At first glance, this seems like a risky proposition: Rhys Chatham, the visionary avant-garde composer known for arranging vast, expansive symphonies with 100+ guitars, has released a record made primarily with trumpet and voice. He hasn't recruited 100 trumpets and 100 voices, either—simply his own. Hell, I didn't even know Chatham played the trumpet until recently...

There have been few albums that I remember waiting so impatiently for. Several years have gone by since Clodagh Simonds' first transmission under the Fovea Hex umbrella and finally a full length has appeared. Continuing on from an exceptional string of EPs and singles, Here is Where We Used to Sing finds Simonds and her ever shifting group exploring different aspects of their songwriting process. With more focused lyrics and more defined melodies, their music has solidified and began to sprout sharp, beautiful forms like crystals grown in a petri dish: equally perfect and fragile.

SSLEEPERHOLD's José Cota initially gained attention as part of the now dissolved Medio Mutante, but here he is working strictly solo. Still utilizing a largely synth based template, he touches upon abrasive late 1980s industrial, laconic soundtrack-like ambience, and a bit of everything between in these eight instrumental songs.

Most of my familiarity with Bullock’s work involves his compositions for contrabass, performed in his own distinctive style with the results being anything but conventional. On this LP, however, he puts the emphasis on modular synthesizers and electronics, with the bass and field recordings appearing on half of the album and even then through heavy processing. The result is a unique pair of works that both show his strength in composition as well as improvisation.

The large majority of Brooklyn based Zs' output consists of their work as a sextet—a varied body of work focused around rhythmic intensity and textures based on duality. To reexamine the group's early recordings is to make a sonic map of the changing attitudes of New York new music and how the talent in the area learned to hybridize their surroundings and their musical skills. In that sense, Zs are the New York avant-garde personified; their role as a bridge between loft bands and chamber musicians, lo-fi and "high art" represents a lot of the essential artistic ideologies in 21st century New York.

After a terrific debut EP in 2010, Bell Gardens finally return with a full album of mostly new music. As usual, the musical arrangements are lush and saturated with beauty as Brian McBride and Kenneth James Gibson try to recreate the moods and sounds of the golden era of pop studio recordings without using the typical computer-based short cuts and technological workarounds that have become de rigour for modern studio work. The end result is a triumph of song writing, musicianship and integrity, highlighting just how good humble songs can be without the need for following trends or to be striving to be the next big thing.

My opinion of Edward Ka-Spel has undergone a dramatic overhaul over the last few years, as the last several albums that I have heard have all floored me with at least one song (often more).  While he has been admirably devoted to making weird, uncompromising psychedelia for more than 30 years, he seems to be making some of the best and most disturbing music of his career right now (as evidenced here).  That is not to say that he has become dramatically less indulgent or difficult (unlikely to ever occur), but the high points of Ghost Logik are truly mesmerizing, haunting, and unique.

The worlds of dance and experimental guitar music rarely intersect (for good reason, probably), but the artistic director of Australia's Chunky Move company had a wild enough imagination to bring Ambarchi and abstract electronics maniac Robin Fox together to compose this soundtrack.  In many ways, that gamble paid off handsomely, as Connected is surprisingly inventive, challenging, and divergent (and no doubt inspired some very unusual choreography).  As a purely audio experience, however, it is pretty tame and comparatively characterless by either artist's normal standards.

Despite knowing Ulrich Krieger from a number of recordings, this is the first time I have heard one of his own compositions. Based on his work with Phill Niblock, Steve Reich and Zeitkratzer, I am not surprised by the form of Fathom (long tones, deliberate use of dynamics and a geological approach to timing) but I am surprised at how he has managed to take all his previous experience and influences and craft a truly original piece of music.

Minneapolis' favorite sons (and daughters), mostly led by Emil Hagstrom and Matt Bacon, have been cranking out releases since the mid 1990s. While they've shared releases with sleaze noise kings Macronympha and Japan's master of sterile sound art Aube, they've never shied away from a healthy dose of absurdity and insanity, and on this messy, sprawling 99 track album, they allow it to fully devour them and revel in it. As much parody as heartfelt tribute to their influences, this is an unabashedly fun album.

