's classic, pre-FMP, uber-rare 1969 LPs. One of Thurston Moore's official Top Ten "free jazz artifacts" in fact. Check out the lineup for this European free improv energy supergroup: Brotzmann, Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, Fred Van Hove, Buschi Niebergall (ok, maybe he's not so well known...), and Han Bennink! Damn. Recorded at Conny Plank's studio.

Pierre Marietan - Rose Des Vents 2xLP (Mana)

Our Review

Originally commissioned by the French government in 1981 and released in a private press in 1987, Pierre Marietan's Rose Des Vents is an inimitable blend of field recording, psychoacoustics, sound art and serialist composition. Swiss by origin, Marietan studied composition with Boulez, Pousseur and Stockhausen before moving to France and founding the Groupe d'etude et realisation musicales (GERM) in 1966. Over the next several years, Marietan's interests gradually centered around the study and preservation of urban sound environments, providing the impetus for the project that became Rose Des Vents.

Marietan conceived of Rose Des Vents - idiomatic French for "compass rose" - as an evolving series of site-specific actions and recordings, rooted in the sonic environments of a number of small villages in the Val d'Oise around Paris. Spending up to a week in each of these towns, Marietan recorded the sounds of daily life - barges, trains, birds, carillons, children at play - and later mixed these with studio recordings of brief melodic phrases, largely played on saxophone and keyboard, as well as snippets of synthesizer and electronics. The result cuts the sonics of quotidian chance with elegant compositional restraint. While Rose Des Vents finds its closest analogues in the recordings of Alvin Curran and Luc Ferrari, Marietan's work retains a sense of singularity as it captures the uncanny nature of everyday life and its disarmingly moving acoustics. Mana Records' welcome reissue contextualizes Marietan's work with reflections from the artist as well as a wealth of contemporaneous documentation and ephemera. Truly unlike anything you've ever heard!

Selda - s/t LP (Finders Keepers)

Our Review:

No surprise that the fine folks with impeccable taste at B-Music / Finders Keepers are responsible for this amazing collection of Selda at her best! With a singular voice that demands and grabs your attention with such utter flare, seduction and style, Selda is truly a musical treasure who we're sure will win the ears and hearts of just about anyone who listens. Every song has a rich musical backdrop, perfectly cradling her lovely vocals, with a sound that has no easy genre lines to point to, but that so few have touched on with such perfection. It's psych-rock and glorious pop, it's folk and funk, it's fun and dramatic, it's whatever it wants to be, and it's a collection of songs with absolutely no misses! There is a playfulness in the performances that totally imbue the songs with a rich full color fever that just can't be denied. While some reissues exist more for history's sake or for just a couple cool tracks, this is one of those records that requires repeated listening, and lord knows we have listened to this over and over and over. In some ways we even think of Selda like a Turkish version of Asha Bhosle, with that sort of amazing voice that turns everything it touches into musical magic.

Sand - Golem LP (Rotorelief)

Our Review:

Sand's first album Golem is an utter classic of ur-folk krautrock recorded back in 1974 with the nascent technology known as Artificial Head Stereo Sound, meant to the expand beyond the quadrophonic. The recording gear was being lugged around by Klaus Schulze who was the man responsible for capturing Sand's album. They were a peculiar band for the whole Kraut scene, as they were drummerless - or mostly so, as a Yahowah 13-ish hippie boogie is tapped out on the album's finale "Sarah". But for the remaining four-fifths of the album, it's just bass, guitar, synth, and voice. The openness of their arrangements served the Artificial Head recording very well (with the results best rendered on headphones, very trippy); but all of these cool tricks would be worthless had Sand's Golem not already been lumbering, lugubrious monster of an album. The sprawling tracks roll in and out of slowly plucked / strummed guitar - like Manuel Gottsching or Gunter Schickert if played at 16rpm. It's sparklingly gloomy avant-folk, with spooky vibes from the synth and horror-laden lyrics uttered by the weirdly mannered vocalist Johannes Vester, whose take on a Cockney slur via Bavaria is most certainly an unconventional approach. It's no wonder that this album was one album that David Tibet obsessed over upon discovering it in Steven Stapleton's record collection. So much so that Tibet not only reissued the album, but reprised Sand's "When The May Rain Comes" on the iconic Current 93 album Thunder Perfect Mind. Probably the closest neighbors to Sand would be the beloved strum-und-drang of German Oak or the weeping fortune telling of Paternoster. Required. Required. Required.

