This ensemble, named after a region of northern Africa located west of the Nile in ancient history, fuses jazz, rock and Middle Eastern traditional music to great effect (and never becomes tacky jazz fusion). The group is under the supervision of Sam Shalabi who, despite a large recorded output, has outdone himself on this album. Recruiting what seems like everyone in Montréal to play, what might have been a project too big to effectively handle has instead blossomed into the best album of the year so far.

While I am not generally one to categorically dismiss entire genres of music, my interest in black metal has historically been for the wrong reasons (I am amused by things that are cartoonishly evil).  Despite my love for extreme music, I feel I have to draw the line at corpse-painted adults operatically shrieking about Satan or hobbits.  Wolves In The Throne Room, however, are not ridiculous.  In fact, they are kind of absolutely amazing. 

With a slew of recent releases on homespun label luminaries such as Housecraft, Tape Drift, Peasant Magik and now Stunned, France's Enfer Boreal (aka Maxime Primault) has been hard to ignore of late. That he is partaking in Stunned's glorious first anniversary run is testament to the successes of both parties this past year and to honor it he releases one his best yet, a moist and brittle set of drones which far outshine the too often pallid results achieved by less finely attuned tacklers of texture.

Some music is better left on a MySpace page. Record labels could do the Earth a favor by not wasting its valuable petroleum supply on sub-par CDs like this. To be fair, Robot vs. Zombie is available as a download from iTunes and other digital distributors, but to put it on your computer might compromise valuable hard drive space.

Tim Hecker's music is physical and concussive, but its effects radiate on a different level and manipulate something more primal than flesh alone. For close to an hour the music on this disc invades and purges the human core with vibrating melodies and crashing distortion: An Imaginary Country features Hecker doing what he does best.

As the second part of a planned five volume series, Carsten Nicolai chose to draw in more contemporary artists' music to collapse and rebuild, compared to the more classically influenced first disc.  Here he takes the likes of Stephen O'Malley, Michael Nyman, and Ryuichi Sakamoto as his starting point, but uses their work to bleak soundscapes that eschews the clicks & blip minimal techno Raster-Noton usually thrives on and instead is a darker, ambient set of pieces.

Representing the first quartet effort of a series of musicians who have long been in association with one another—most often in duet settings—this debut effectively mixes a variety of contemporary musical tactics into a unique and accomplished stylistic melting pot. While too many efforts that take on this broad a range of material lack in depth however, this quartet has the chops to pull it off without losing its spirit of adventure.

Samuli Tanner has a suspicious and inscrutable way of doing things.  Most notably, the band name, album title, and cover art here are all suggestive of ugly, misanthropic scuzz rock (definitely not oddball hip-hop influenced experimentalism from Finland).  Then the album opens fairly straightforwardly (for about 30 seconds anyway), before quickly plunging down a rabbit hole of splintered surrealism.  Also, this album is only one very long track, unless you buy it from him on tour, in which case it is 27 extremely short ones.  Many of the tracks have police-themed titles, but I'll be damned if I can decipher any sort of thematic relation to the music.  I am decidedly flummoxed.

The collage of two headed cats, tigers and smiling trees on the cover of this album sums up the merriment contained in the music within. It is exciting from the opening seconds and engaging to the end, I have been getting more pleasure from this album than I had been expecting. Although song-orientated, the pieces meander and are allowed to expand without becoming self-indulgent or overbearing. The band is pared down to a trio here and as a result the music is full, strong and, in refute of the album's title, uncomplicated.

This live album was recorded at Faust’s own Avant Garde Festival at Schiphorst and is intended as a fundraiser for this year’s event. Although not the sharpest recording, the band is on form on this recording and give a powerful performance. A heavy mix of improvised jamming and fan favourites, this is an enjoyable and exciting live document. Also included is a live cut from Nurse With Wound at the same festival, icing on an already sweet cake.

Released way back in the earlier part of 2008, I stupidly skipped over this improved reissue of a scarce and rarely discussed entry in the ever-expanding Nadja discography. Aidan Baker and Leah Buckareff rearranged and re-recorded each song for this release, which is easily one of their most listenable and memorable releases to date.

This dubwise sideproject from the established Ninja Tunesmith seditiously defects from the singer-songwriter's last album under his primary Fink moniker.  Yet unlike the icy-hot textures crafted by current kings of the sound Rod Modell and Stephen Hitchell, Fin Greenall's approach curves away from deep space revisionism while skewing more towards Rhythm & Sound's rootsy reverence.

Austin, Texas's Balmorhea have garnered a quite a bit of well-deserved praise for their earlier work (Pitchfork managed to inexplicably compare their previous album to both Keith Jarrett and Arvo Part), but that did not deter them from making some very substantial changes to their sound.  All Is Wild, All Is Silent is the folky chamber music sextet's first recording with a drummer and stand-up bassist. Notably, it sounds absolutely nothing like Arvo Part.  I'm afraid something has gone dreadfully wrong somewhere.

On her fourth full-length album, Marissa Nadler takes a conscious step away from the folk purity of her earlier work, filling out her sound with full band arrangements featuring drums, bass guitar, and keyboards. The gamble pays off handsomely, and the indie-folk pinup girl and mistress of the murder ballad delivers one of her finest albums yet.

While most of the recent releases from Tietchens have been Die Stadt’s archival releases and a few collaborations, this is his first full vinyl album in quite some time.  As expected, it is a carefully nuanced series of pieces that fully reflects his clinical, yet inviting and engaging, take on abstract composition and sound art.

While she has already built up an impressive discography in collaborations with other artists, this is her first solo CD.  This wouldn't be apparent from listening, because there is a great deal of maturity in the composition and structure of the two tracks that make up this album.  Alternatingly chaotic and rhythmic, there is a lot going on in this complex disc.

While the 2009 musical landscape is teeming with C86 and new wave revivalists, none do it quite as well as The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart.  Although they have been compared to a staggering number of disparate hipster touchstones (I personally think they sound most like a ballsier Field Mice), their youthful exuberance and melodic sense gives them a freshness that often transcends and surpasses their influences.

Industrial-damaged dirge-metalers Gnaw promise to be "as ugly as sound can get" and they inarguably deliver on that.  This Face is a visceral, bilious, crawling, throat-shredding mangled nightmare of an album.  Their singular devotion to being unpleasant deserves respect and admiration.

If I didn't know better, I would swear that Mono hail from Viking territory. Their latest full length conjures up scenes of great Norse ships sailing through the fog past coastal villages that have been set ablaze.

Few sounds are as exhausting and as exhilarating as the voice of Carey Mercer. Whether with Frog Eyes, with myriad other projects, or solo, he conveys joy and bitterness, anger and bliss, with an allure and conviction few can equal.