On this first release in nearly 2 years, Finnish artist Sasu Ripatti allows a greater amount of his former life as a jazz drummer to enter the fray, offsetting the digital ambience and chaos of his work with a greater sense of the organic, bringing with him Lucio Capece on reeds and Craig Armstrong on piano. The result isn’t quite the jazz trio sound the lineup would suggest but certainly a more natural sound than other releases in the Delay discography.

The duo of Susanna Wallumrød and Morten Qvenild are finally back with a new album but with some disconcerting stylistic changes.  While there are still a handful of excellent songs strewn about, the "magical" moments are now locked in a mortal struggle with "early Sarah McLachlan-esque" ones (made infinitely more confusing and improbable by the production involvement of Deathprod's Helge Sten).  I fear for where this project is headed.

Christina Carter's music has been compared to Jandek's lately, but that analogy goes only so far in describing what she does. Her style is bare and equally ghostly, but unlike her Texan brother's output, Carter's music on Lace Heart is immediately approachable and tranquil. Each song is a sigh of yearning and contemplation but the hypnotic strumming of her guitar and the power of her voice generate a heavy and sensuous undertow.

Just 21 years old at the time of this recording, this preternaturally gifted Aussie composer has unleashed a striking and assured debut that draws upon influences from somewhat “difficult” modern classicists such as George Crumb and Alfred Schnittke. Unexpectedly, however, Gardiner largely eschews the complexity and overt experimentation of his precursors in favor of pared-down elegance and melodic simplicity (albeit with some darkly dissonant harmonies).

This sprawling, oft-fascinating limited edition double album of live collaborations features some rather surprising detours from Erik Carlson's previous work.  As all of the pieces were composed specifically for performances at Providence's Cormack Planetarium, most of those detours lead towards some appropriately space music and krautrock-influenced places.  Carlson, ably assisted by an array of like-minded experimentalists, seems quite at home outside the confines of his usual sound and continues his recent string of impressive albums.

This release collects two songs from a 2007 collaboration between two of the most prolific and unique artists to emerge from the doom metal milieu.  That union, needless to say, held (and holds) enormous potential.  While this is not the absolute monster of an album that I had hoped it would be, many flashes of brilliance and inspiration still manage to burst through the slow-motion, shambling doomfest that resulted.

Retaining the sense of minimalism and drone that the label has put itself at the forefront of, Horseback forgoes the dark creaky sounds and quiet moments to instead crank up the amps into full on stoner rock mode.  Sticking to repeated mantras of Sabbath inspired grind, there is a sort of kinship to the likes of Loop and Spacemen 3 in approach, even if the sound is much different.

Justin Broadrick had previously stated that this album was going to be a return of the more "organic" Jesu sound, and compared to everything since Conqueror, it by far is.  Consisting of a single 18 minute piece, Infinity feels much more in league with some of the more melancholy Godflesh work, and especially the first Heart Ache EP.  Any naysayers that say the man has gone soft won't feel the same way after this one.

Matt Elliott is an expert at covering his music in melancholic dross. This approach is very fitting for Failing Songs, as the subjects explored through his lyrics are not the most uplifting. Furthermore the instruments used have piquant old world flavor, recalling a time when extended families relied on making music together as a way of escaping the dreariness of life. These songs of failure focus on humanities shortcomings and the steady downward decline of civilization. It's perfect for a time when the evidence of human failure is everywhere to be seen.

On cool summer mornings along the Pacific, clouds will roll in from the sea and blot out the sun, suffusing the land with a luminous gloom. Like an overcast day, Desolation Wilderness envelopes the listener by obscuring the outside world. In New Universe, the group blends a wide range of instruments and voices into wavelike masses of hazy rock and roll, evoking the loneliness and grandeur of a deserted coastal highway.

The first time needle was laid to wax on a hot side of jazz, there was certain to be faces frozen in the pulsations and perversions emitted from the victrola funnel. How was one to dance to such syncopated cacophony, let alone find relaxation and good dinner conversation? Of course, evolution does the dirty work for progressive thinker, weeding out the fearsome and strengthening the adventurous. As jazz grew and transformed out of Chicago speakeasies and Mississippi Delta juke joints, it found a larger audience ready for the challenge of gyrating brass and nimble fingers. It’s from this grand tradition that guitarist Eyal Maoz and drummer Asaf Sirkis mold Elementary Dialogues—an album rich in tradition and yet no regard for it.