Philip Lewin - Am I Really Here All Alone LP (Tompkins Square)

Our Review:

Am I Really Here All Alone?, with its forlorn title and hand-drawn cover, sure looks the part of a stone-cold obscure monster; the kind of private press LP that heavy collectors have learned to temper their excitement about until hearing, for it can't possibly be as good as it looks, right? Fortunately, this one is. And the fantastic San Francisco label Tompkins Square have made it available for those of us unwilling or unable to spend mid-three-figures for a lone(some) long player. Toronto singer-songwriter Philip Lewin plays everything on here, and recorded the album at a friend's home. Though it's mostly just acoustic guitar and vocals, with the occasional piano led track, there are lots of lead guitar overdubs and double-tracked vocals creating a more textured and full sound than your usual sad man with acoustic guitar LP.

Originally released in 1975 in a truly micro pressing of 300 copies, Am I Really Here All Alone? at times sounds like early Mountain Goats, and not simply for the strummed guitar and lo-fi tape hum, but there's also something in the intonation and vocal delivery that is similar to Darnielle's Shrimper/Ajax era. Elsewhere, like on piano ballad "Touch" Lewin's loner sadness reminds the listener of another private folk classic, David Kauffman and Eric Caboor's Songs From Suicide Bridge. Lewin's hearty voice ranges significantly from angry to fragile - most notably on side two as the bitter "The Momentary Lie" gives way to the lovely "The Magic Within You" - and is perfectly complemented by his crude but emotional guitar playing and piano work.

In the end, it seems that the answer to the title's question is "no", as Lewin made a lovely second record the following year that features a full band and female vocalist. That record is a near 180 in style, a fairly well produced jazzy soft-rock LP somewhere in the neighborhood of Fleetwood Mac. Though it may seem crass to say, it's a benefit to the listener and the world of records that Lewin once felt so solitary as to ask, "Am I Really Here All Alone?"

Pure Ground - Giftgarten LP (Chondritic Sound)

Our Review:

Pure Ground is the Los Angeles duo of Greh Holger and Jesse Short who have been mining a particular vein of the EBM/minimal-wave vernacular. Jackbooted antecedents such as Klinik, Portion Control and more well-known icons like Front 242 and Nitzer Ebb spring to mind upon listening to Pure Ground's aggressive sequencing and pounding machinations. Giftgarten maintains much of the ultra-minimal production and surgical strike aesthetic that Holger and Short have constructed on previous albums, and they've slightly detoured with more of a Martin Hannett production vibe to give the album an overall gloomier pall. The vocals too are buried more in the mix, bathed in a controlled, tight reverb that never upstage Pure Ground's fetishization for ice-cold synth chemistry, industrial/dystopian allegories, horror film-score interludes and shadowy noise drones.

Limited to 300 copies.

Roberto Musci - Tower Of Silence 2xLP (Music From Memory)

Our Review:

Beginning in 1974, the Italian musician Roberto Musci started traveling throughout Africa, the Middle East, India and elsewhere in Asia. During his journeys, he would collect field recordings and study various musical traditions from those particular regions, adopting and manipulating those sounds into his own electronic scores. His chimera of modern technologies with these non-western elements paralleled the "fourth world" recordings of ethnomusicologically non-placed compositions that Jon Hassell produced through his highly influential recordings in the late '70s and early '80s. Tower Of Silence is an anthology of material that was composed from 1983 up to the present day, including a number of collaborative tracks and various previously issued albums. Despite the vast timeframe for this collection, Tower Of Silence maintains a uniform sound for a quasi-mystical sense of tranquility and meditation. These earnest recordings might adopt the vocal chants from Ghana or the dervish percussive patter from Morrocan Sufis or the mesmerizing harmonic ragas from the subcontinent. In turn, his hypnotic, relaxed compositions of percussive objects, wind-chimes, airy flutes and looped field recordings skitter somewhat painterly across surfaces of dreamtime ambience and fretless bass motifs.

