Kevin Tomkins is probably always going to be known for his tenure in the early (and some would say best) incarnation of Whitehouse, closely followed by his power electronics project Sutcliffe Jugend and the rock-oriented Bodychoke.  This first solo outing from him completely defies expectations, being based only on sounds generated by an autoharp.

Presenting a whopping 24 tracks in just over 45 minutes, this album is exactly what it says it is: a series of drone works the titles of which indicate the digital works' file type, size, bitrate and other pieces of information. If this sounds like a disjointed mess however—and you couldn't be blamed if the quantity and brevity of the material suggested as much—don't be fooled. This is an extended work whose whole is simply attained through the slight differences afforded by so many partitions.

An hour of mostly solo cornet played in a French monastery might seem a strict challenge. And that's the point here as Rob Mazurek battles his more extreme urges on 11 compositions recorded at Fontevraud l'Abbaye and dedicated to the controversial Robert D'Arbrissel who founded it in 1099.

Campbell Kneale may longer be known as Birchville Cat Motel, but he certainly has not stopped making abrasive, nightmarish music. Surprisingly, curating a Prince tribute album (Shutupalreadydamn!) has failed to translate into a funkier, sexier Neale. Stillborn Plague Angels is exactly the sort of album that Satan would make if he had the time and inclination to start a noise band.

Italian mutant jazz-metal no-wavers Zu have been plying their bludgeoning trade in the underground for a decade, but it seems that they are finally receiving some widespread attention now that they are signed to Mike Patton's Ipecac label.  In the past, they have collaborated with a staggering and varied array of folks, ranging from free jazz icons to members of Can, The Stooges, the Ex, Sonic Youth, and Dälek.  On Carboniferous, they largely opt to go it alone, although Mike Patton and King Buzzo make somewhat dubious contributions.

Over ten years after the last of these tracks were recorded the members of Fridge have selected their favorite songs from their slew of releases on Output Recordings, the label that first championed them. Luckily they turned out to be my favorites as well. With headphones on and 80 minutes of their choicest cuts cued up, it is hard to be unhappy. The relentless pace Fridge showed, in both their rhythms and sheer number of songs recorded over a two year period, would exhaust the creative energies of many musicians. They were just getting warmed up. Listening back, after a decade of new developments and notable side projects, we can trace the trajectory they have followed, and hear within these songs, many points of origin.

Led by Dave Heumann, Arbouretum doesn't beat around the bush. Out of the gate they make it very clear exactly what rock 'n' roll means to them: huge melodies, rolling rhythms, noisy solos, and few introspective moments for good measure. Over eight concise songs, the band wrings the guitar for everything its worth and then some.

Consisting of only seven spare pieces lasting just over 25 minutes in length, Tenniscoats find themselves having to make a lot out of a little on this disc. That the duo of Saya and Ueno are displaced from their Tokyo home base and immersed in the Amazon rainforest for a series of essentially live recordings seems as though it would leave even less room for error. Yet this distillation results in a poignant intimacy that seeks and finds its own niche in the realm of location-based music interactions.

Done right, calypso conveys succinct unpretentious pleasure. In the wrong hands, though, it can be murderously bad. Thankfully, there is no over production or lyrical inanity to interfere with the simple, timeless enjoyment of this consistent collection from 1950s West Africa.

 

Jarboe is an artist that is very much at the mercy of her collaborators; a strong band behind her and she flourishes but accompanied by a weaker artist she flounders. This has made for a patchy career, the dizzying power of her performances with Swans has not been a constant presence in her work but in recent years her work with Neurosis and Larsen has shown that her drive is still there. Her latest album sees her play with a group that can be every bit as crushing as any other modern metal band and also allow Jarboe’s softer side to shine through.

On the cover of his latest album Will Oldham's portrait looks more like a bare skull than a human head, the sleeve is reminiscent of Neil Young's Tonight's the Night. Because of this grim cover and the album's portentous title I was expecting a much darker affair, but this is anything but dark. Oldham has sketched out a country album that has far more in common with the cheerier parts of Young’s Nashville recordings. Employing over a dozen musicians for these sessions, Oldham has made his slickest album yet but without sacrificing the soul of his music.

