This was never one of my favorite EN records.  It followed the near perfect Tabula Rasa and at its center was the dreadfully too-long "NNNAAAMMM," which kept it from getting regular front-to-back plays in my house.  But now upon revisiting the album due to its reissue, I'm surprised at how many of my favorite EN songs come from this underappreciated gem.

Former Black Dice member Eric Copeland has set out on his own off late, forging a highly unique sound that draws lines between pop, hip-hop, experimental and dance modes into an entrancing discourse on contemporary music culture. This, his second solo outing, further traces this at once nostalgic and futuristic musical approach ever deeper into the spaceways.

Brock Van Wey's Echospace debut is the first album to be released under his own name, but its content will not surprise anyone familiar with his previous ambient work as BVDub.  It probably won't surprise anyone that this is a great album either: so much so, in fact, that Echospace head Stephen Hitchell was inspired to make an accompanying bonus album of his own reinterpretations.  In this case it works, but I sure hope that does not become standard industry practice.

Ethan's third full-length takes inspiration from a roller rink and a Wurlitzer organ. Immersing himself in playing and repairing the pipe organ informs his updated sound manipulations with feeling for the older technology and balances melody with free-form flights. Oaks is alluring, impressionistic music that may prove to be a portal for those who have previously found such realms cold, shapeless and uninviting.    

The Sinking of the Titanic is a piece of music that is a lot more than notes arranged in a certain order. It is the perfect marriage of conceptual art, music and raw emotion. In this reissue of a 1990 performance (originally on Les Disques du Crépuscule), the conceptual side of the piece comes to the fore as Gavin Bryars and his ensemble perform in a water tower and push the piece for the first time well beyond the constraints of previous performances.

Mev 40 is an essential listening experience. The four discs of this set bring together eight tracks from seven performances spanning 40 years of Musica Elettronica Viva’s activity, from 1967 through 2007. In 1966 musical ideas were flowering in America and Europe. As American expatriates living in Rome they were steeped in the classical New Music scenes happening on each side of the Atlantic, as well the heavy spell cast by Free Jazz. Musica Elettronica Viva was a new hybrid that blossomed out of that fecund sound pool. Within their songs can be heard a zeitgeist that not only spans the decades, but an inclusive and intuitive impulse whose periphery extends far beyond the group and deep into audio culture at large.

A reissue of a legendary private press Brazilian psych record, this disc represents a welcome document of this too rarely heard classic. With a mellow fusing of psych, folk and plain great songwriting, the album provides a number of instantly memorable sides with subtle and pleasing idiosyncrasies keeping them afloat.

Since establishing their own small-run label to release their work, the duo behind Sutcliffe Jugend and Bodychoke have become extremely prolific, releasing multiple projects this year alone.  While to some this could seem excessive and overindulgent, each release from Kevin Tomkins and Paul Taylor (as well as joint releases) have taken entirely different directions.  These two releases are both vastly different:  Loss is mostly just vocals and guitar (recorded over the span of two days), while Vocal Sound Collage is exactly what the title indicates.

Along with the likes of label mates (and fellow Chicagoans) Locrian, The Golden Sores have taken a modernized approach to drone, away from the traditional academia of La Monte Young and the like, but also diverging from the metal leanings of Sunn O))) into its own realm of ambience and electronic sensibilities.

Between his roles as both filmmaker and Fonal Records head, Sami Sanpakkila has somehow managed to find time to produce this, his fifth album of solo material under the Es moniker. Citing Pekka Streng's "Kesamaa" as its impetus makes sense considering the immediately nostalgic summer feel of the record, though Es' eyes are set on a much more distant and ethereal horizon than Streng's song-based structures.

Cocteau Twins founder and indie guitar demi-god Robin Guthrie has always been both reliable and respectable (musically, anyway), but seldom surprising.  The pleasant and elegant dreampop instrumentals of Angel Falls do not waver from this trend.  However, they don't indicate any declining quality in his singular soundscape wizardry either.

Helen Scarsdale founder, sound installation artist, and mega-collaborator extraordinaire Jim Haynes claims that his work involves the process of rusting. More specifically, the sounds he makes connote the suffocating grip of decay and the passage of time. On Sever Haynes marries that focus to the creation of dystopian worlds and crippled environments, creating a convincing and uncomfortable environment of his own as he proceeds.

This album is yet another fine testament to the French composer’s genius; these pieces have bucketloads of creativity and depth to them despite being shelved for well over 20 years. Composed between 1982 and 1984, the first piece showcases Ferrari’s interest in tape collage work and sampling whereas the second piece is one of his less than traditional compositions for a traditional ensemble.

First issued as a cassette-only release in 1995 with a variety of different names (ranging from Eyeless Fabrication to Eat Fuck), this long-unavailable early gem from Seattle’s beloved lo-fi sound collage weirdos is now available once again (in the decidedly more prestigious format of vinyl).

A supergroup of sorts, Risil is the moniker for a series of collaborations between a slew of musicians which include Guillermo Herren of Prefuse 73 and Savath & Savalas, Zach Hill of Hella, Tyondai Braxton of Battles and John McEntire of Tortoise. Over the course of some time, the collaboration resulted in enough material to culminate in this, the first of three volumes to comprise the evolving casts' output.

First released in 1986 on Torso, this enduringly bizarre collage of kaleidoscopic surrealism has now been reissued with the original cover art.  More than two decades later, it still stands as one of the clear highlights of Stephen Stapleton’s singularly daunting and mountainous discography.

Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of the solo project of Kemialliset Ystavat frontman and respected Finn Jan Anderzen. This reissue finds Anderzen further pursuing his deranged and chaotic sound worlds, albeit on a much smaller, more intimate scale than with his better known group. Almost childlike in its playfulness, the album is a rich and colorful affair that will have heads spinning with delightful sensory overload.

Somehow managing to simultaneously cover krautrock, black metal, noise, and post-rock, this trio's second full length album is somewhat of a departure from the largely drone oriented URSK series on Utech, yet keeps enough of that ethos and ambience to not seem out of place, but stands out as a more metallic shard amidst the warm murkiness.

After a few limited digital releases, this 23 year old Polish composer has released two albums near each other temporally, and while both focus on pure, gliding tones, Let’s Make… emphasizes the more digital and static elements of his sound, while Painting Sky Together leans more towards his fondness for simple tones and field recordings.

Thomas Meluch's music is always thick with atmosphere and always utilizes textured or ambient sounds, but seeing him live was a surprise. Bathed in steaming noise, Benoît Pioulard's performance in Boston was a psychedelic jam that heavily favored his abstract side. The two 7" records he had with him on that tour provide a sense of just how diverse an artist he is and one of them has me excited about the prospects of a Benoît Pioulard noise record.