OOIOO - Gold & Green 2xLP (Thrill Jockey)

Our Review:

This is the third album from OOIOO (say "oh oh eye oh oh"), the Osaka based, all-female quartet masterminded by Yoshimi P-We (drummer/trumpeter/vocalist for the Boredoms, et al.) At times playful and childlike, Gold And Green abandons the grating, no-wave dissonance of earlier albums for a more textural, atmospheric and melodic experience. It's much more Terry Riley's In C than the noise-punk deconstructions of early Boredoms / OOIOO material. "Mountain Book" (which seems to be the musical accompaniment to the lovely artwork for this record) is the beautiful standout track on which they are joined by many guests including Seiichi Yamamoto (Boredoms), Yuka Honda (Cibo Matto) and even Sean Lennon: epic, hypnotic, dreamy psychedelia with piano, dulcimer and tabla. So nice!

The 2017 Thrill Jockey version also features a beautiful gatefold album jacket and a full color booklet of children's psychedelic fantasy artwork by Yoshimi herself!

This long-time favorite finally gets its first ever US pressing on vinyl.

Oval - 94 Diskont 2xLP (Thrill Jockey)

Our Review:

At the time of the release of 94 Diskont in 1995, Oval was a trio of electronic musicians including Marcus Popp, Sebastian Oschatz and Frank Metzger. Eschewing synthesizers in the construct of their electronic music, the trio deliberately scratched and scribbled on CDs. Upon playback, these damaged discs would generate skittering glitches and microdot ruptures, which became the source material to their luxuriously textured ambient tapestries. The glitched errata of those damaged CDs is an ugly sound. Yet in the hands of Oval, these became liquid nirvana in the form a data-streaming electronica. Those glitches became so granulated and multiplied as to evolve into a sentient hologram singing luminous chorales from within the dreaming mind of a computer. This album predicted / inspired much of the digitally clipped 'clicks 'n' cuts' electronica that announced the turn of the millennium with all of its Y2K paranoia and giddy emptiness, though none of that work came remotely close to the emotional depths found on 94 Diskont. Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works, Volume Two would be the nearest contemporary parallel to 94 Diskont in terms of the scope and richness of the work, though this album also very easily fits into the pantheon of great electronic works by Eno, Cluster and Carl Stone. As with the original release, 94 Diskont is fleshed out with a second LP of remixes by Jim O'Rourke, Scanner, Mouse On Mars and Christian Vogel.

Liebestod - Beta Male LP (Chondritic Sound)

Our Review:

Jesse Sanes presents Liebestod as his fully realized Power Electronics project, one that parallels his role as frontman for the nihilist hardcore outfit Hoax. A violent intensity and spilt blood carry over in both projects, even as the vehicles are radically different. It must be noted that Sanes has collaborated with Puce Mary as Fejhed and JH1.FS3, whose two recordings mine a controlled malevolence through synth noise and heavily processed voice. Such is also the strategy for Liebestod, through which Sanes hangs an electric dread upon the voltage controlled blurts, junkyard metal-bashing, and scalding flames of white noise. Leibestod's psychological / conceptual position on Beta Male seems outside the typical poetics of sexual control and/or extremist political chest-thumping, scribing instead an existential crisis with Sanes standing at odds with everything and everybody, including himself. It makes for a brilliant if disturbing album, one that mirrors a similar plight found in Maurizio Bianchi's first fruits in the '80s applied through a brooding regimentation akin to Anenzephalia. As such, this album gets our highest recommendation, settling next to Puce Mary's The Spiral as one of the best noise albums of 2016.

Patrick Cowley - School Daze 2xLP (Dark Entries)

Our Review:

For every ecstatic high, there often needs to be a soul crushing descent via a dark comedown. San Francisco electronic music pioneer Patrick Cowley is best known for his trailblazing signature sound which helped spawn a whole dance music genre (Hi-NRG), as well as his amazing production work, not to mention guest spots on many of Sylvester tracks. His life ended way too early, as one of the first victims of the AIDS epidemic (before they even understood what AIDS was), but in the short time he was on this planet he recorded hours and hours of electronic music light-years ahead of its time. Most of those recordings have never seen the light of day.