When did anything slow, dark, and covered in reverb become "doom"?  Perhaps it is the fault of those Sunn O))) kids, but in my day we called this dark ambient, and we wore onions on our belts and walked to school up hill, both ways.  This "doom" album definitely has the darkness and bleak sounds that characterize the genre (and dark ambient as well), and being a Norwegian project, there’s even more darkness.  The problem is, for all its miasma and drone, it isn’t functionally different than a lot of other projects that tread similar sludgy, opaque waters.

Bryn Jones had a work ethic that verged on frightening and supernatural. Despite his death at the relatively young age of 38, he managed to complete over 90 albums (not counting reissues). Unsurprisingly, the handful of hapless record labels that supported him during his life could not possibly keep up with the deluge of material that he continuously submitted. As a result, Muslimgauze continues to be one of the most prolific entities in music, despite the fact that its sole member has been dead for a decade now. Much more striking is the fact that the vaults still contain some great and fully realized material.

While I do not have any particular animosity towards Deerhunter, I've always felt that the enthusiasm they generate seems to be disproportionate to the quality of their music.  Consequently, my expectations for guitarist Lockett Pundt's Lotus Plaza solo project were not especially high.  I turned out to be pleasantly surprised though. He has managed to produce a couple of memorably warm and artfully blurred pop gems here.  I suppose I owe him an apology, but first he has to apologize for sabotaging his debut album with so much filler.

Mick Flower and Chris Corsano are no newcomers to the world of freely improvised music, and their numerous accolades more than summarize their collective achievements. Yet the two musicians play in such a broad spectrum of situations that sometimes it is difficult to tell just what the core of their sound is. On their second full length as a duo however, they are stripped of any external distractions in favor of head-to-head improvisational conversations, a setting that both thrive in.

In the seemingly endless discography of Muslimgauze, sometimes it's tough to know where to start or, even worse, where to end. Bryn Jones produced so much music during his sadly shortened life that sifting through it all can feel more like an archival endeavor than a journey into the mind of one of the most impressive and singular electronic musicians of his time. This disc, part of an archive series collecting various shelved projects from Jones, demonstrates simultaneously the depth and the prolific compulsions of the electro-genius.

It is doubtful whether a majority of today's current crop of laptop musicians would recognize the name of Lejaren Hiller (1924-1994). It is however, certain, that he was a key figure in the genesis of computer music. A lifelong student of music who was a chemist by profession, he succeeded in bridging the gap between scientific inquiry and the world of sound. After working for Dupont he joined the faculty at the University of Illinois where his research involved the Iliac 1, the first computer to be owned by an academic institution. He realized that the chemical probability processes he was investigating could be applied to music, resulting in the first composition to be written with the aid of a computer, much to the ire of the 1958 musical establishment.

For his first release on Raster-Noton, Atom™ (aka Senor Coconut, Atom Heart, Uwe Schmidt, etc.) has created an album that does not necessarily clash with the label’s aesthetic, but takes a different direction that is much more classical in feel:  just as the album’s packaging resembles an old book more than the traditional cold, sterile art R-N are known for, the music within has the same feel, along with input from Kraftwerk’s Florian Schneider.

Working at the crossroads between a variety of contradictory approaches—electronic and acoustic, improvisation and composition, producer and performer—Kevin Micka continues to hone his Animal Hospital project's refined explorations on this disc, compounding his broad and considerable talents into a majestic grit that shimmers with supple detail.

The fourth album by French composer Pierre-Yves Macé is an exceedingly high-concept affair with very intriguing source material.  Passagenweg is inspired by philosopher Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project, which was an unfinished attempt to chronicle Parisian industrial modernity.  Mace, whose thematic consistency is laudable, constructs this lengthy musique concrete opus largely from crackling gramophone recordings of French popular music from the early twentieth century.