It may not be an earth-shattering concept to go analog, but this is not your average take on the idea either. Presenting one nearly hour-long track, there is plenty of room here for this Russian artist to sprawl out and develop ideas, but Alexey, the project's sole protagonist, seems to feel little need for sticking to anything, instead bobbing around from idea to idea with fluid and exciting ease. Pulling from as many realms as he can and synthesizing them into one bombastic go of it this is, as the title enthusiastically suggests, timeless stuff that could just as well be some odd Soviet new-wave experimental excursion as it could be the basis of future beat culture worldwide. If only...

When I first encountered some of the experimental music coming from China, I was intimidated by the amount of people involved. Additionally, the presence of severe language barriers made tracking this stuff down a difficult challenge. The occasional CD-R, some online sources, and the remarkable Buddha Machine have let me dip my toe into this expanse of sound but a toe-dipping was where I had to halt. Thankfully, this anthology compiled by Chinese noise stalwart Dickson Dee has allowed for a massive insight into China’s music underground.

On his fourth solo album for the label, one half of Pan Sonic passes on the bare minimalist techno pulse of that band, as well as his own Ø side project, and instead focuses on pure electronic sound that has all of the austerity of an art gallery installation with Dadaist sound cutups and a comfort in drifting into painful noise, as well as near silent sonic territory.

It's rare for a remix to match an original, but then this isn't your standard remix. The setup being as it is, with Altz remixing the entirety of Roland P. Young's free/spiritual jazz classic "Isophonic Boogie Woogie," this is a more intimate affair, less based on creating new beats to old material than it is with providing an entirely new and updated look at an old classic. This is dangerous territory, but Altz is wise enough to let the original material take the fore. Sometimes this leaves a nagging desire for the original, but it does remain an interesting listen that reveals elements of the original not necessarily viewed so easily.

Whether paired with Taylor Richardson (Infinity Window) or solo (Oneohtrix Point Never), Daniel Lopatin rarely strays from the world of science fiction. Each synthesized note; each string of composition; each fractured note a piece of a world once brought to us by Carl Sagan and Leonard Nimoy. Zones Without People continues to explore the vast virginal openness that is space—and like the atmosphere he deftly reproduces in sound, Lopatin's boundaries are always contracting and expanding to create music for all beings of the universe.

This endearingly odd, gutsy, and oft-surprising compilation unearths 16 long-forgotten and hard-to-find singer/songwriter gems from the '60s and early '70s.  While most of the songs superficially could be labeled as "folk," there is very little here that could be considered formulaic, commercial, or uninspired.  For better or worse, these idiosyncratic and intense young women followed their muses down some pretty bizarre paths: some haunting, some beautiful, some crazy, and some just utterly mystifying.

Every great once in awhile an album comes along that completely blows me away. This is one of them. Within the first few chords of the opening song I can feel Overloaded Ark singing in my bones. It is an album that reminds me of the power music has for elevating the mind and spirit. When listening to these songs it is hard to be unmoved and unhappy. Overloaded Ark is rapture made audible, joy stirred by a resonant interplay of voice and strings, a pure sonorous ecstasy.

While initially I thought that Luminous Night was a weak follow up to 2007’s Shelter from the Ash, it is obvious from repeated listening sessions that this album is a much more complicated and layered work than Ben Chasny’s previous album. The rich musical tapestry that his group has created here sounds timeless; that inimitable mix of rock, traditional and atmospheric music that sets Chasny and his companions apart from other bands.

Issued earlier this year as an LP, the latest Final album is rereleased digitally with almost an entire second album’s worth of alternate mixes that combine the strongest moments of Justin Broadrick’s long-standing side project into a single work.  It meshes the dark, moody ambience of his discography with the more recently resurrected love of dirty noise into 80 minutes of melancholy melody and speaker shredding squall.