In recent years it seems a whole genre of "space-disco" has emerged out of the influence of the Sylvester track "I Need Somebody To Love", produced by Cowley, who almost single handedly created the cut's distinctive minimal spacey/sensual sound. And within the many solo Cowley releases, there were hints of this darker sonic side, a whole part of his music making beyond the greatness he created for disco divas and sweaty dance floors. Enter School Daze, a Dark Entries collection of previously unreleased tracks, which showcase that warped and dark side of Cowley's music. These tracks were originally commissioned by the LA-based Fox Studios, makers of gay porn, and as we listen to this over and over, we can only imagine what kind of hazy, foggy, fucked up, beyond high, drug addled state of mind that folks must have been in to watch pornography set to these dark & dizzying sounds! The opening track is the outlier here, a chunk of classic Cowley Hi-NRG, but it's certainly a misleading introduction, as throughout the rest of School Daze, there is hardly a trace of Cowley's typical dance floor production, instead these songs much more concerned with capturing a mood and vibe that evokes melting and dripping trippiness, seemingly designed for late, late nights long after the party has ended. Tracks like "Tides Of Man" take us on a harrowing dark voyage, the listener losing control and spiraling deeper and deeper into the empty void. "Seven Sacred Pools" displays an epic side of Cowley's sound, the track drifts drowsily from underwater warble and woozy spaciness into shimmering and tranquil soft wave shimmer, the sort of soundworld we wish could get lost in forever. The title track reveals Cowley reigning over his own majestic prog sci-fi fantasyland.

Traces of Tangerine Dream, Vangelis, Jean Michel Jarre, Kraftwerk, Harmonia, Cluster, The BBC Radio Workshop and even musique concrete are woven throughout School Daze. We're also reminded quite a bit of some of the proto-dark techno records that Moebius was making in the early '80s with Conny Plank and Gerd Beerbohm. What's even more astonishing is how so many of these sounds predate by several decades the sound of so many of our favorite contemporary electronic artists. In fact, we might go so far as to call the sound on School Daze "proto-IDM", as these tracks contain blueprints to the more spaced-out sides of artists like Aphex Twin, Boards Of Canada, The Orb, Seefeel and Bola.

It's unclear exactly how many of these tracks actually made it into the films, but we can safely say this is still some of the most fucked up, avant-garde porn music we've ever heard. In fact we wonder if Matmos took inspiration from some of these Cowley tracks when they were asked to create their own soundtracks for underground kinked out porn.

Lydia Lunch - Honeymoon In Red LP (Bang)

Our Review:

Honeymoon In Red began as the name of a band that Lydia Lunch conceived of in Berlin, 1982 in collaboration with the two Australian avant-rockers Genevieve McGuckin and Roland S. Howard. The latter was still a member of the Birthday Party, who had recently relocated to Germany, and the other members of The Birthday Party (Nick Cave, Mick Harvey, and Tracy Pew) participated in all of the recording sessions. However, Cave and Harvey expressed reservations about the mix and the quality control, resulting in a massive falling out with Lunch. By 1987, she approached J.G. Thirlwell and Thurston Moore to complete the recordings, seeking Thirlwell's production prowess and Moore's incendiary guitar noise. When she finally published the album through her own Widowspeak, Lunch ascribed the band's name as the title to this, her own record.

Given the heavyweight contributions to Honeymoon In Red, this album has been strangely overlooked, yet remains one of the most accomplished works in Lunch's illustrious career. Whatever reservations Cave and Harvey had at the time over the production are more than made up with Thirlwell's skill. This album is as good as anything that The Birthday Party did at the time, with Lunch's caterwauling and mewled invocations replacing Cave's gut-wrenching exorcisms to profound effect. Lunch and Cave offer two duets that hint at what may have happened had these two been able to get along for more than these recording sessions. Not surprisingly, Lunch et al. paint the album in stark dramatic contrasts, with jagged snarls of swaggering punk blues and car-crashing no wave frenzied atonality. The band is at its best on the lengthy "Three Kings," arranged by McGuckin, who lays down a hyper-repetitive, minimalist riff on her dark carnival organ with Lunch transfixed in zombified monotone. "Dead In The Head" and "Done Dun" stand as as those two brilliantly nightmarish Lunch / Cave duets, with Roland S. Howard taking up the lead vocals on one track "Still Burning" that Lunch would later cover on her In Limbo album a few years later.