This is the first ever release for the new Editions Mego imprint curated by Emeralds' John Elliott and it is an extremely auspicious start.  Fabric is the guise of Chicago's Matthew Mullane and this is his first major release under that moniker, though he has previously surfaced on a number of limited releases as both Fabric and his own name. He describes himself primarily as a guitarist and "computerist," however A Form of Radiance is a wonderfully spacey, endlessly pulsing bedroom synth epic...that may or may not have been created using actual synthesizers.  Mullane's methods are inscrutable.

This extremely minimalist album of high-concept drone was composed as the soundtrack for a Michael Azar play about the life of one of the most iconic tortured artists in history: poet Arthur Rimbaud.  The actual music seems to have been secondary to the cleverness, veracity, and thematic consistency of the process, which I find both problematic and intriguing. That particular aesthetic often makes for an underwhelming and difficult listening experience, but Harar can sometimes be perversely mesmerizing in its simplicity too.

This Norwegian duo made a big splash in certain circles with their 2005 debut Pale Ravine, but their haunted, shadowy chamber drone held somewhat limited appeal for me.  While accomplished and unique, it was simply too cinematic and oppressively dark: whenever it was on, I felt like I was either trapped in a very slow-moving and somberly brooding art film or attending a witch-burning (both feelings that I generally do not actively seek out).  On this, their long-awaited follow-up, Deaf Center’s sound has become a bit more substantial musically and a bit less narrow mood-wise.  Also, they toned down the bombast and recorded in an actual studio.  All of that tweaking has cumulatively resulted in a significantly more gratifying album.

In one way, this 7" is a departure from C Spencer Yeh’s lovely, wild, textured, drone experiments as Burning Star Core and from his work with everyone from Comets on Fire and Tony Conrad to John Sinclair. Yet, these two engaging songs, with their satisfyingly oblique lyrics, also confirm his interest in the human voice and in the studio as a compositional tool.

Since parting from Kranky after 2002's Trust, Low have been at a crossroads. Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker, the band's guiding lights, have experimented with Low's blueprint, slipping into costume as a proper rock band on The Great Destroyer, then deconstructing that sound on Drums and Guns. Both are littered with great songs, but sound restless and unfocused in contrast with Low's previous work—the distinctive, low-key beauty that had drawn me into their world was often missing, at odds with their forays into dissonance and distortion. For their third Sub Pop album, Low have discovered a wonderful middle ground, merging the simplicity of their early recordings with the scaled-up production of their last two albums.

Scott Ferguson has a unique voice. Of course, like fingerprints, every voice is unique to a degree. But Scott has found his voice, and conformed it to his introspectral lyrics. Whether it is hiding submerged beneath the shadows of etheric guitar work, or rising triumphant into the light above the steady tambourine pulse and murmur of electronics, the experience is haunting. Listening to this succinct EP is like brushing up with a ghost in the haunted Midwest landscape. While the machines of industry may be dead or dying, something invisible still moves among their rusted skeletons, in the empty homes. And now I can hear them.

The mysterious Burial had the jump on everyone in dubstep this year, delivering the burgeoning underground scene's most anticipated artist album months in advance of anyone else.  However, based on the virulent virility of Skream's unpretentious, nearly eponymous debut, I suspect I, and many others, will be more inclined to listen to this album far more regularly.

The primitive sounding blues being played on White Man at the Door is similar to Tom Waits or Nick Cave’s early excursions with The Bad Seeds. The Lost Domain never match those artists for power and originality but like those artists they do give modern blues playing a swift kick. It is the dark mythological blues that only came into existence when white people came onto the scene (something that is alluded to in the title of the album), something that has been done to death but can still provide the odd surprise. By no means is this a masterpiece but this album at least had some life as the band puts their own spin on the blues.

With the name Hulk and a sleeve color of an angry Bruce Banner I was expecting this album to be muscular and dominating but instead it is subdued and peaceful. The title of the album is apt, as there is a serene, supernatural feeling permeating the recordings. It is sad yet deeply comforting music.

Like all great seven inch releases, this Volcano the Bear disc crams a few of this band’s multiple facets into one value for money package. These three utterly independent cuts highlight a band that never seems to settle into a style, even within the constraints of a single piece of music.