Words like armageddon and visionary get tossed about around David Tibet (for good reason) but with this latest album, these words seem too small and meek. As hinted on Black Ships Ate the Sky and the split EP with Om, David Tibet has embraced a blistering rock aesthetic for his apocalyptic visions. Sounding as psychedelic as Of Ruine Or Some Blazing Starre or The Inmost Light trilogy, there is also a heaviness here not heard since the noisy tape loops of Current 93's embryonic period. Tibet sings of Aleph (an Adam-like character), murder, and destruction as a huge cast of musicians and vocalists create a backdrop worthy of his vision.

On their second album, Jordan McKenzie and Emi Honda have created a mesmerising experience somewhere between revolution and fairytale. It is difficult to place it accurately in any standard musical taxonomy but with elements of folk, world music and a fierce rock and roll spirit, Elfin Saddle have created some of the most stirring songs to enter my ears recently. From my glib description, they sound on paper to be yet another freak folk act with their own novelty but they are much more than that.

Taking a similar approach to the classic likes of Aube, Bionulor is billed as being focused exclusively on "sound recycling," or using only a single sample or sound as the basis for an entire piece.  As a self-imposed limitation this sometimes does keep the compositions to a Spartan minimum, yet just as often become a chaotic mess of layered sounds and effects.

A reissue of an extremely LP from 2007, with an extra 28 minute bonus track, Chain Shot is an accurate title for this extremely lo-fi disc of junky metal, violent raw frequencies, and the complete exploitation of analog technology.  Rather than being simply a blast of noise, it is instead a study of textures, as rough as they may be.

Perhaps one of the most remarkable things about Derek Bailey is that, despite having left this world over three years ago, he is still releasing albums of such high quality. Out of all his posthumous releases, there are few that feel like they are cashing in on his name now that he is not here to object. This latest album sees Bailey perform as part of a frankly spectacular ensemble; the music lives up to the album’s title as it swings from a gentle abstraction to an uncompromising and visceral pummelling.

James Blackshaw has released a number of introspective and genre-defying records since his debut on Digitalis Recordings. He has, however, saved his best work for his debut on Young God. With a couple of familiar Current 93 faces behind it, The Glass Bead Game exhibits Blackshaw's experimental preferences, but also showcases his strength as an emotive and able songwriter.

Brendan Burke and Fred Lonberg's quiet, unassuming debut on Flingco Sound flirts with the conventions of both glitch and chamber music, though it obviously favors the latter. Composed primarily of piano and cello performances, Over All of Spain... is a beautiful and mostly pastoral record fleshed out by the minimal use of samples, loops, and other odd sounds.

 

Kawabata Mokoto and his spacey pals have dispatched another communiqué of shambling kitchen-sink psychedelia from whatever mental place they currently inhabit.  As is often the case with this band, I am left scratching my head and wondering whether Kawabata is a genius or a charlatan (or both).

After an entire decade of incendiary live shows and roughly a billion releases of varying quality, this West Coast noise supergroup finally stepped into a (proper) recording studio.  Unsurprisingly, this new experience did little to diminish their spazzy, entropic intensity.

The duo of former Creation is Crucifixion members Ryan Unks and Nathan Berlinguette sure do present a grim outlook with this one. Combining their efforts, the two concoct an immense black hole on this, the moniker's second full-length (the first featured only Unks). Meshing dark ambient, metal and drone, the resultant sound is both apocalyptically shaded throughout, a detailed and dense look on the sounds of an end.

Considering the title, it appears guitarist Christopher Riggs has created a pretty big hole. Among a slew of young experimental musicians whose output often sees highly limited pressings, Riggs, an Oberlin Conservatory graduate, has been making his mark in groups such as Trauma (with Ben Hall and Hans Buetow) and a trio with Hall and Joe Morris. His solo output on numerous labels, including his own Holy Cheever Church Records, has been outstanding as well however, often pushing the brink of his instrument's assumed capacity beyond recognition.

Using shortwave radios to pull sounds out of the ether has been a longstanding tradition in experimental music. Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage were perhaps the first to explore this area, fascinated by the possibilities inherent in using the radio as an instrument. It is often left to a second generation of explorers to further develop the discoveries made by the first trail blazers. In 1982 William Basinski carved out his own territory in the worlds of shortwave sound with nothing more than a receiver and his trademark loops of tape. First released on Noton as an LP in 1997, it has been made available once again, this time on compact disc from Basinski’s own label.

The latest album from Daniel Padden's One Ensemble sees the group expand to a seven- piece, the extended line-up extending the range of the music in the process. The blurring of many folk styles with elements of improvisation should come as no surprise to those familiar with this group's previous output but the unexpected span of textures and focus of energy bring the music onto a new trajectory.

An extensive double disc collection documenting the output of six French tutees of Erik Satie and Jean Cocteau, this album is a near necessity in any cohesive understanding of France's musical environment in the interim between World Wars. Comprised of Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Germaine Tailleferre, Darius Milhaud and Francis Poulenc, "Les Six" forged an approach generally marked by spare concision, a response to the flowery output of the Romantic and Impressionist tendencies of composers such as Wagner and Debussy.

Chicago's Cave have returned with their distinct blend of momentum rock and it is, fittingly, their most fully realized disc yet. Tighter, funkier, spacier and more driving than anything they've done, this is the group at their best, concocting neo-Krautrock grooves that perfectly soundtrack the continued and colorful descent deeper into the new millennium.

Pimmon's Paul Gough has made a career out of constructing dense and complex ambient soundscapes. On this, his first full-length in five years, he shows no signs of rust and delivers a headphone album of striking depth and vibrancy.

Expanded to a duo, Boy In Static abandons its pleasantly derivative dream-pop, choosing something closer to the saccharine sweetness of Peter Bjorn and John—with uneven results.

Area C’s newest release borrows its theme from a passage in Claudius Aelian’s On The Characteristics of Animals (written around 200 AD); specifically one that states that doves can protect themselves from wizard attacks by using bay-tree shoots for their nests.  From the same book, I also learned that beavers often elude predators by chewing off their own testicles. I suppose I‘m digressing though. I should probably mention that this is an excellent album at some point.  I will find another forum for my ramblings about our delightful and industrious mammalian friends.

Despite having been recorded more than a decade ago with somewhat fledgling technology,  Jim's 2001 laptop masterpiece still sounds fresh and vibrant today.  That is no small accomplishment, given the avalanche of laptop-based improv works that followed in its wake. 

Conceptually being the audio equivalent of a cross-country drive through North America, this Danish artist combines the somewhat contradictory sonic elements of guitar amplifier hum and feedback with purely digital synthesized tones and rhythms to unique effect, creating a contrast that is not as stark as one would expect.