Mistress Mary - Housewife LP (Companion)

Our Review:

The most beguiling and likely most rare piece of the Byrds/Burritos/Bakersfield/LA puzzle is this LP, the lone release from Mary Afton (aka Mistress Mary). Originally released in 1969 and entitled Housewife, the record was intended as a demo to showcase her songwriting talents to the general music industry (and specifically Elvis, whom she made sure received a copy). Though the original packaging – which includes a very '60s Hollywood glamor shot, some completely in-the-know or completely out-to-lunch hand written notes and three more photos on the back that include, variously, a belly dancer's outfit, a refrigerator and the world's longest cigarette holder – betrays some pretty heavy wine-drunk-by-noon vibes, the songs themselves show a maturity and talent that deserved more than this one forgotten, if ever known at all, collection.

Mary was friends with folks in the extended LA country-rock scene and this record was put to tape at Darrell Cotton's studios with help from Clarence White (The Byrds), Carl Walden (crack LA steel guitarist) and other unidentified session players that probably came from the extended Byrds/Burritos/Gary Paxton/Bakersfield International/Alshire family. With a voice that's a bit reminiscent of Barbara Keith and a general vibe that falls somewhere between the aforementioned country-rock scene and a more mature Nancy Sinatra, or as Mary herself puts it in the liner notes, "country-western ... some soft-soul ... some what-ever," the record is a truly great example of late '60s LA that very few have had the pleasure of experiencing before this reissue. Mary's lyrics range from playful and goofy to truly cutting and deadly and the backing is spot-on. When none of the attempts to connect with the industry at large panned out, Mary moved on to various other gigs including disco dance instructor, leaving behind this one LP, essential to any fan of LA country-rock and private press obscurities.

Merzbow - Lowest Music 2 LP (Urashima)

Our Review:

Lowest Music 2 is a very early recording from the master of Japanese noise, Masami Akita / Merzbow. It was originally constructed on "very cheap equipment" in 1982, released on cassette Akita's Lowest Music & Arts (the precursor his more well known ZSK Produkt). He remixed / reprised the material in 1990 for a cassette on Extreme, who later incorporated this on the legendary Merzbox.

Way back when, one foolish employee at Aquarius (FYI, Jim is now happily working for Stranded) embarked on a project of reviewing every disc in the Merzbox while perched behind the counter at the shop. Here is the review from that intrepid bit of gonzo journalism from 2000: "This has got to be a collaboration. I sort of feel like I'm playing the Wire's Invisible Jukebox ... trying to guess who the collaborator must be. After listening to all of the previous discs, I've gotten a pretty good idea as to what the sonic intentions of Merzbow are and what his voice is. Disc Twelve (yeah, I've still resisted the urge to break the hermetic seal on the book) has another presence in the tape. I know that there's a wealth of collaborative efforts from Merzbow including work with Christoph Heemann and Achim Wollscheid. It definitely not the Heemann piece as that one is quite beautiful, but it could be the Wollscheid one. However, this sounds much more like a really early Come Organisation production with William Bennett's lo-fi tape loop mantras, rather than the Wollscheid's hyper cerebral / neo-musique concrete. I didn't think that anyone from Come Organisation did anything with Merzbow. Steven Stapleton would be another guess, but it's too crappy a production from Stapleton's baroque dadaism... and furthemore I don't think that he did anything with Merzbow (did he?). Another guess would be Richard Rupenus / Bladder Flask, but it's too orderly for both parties involved. So, I'll shrug my shoulders and say that this is quite the spartan production for Mr. Merzbow."

Jump 16 years later, this review holds up to the descriptive rhetoric, but the underlying argument of this recording being a collaboration is entirely wrong. It's not a collaborative body of work but a sole Merzbow construction of nearly self-immolating tape-loops of wildly fluttered varispeed, chopped vocal utterances, overdriven amplification, and bit of caustic freedback, with the tape mechanisms getting all fucked around with during the recording and playback. More Fluxus than the brute noise that came to dominate the Merzbow aesthetic from the late '80s onward. The version featured on the Urashima edition is a remastered edit of the original Lowest Music & Arts cassette.

Mauthausen Orchestra - Murderfuck LP (Urashima)

Our Review:

Urashima continues in the re-issue campaign of Mauthausen Orchestra's early cassettes of brutal power electronics. Mauthausen Orchestra was the pseudonym for Pierpaolo Zoppo, an Italian malcontent inspired by the earliest works from Whitehouse, Ramleh, and the more extreme proponents of Industrial culture, with this work heralded alongside Maurizio Bianchi and Atrax Morgue in pioneering an Italian axis of harsh electronics that is as captivating as it is horrifying. Murderfuck was originally a cassette released on the Aquilifer Sodality imprint back in 1983, and the album's nightmarish content lives up to the title, channeling an unseemly and unhealthy appetite for sexual depravity wracked with paranoia, claustrophobia, and self-loathing. One side of Murderfuck is an unhinged work of impenetrably thick noise choked with tape hiss and synth-drone murk, where the other is a brutally harsh reinvention of Whitehouse's ear-drum piercing feedback explorations. So fucked-up.

