Last year's self-titled, self-released album felt like a major creative breakthrough for Nadler, as she found a very effective way for her distinctive, ghostly songs to coexist with a bit more light and life. The Sister, billed as its companion album, turns out to be something of a lateral move rather than an evolution or continuation. It is certainly more melancholy, spare, and monochromatic than I expected, but it largely overcomes those hurdles by being such a meticulously crafted, focused, concise, and thematically coherent song suite. As a whole, it is perhaps a bit weaker than some of Marissa's other efforts, but some of the individual songs are easily among her best.

As a companion piece to Line's reissue of Lovesliescrushing's CRWTH (Chorus Redux) from earlier this year, guitarist/instrumentalist Scott Cortez has also released a work of guitar ambience from the latter portion of the '90s that is simultaneously reminiscent of the era's sonic fringes, yet sounds just as fresh today as it would have then.

Originally released in 2004, the limited quantity and distribution of the original Heart Ache EP surely resulted in a bulk of its listeners relying on less than honest means of hearing it. Now available widely with recently finished EP that began around the same time, it is a wonderful opportunity to hear how things have changed with Jesu, as well as stayed the same, in the past six years.

This 1986 album was the beginning of Zoviet France’s Charm, Ceremony, Chance, Prophecy tetralogy and continued the collective's shift away from harsher textures and lo-fi production towards a cleaner and more restrained aesthetic.  Misfits occupies something of a lull in the Zoviet France discography, as it is not nearly as strong as earlier releases like Eostre, Gris, or Norsch nor does it give much hint of how much potential such a change in direction actually held.  Despite that, it still boasts a few excellent pieces, one of which ranks among the band’s finest work.

This year is a good year for Nurse With Wound-related reissues and this re-release of the collaboration between Steven Stapleton and Tony Wakeford is a good way to finish off 2009. Comprising of the original album on one disc and numerous unused mixes from the original sessions and new remixes from Wakeford and others; this is a good lesson in how to do justice to a classic album. This is a great reissue which has brought back an old favorite from the depths of the deleted release bin.

One of the best international compilations that I heard this year was Tumbélé, which examined the impact of African music on the Caribbean.  Africa Boogalo is its logical counterpoint, providing ample evidence that the vigorous cultural exchange of the mid-twentieth century yielded equally stunning results on the other side of the ocean (though not without a certain degree of weirdness).

Psych-folk chanteuse Josephine Foster has always been a reliably unusual and singular artist, but her dissonant, artier tendencies have sometimes detracted from the beauty of her lilting, world-weary voice.  With this release, a song-cycle based upon the poetry of Emily Dickinson, that experimental impulse is confined entirely to structure and concept.  The result is one of her most ambitious, listenable, and mesmerizing albums, as Foster's gorgeously baroque vocals are finally allowed to swoop and quaver around comparatively simple and traditional melodies.

This split 12” was one of the best musical surprises I’ve had this year, turning up unexpected as it did in my mailbox at the radio station where I do a weekly program. Usually people don’t send vinyl to me at the station (though it is encouraged) just CDRs of mostly forgettable music, hence my happiness in receiving a release that some serious effort went into. When I finally got around to listening to the record I was immediately impressed: the epic drone of Scott Cortez’s side shows him reaching out into the gorgeous expanses of space with masterfully layered guitar manipulation, while Language of Light presents a more animated and alchemical journey.

The fifth installment of Sub Rosa's series dedicated to the works of Henri Pousseur highlights the composer's efforts to experiment with different serialist techniques and tonal systems. The compositions presented on this disc span decades and feature a variety of musicians, including a rare performance from Pousseur himself.

Hot on the heels of Cosmarama, this time Nick Saloman ventures across the Atlantic to focus on '60s garage rock from the United States. Saloman leaves no stone unturned in bringing these tracks to CD for the first time, making for another remarkably entertaining compilation.

The first studio material recorded by KK Null and Seijiro Murayama in almost 20 years achieves a sonic symbiosis that’s both riveting and incendiary. While there are plenty of noisy electronics involved, they entertain rather than alienate on this chaotic yet warm recording.

Uzeda uses razor wire guitar, bass that frequently takes the lead, and merciless drums to mold the perfect foundation from which to launch their unrelenting vocal attack. Restless and turbulent, the band thrives in a constant state of eruption.

The first solo outing of Julian Cope's Head Heritage webmastercould've come with the tinkling of nepotism's alarm bells, but insteadit brought out the ringing drones of doom. Drafting in Brain Donor'sDoggen, SUNN O)))'s Stephen O'Malley and Cope to help out Holy McGrailshows that it takes more than pagan chic and black clothing to craftclassic drone rock.

After the Asian volume a few years back, Ididn’t expect further investigation of Eastern psych currents, but I’m happy tobe proved wrong by the series’ tireless curator, Thomas Hartlage, who’sproduced another absolutely solid collection of lost psych brilliance.

On their third release, this Norwegian duo of Jostein Dahl Gjelsvik and Rune Andre Sagevik continue to channel an organic warmth that would stick out so blatantly in their cold homeland, mixing unidentifiable sounds with bits of traditional sounding music. Tele sounds like the natural follow-up to 2010's Sval, fleshing out the concepts there with a greater sense of polish and experience.

Since his emergence from self-imposed exile in the late 1990s, Maurizio Bianchi has become extremely prolific, and even more so in the past few years. Like other artists who release this volume of material, I have only dabbled here and there amongst his contemporary. The newer material is more in-line with the sound art and ambient worlds than his older MB material was to the then-burgeoning industrial and power electronics scene, and judged on its own merit, is quite good, as is this album here.

These two albums are two thirds of what I consider to be Whitehouse's most idiosyncratic, and therefore most compelling phase in their 26-plus years of activity. Culminating with 1995's Quality Time, which I have discussed at length before, the phase began here, with probably their most musical and understated (in relative terms, of course) works, respectively.

After so many albums, I fear that someday Aaron Moore and Daniel Padden will stumble but thankfully with their latest album they prove that they are still firing on all cylinders. As varied as expected, Golden Rhythm/Ink Music is an exciting and gripping exploration of barmy improvisation and deeply intense, almost ritualistic, music. It does not reach the dizzying heights of early Volcano the Bear but it is definitely one of the best things they have done since coming back in from the cold a few years ago.

Drawing on literary influences like Franz Kafka and Thomas Ligotti, Mat Sweet returns with an EP about the purgatories and hells that are jobs in the bureaucratic machine. Undoubtedly inspired by the continuing financial crises that have erupted like boils across the world, Sweet has created a concise and precise indictment of the men in suits who have done as much damage to the world as men in military uniforms and priestly robes in past decades and centuries.

Few albums are as successful pulling off an album's worth of music wrapped into a single song as Sleep were in the '90s. Their sprawling weedian travelogue, Dopesmoker, set an impossibly high precedent for bands looking to follow the album-length song format. For Italy's Ufomammut, that precedent sounds more like a challenge to raise the bar, in which case, instead of just one... why not release two back-to-back albums in one year, together encompassing a single mammoth song 90 minutes in length?