Joanna Newsom - Ys 2xLP (Drag City)

Our Review:

Joanna Newsom's second full length Ys (fyi: apparently pronounced 'ease', not 'wise') probably needs no introduction. On this album, she seeks to reinvent herself, distancing herself from the indie folk scene that she helped spawn. It appears all that lingers from The Milk-Eyed Mender is her trusty harp, though even it claims less of the spotlight. Ys most definitely shows much artistic growth and aspiration with a far broader creative scope and production sense. Really, if there's any question that Newsom (and her label Drag City) is goin' for the serious artist credibility, you need look no further than the big gun support from top shelf luminaries Van Dyke Parks, Steve Albini and Jim O'Rourke. Not unexpectedly, they do amazing work on this album. It's stunningly beautiful. With a supporting cast like that, Newsom was clearly afforded full freedom to focus on realizing her vision. In each of the five lengthy tracks (the longest is 16 minutes!), she unveils her lyrics in theatrical, highly literary fashion. It's the storybook stuff of romantic fairy tales and whimsical fables, but it's set far less in nature than the rural hued Milk Eyed Mender. It evokes fantastic jewel-toned interiors, stages, salons, tea rooms. At once, dainty and sumptuous. The album defies expectations in wonderful, enchanting ways.

Googoosh - s/t LP (Finders Keepers)

Our Review:

Oh Googoosh! We were pretty thrilled when this came in as we've been anticipating a collection of her recordings ever since many of us first heard her mind blowing track "Talagh" on that great Pomegranates compilation of Persian pop, psych, and funk from the '60s and '70s. Luckily, Iranian singer Googoosh was no one hit wonder, as this collection shows that pretty much every song she made during this era (1970-'75) is totally awe-inspiring. Like the perfect cross between the explosive psychedelia of Selda and the introspective folk of Pari Zangeneh. Her voice reels you in and the music's alluring and dynamic swirling melodies leave you in the throes of serious sonic pleasure. Much like Turkey's Selda, Googoosh's music had such a brave and fiery political stance to it as well. Sadly much of her music was banned by the Iranian government by the end of the 1970s, and many of her records were literally burned and destroyed. Luckily, from what copies did remain, Andy Votel worked his Finders Keepers magic and has compiled an amazing collection of one of the greatest voices to come out of Iran (and anywhere else for that matter)!

Gate - A Republic Of Sadness LP (Ba Da Bing)

Our Review:

Michael Morley, aka Gate, may be more well known for his work in legendary New Zealand noiserockers the Dead C, but he's been making Gate records just as long. Those Gate records have all been pretty much stone cold classics. The Dew Line is one of THE most unsung, underappreciated weirdo outsider pop records EVER. Golden is ostensibly a noise record, but manages to harness noise into something much more beautiful and listenable and lovely. And now we have A Republic Of Sadness – a strange swirling assemblage of lush guitar textures, turntable loops, crooned lo-fi bedroom pop and skittery IDM style beats, woven into dark, woozy, abstract electronic drone pop.

The opener "Forever" is totally gorgeous, built atop a scratchy turntable loop, that Basinski-like backdrop repeats endlessly, drifting in its cloud of crackle and pop, while Morely unfurls a distorted dreamy croon. It's like Gas meets Jeck meets Basinski meets The Caretaker meets Sentridoh. Utterly trancelike and mesmerizing. "All" starts out with soft swaths of synth, before a weird clattery lo-fi distorted beat lurches into action. In come Morely's creepy distorted mumbled vocals – mysterious, mournful and intimate. Like the track before, the non essentials are jettisoned, and the layered loopscape plays out hypnotically. The rest of the record constructs similarly twisted bits of lo-fi electronica, woven into skittery dreamscapes, and muted minimal grooves, slipping fuzzy shoegaze guitardrone to creaking industrial rhythms and gorgeous pulsing synthscapes that will have fans of Oneohtrix, Emeralds, Gottsching and other krautdrone explorers frothing, for sure!

Jon Hassell & Brian Eno - Fourth World Music Volume I: Possible Musics LP+CD (Glitterbeat)

Our Review:

Reissued and remastered for the first time on vinyl since its initial 1980 release, and previously long out of print on cd too, this beautiful collaboration between minimalist composer / experimental trumpeter Jon Hassell and ambient music pioneer Brian Eno has never sounded better! Such a gorgeous classic. Made between Eno's production work on Larajji's Ambient 3: Days of Radiance and the David Byrne collaboration, My Life In The Bush of Ghosts, Possible Musics was an early investigation into world music influences tempered through modern, Western studio techniques (synth treatments, tape delay, echo effects) resulting in a music of a borderless hybrid world of geographical intrigue. It greatly influenced the future-primitive recordings of My Life In The Bush of Ghosts made only ten days after the Fourth World sessions finished, though really they are different sides of the same coin.

Hassell, studied under Pandit Pran Nath and learned to transcribe Indian classical vocal techniques to the sound of the trumpet. Through various effects, he is able to conjure a vast array of sounds and textures, animalistic and mystical, sometimes flute-ish and even didgeridoo-ish. It never once sounds like a trumpet. There are definitely influences of Aboriginal, African, island and tribal music, but the aim feels more topographical than ethnological. The slow and deep attention to detail like the timbre of strings, the deep pulse of water drums and the loping liquid rhythms suggest big expanses of weather and terrain, movement and landscape. Hassell's trumpet treatments processed through Frippertronic-like tape loops and reverse echo effects are like deep rain clouds slowly moving across sparse tundra but seen and heard at a far distance. And indeed the whole album has this remote field recording quality like one is witness to something far-off, slightly foreboding, perhaps mystical, but also magnetic and alien, especially felt on the final side-long track "Charm (Over 'Burundi Cloud')". One of our favorites of the whole Eno/Ambient catalog!! Vinyl version comes with a copy of the cd.

Helen - The Original Faces LP (Kranky)

Our Review:

Sure, let's call 'em a super group. Why not? Helen is fronted by Liz Harris. Yes, THAT Liz Harris, of Grouper fame; and she's joined by bassist Scott Simmons of Eat Skull, and Jed Bindeman, who seems to be the only drummer in Portland, Oregon given his ubiquity in so many great projects (Eternal Tapestry, Heavy Winged, Operative, The Greys). Also, the trio list an eponymous Helen as the backing vocalist, who sounds remarkably like Liz Harris herself.

They've also made claim that the band's first intentions were to be a thrash band. Now, that would have been quite amazing had Helen followed through on that concept; but that was not meant to be. Instead we have this lovely lovely lovely shoegazing noise-pop project. Liz Harris has long been able to craft drifting, pop-narcotic perfection through her slumbering songs as Grouper. Joined by a rhythm section, she's forced herself to step forward with her melodies - both vocally and on guitar, both of which are still buried in rainclouds full of reverb and sadness – and it's a gambit that pays off very nicely. Simmons tends to throttle the bass, which has him sounding more like D Boon than Deb Googe more often than not; and Bindeman take an understated, if upbeat approach to the kit. Actually, the whole rhythm section of Simmons and Bindeman can be pretty upbeat, with Harris adhering a jangly blur to the wintery grandeur that's long been her trademark. It's a nice mix. The atmosphere on The Original Faces is pretty damn captivating, reminiscent in all the right ways of Black Tambourine, The Aislers Set, The Lilys, and whatever your favorite Slumberland band is, past, present, or future. A wonderful release!

Jean-Claude Vannier - L'Enfant Assassin des Mouches LP (Finders Keepers)

Our Review:

Some reissues of long-lost gems arrive here with little fanfare and turn out to be great nonetheless. This one though, came our way emblazoned with blurbs proclaiming its immense awesomeness quoting the likes of Jim O'Rourke, Tim Gane, Jarvis Cocker and David Holmes. And guess what? Those guys do indeed know what they're talking about! This is fantastic. Here we have an action-packed instrumental concept album whose title translates into English as "The Child Killer Of The Flies," which musically narrates a simple but creepy story by Serge Gainsbourg (written after he heard the album, and included in the liner notes, explaining each track title) about the horrific revenge of flies on a child who had tortured them. This musical story-telling is by way of schizoid arrangements of tracks that range in sound from groovy pop to jazz to avant-garde tape music to fuzz guitar rock! Sounds good, eh? Good 'n' weird for sure.

L'Enfant Assassin Des Mouches is a "Fellini-esque psychedelic symphony" originally released (but poorly distributed and relegated to general obscurity) in 1972, credited to a unknown group called Isolitudes. The man behind Insolitudes, though, was one Jean-Claude Vannier, a musician and producer from the happening '60s French pop ("Ye Ye music") scene who had scored film soundtracks and collaborated with Serge Gainsbourg, most famously providing the arrangements for Gainsbourg's highly-rated L'Histoire De Melody Nelson album. This record is thereby cited as the follow-up to that one-of-a-kind conceptual classic. Itself, this is pretty much one-of-a-kind too. Funky and groovy, as well as deliriously, disorientingly hallucinogenic, this will hit you with lush string arrangements one moment, sound effects of sheer terror the next... it's psych, it's prog, it's funk, it's musique concrete. There's even a chorus of car horns put to good use here! It's the freakiest sexploitation soundtrack that never was. Very very recommended!

Fra Lippo Lippi - In Silence LP (Onderstroom)

Our Review:

Fra Lippo Lippi's debut album is an outlier in the band's discography. In the earliest incarnation of 1981, the Norwegian band was a trio featuring Rune Kristoffersen (guitars / bass) Per Oystein Sorensen (vocals), and Morten Sjoberg (drums), with all taking turns on keyboards. Kristoffersen's presence is noteworthy as he later founded the avant-jazz / avant-rock label Rune Grammofon in 1998, publishing work from Supersilent, Motorpsycho and Biosphere. By the mid '80s, the band's line-up changed and their sound shifted towards a soft-pop of electronic ballads that brought them some commercial success with albums on Virgin and EMI. In Silence is most definitely not of that sound. Inspired by Joy Division and paralleling like-minded acts such as Section 25, Siglo XX and Second Layer, Fra Lippo Lippi shaped their sound through a post-punk gloom. The songs keep a stately, if tear-stained pace just a tick above a funereal dirge. The chimed guitars recall Robert Smith's minor-chord strum on The Cure's Faith and Seventeen Seconds with the rhythm section darkly lumbering in time with the b-side to Unknown Pleasures. In keeping true to the sound of Martin Hannett's productions, Fra Lippo Lippi pushed the monotone vocals and moody ambient wash to the back in the mix, bathing these droning, gloomy elements with a tear-stained reverberation. It makes for an atmospherically bleak album, less claustrophobic and more somber. Those who found their mid '80s work too saccharine will have much more to sink their teeth into on In Silence.

Deathprod - Treetop Drive 2xLP (Smalltown Supersound)

Our Review:

Deathprod is the existentially bleak solo project of Helge Sten, who is also a key member of both Supersilent and Motorpsycho. In 2004, Rune Grammofon published a 4CD box-set compendium of Deathprod's work that was recorded between 1991 and 2000. Housed in an matte black box with a all black artwork and the sparest of text, this anthology presented itself as a semantic void, with nothing but the harrowing orchestrations of controlled noise and brooding atmosphere into Deathprod's oeuvre. This reissue campaign from Smalltown Supersound marks the first time any of these recordings have been on vinyl. Like before with the CD box-set, this too is enshrouded in matte black packaging.

Working with old magnetic tape recorders, hand made delay and sundry other electronic devices, Sten manipulates fragments of sound (e.g. a two note melodic interval or a final orchestral cadence) into brooding dark soundscapes, rich with overtones from feedback and often overlaid with guest performances from fellow Supersilent members. It is the very limitations of the equipment that Sten uses that become the sources for the beautiful timbres he produces: an over-saturated tape input, a primitive sampler that never reproduces the same note the same way twice or the uneven decay from primitive tape delays. Two tracks in particular from Treetop Drive deviate from this template through a six minute narration from American born Oslo resident Matt Burt and a couple tracks of an organ, vibes and drum trio not unlike Bo Hansson or a voodoo ensemble that David Lynch might incorporate into one his movies. More typical are tracks which blossom out from a single cell of an idea: one chord, or one blast of noise. At times Deathprod sounds almost like an attempt at recreating Thomas Koner's soundscapes using the audio palette of Maurizio Bianchi.