The title couldn't be more appropriate for this album:  the band's work has always seemed to come out of a smoky, hallucinogenic haze, and this collection of rare and unreleased tracks demonstrates this clearly.  The sound is an odd mix of 1960s psych tinged rock with some of the more current attention to drone and noise that works extremely well.

This 7" only release sees Andrew Liles form yet another collaborative unit, this time with Clodagh Simonds' wonderful (and ever changing) group. Established Fovea Hex approaches to song recur only to be almost completely dashed aside with new approaches to their work. That so much can happen on two shorts sides of vinyl is not very surprising considering how epic Simonds' previous EPs with her group have been. With Liles' sonic alchemy, the results are breathtaking.

This latest album by one of the greatest living singers is a celebration of the damned by the damned. It stands out in stark contrast to her more usual themes, a smirk and a wink to co- conspirators instead of the damning finger of accusation or cry for those who never got a chance to cry out. This change of tact makes Guilty Guilty Guilty one of her more instantly listenable albums. Instead of working myself up to listening to an hour or two of dejected misery, this is a far more accessible voyage through some of the not so dark ballads in Galás' songbook.

Czech psych group Seven That Spells add Acid Mother Makoto Kawabata into their fold for an album that sounds almost exactly like an Acid Mothers record. Be that as it may, it is still a high-quality recording that holds its own against some of that band's better material.

Excepter's fourth album seems like an obnoxious mess at first, but repeated listens reveal patterns in the chaos. Using deceptively simplistic beats, electronics, swimming voices, and even a bass clarinet for good measure, they add rich textures to uneasy rhythms for music that is ridiculously addictive.

The Trunk label rescues from extinction Vernon Elliot's composition for two 1960s children's TV shows: the charming Ivor The Engine and the decidedly surreal Pogles Wood.

E.E and The Owl Archimedes love dancing to death... literally. Adoringly these two sculptors have put one of the world's most-revered tunes to the chopping block and, by virtue of its eradication, developed a new spectrum of radiant sounds and mutant un-rhythms to enjoy. This is a requiem for the dancing queen, who in death sounds as marvelous as she did in life.

This rare second album from the band gets new life, five extra bonus tracks, and a bit wider recognition on its reissue on Tzadik (on the "Fullforce Composer Series," seriously John, is there a series to go along with every album you release?).  All kidding aside, that is a pretty good description of the style presented here.  Shards of metal, hardcore punk, jazz, and the avant garde all come together here, somehow as a congealed package.

By all accounts this is a metal album.  From the dark, lo-fi black-and-white artwork, gore-ified fonts and titles, I expected some form of death or black metal, and I was pretty much right on target.  Now, knowing the label that put this out, I assumed it couldn't be just any generic metal album, because Alien8 is known for leaning towards the experimental.

Son Lux, otherwise known as Ryan Lott, hails originally from Denver and is now based in New York. Here he presents us with his debut CD of 11 exquisitely styled and crafted slow-burn songs, a pleasing marriage of lean classicalism with trip- and hip-hop beats, and the whole flavored with a distinctly otherworldly ambience. Only three months into 2008 and I have already come across a possible contender for best of year.

27 has quietly become one of my favorite bands over the last few years and their latest album is the perfect explanation for why that is. I'm an unashamed fan of pop music, and I am thankful that there is a band like 27 that continues to offer a reason to love hooks, lyrics, and songs.

Italy's Alessandro Tedeschi (the man behind both the ambient Netherworld outfit and Glacial Movements) seems to be waging a one-man campaign through his label to make us aware of the fragility of the icy snowbound environments situated at both poles of our planet. This release, by fellow Italian ambient artist Oöphoi (Gianluigi Gasparetti), is the label's fourth foray and steadfastly continues the tradition set by the previous three in bringing  extended and hauntingly crystalline sound explorations of these threatened environments.

Taking for the name of her band the title of her previous album, Carla Bozulich's latest broadcast is as unsettling as it is beautiful. Crushing No Wave-style rhythms sit beside milder, contemplative songs; the contrasts making for an album that in lesser hands could end up sounding disjointed and fragmented but, thanks to Bozulich's vision and the stellar cast of musicians accompanying her, Hello, Voyager is more than a collection of songs on a CD. It is a call to arms against all that is wrong with the world.

The three names emblazoned on the simple and stark cover of this CD should be familiar to most people here–Duncan, von Hausswolff, Koner, and Tietchens have been around for many, many years, establishing themselves as elder statesmen of the scene. The present disc features three extended explorations recorded live, committed to tape in San Francisco, Montreal, and London, and represent a summation perhaps of the combined artistry and talent that these people have shown us all these years.

It is safe to say that noise as a genre has officially achieved crossover status. There were hints at this before, such as Wolf Eyes landing on Sub Pop and delivering rhythmic, yet still brutal punk influenced noise and Prurient becoming a Pitchfork pin-up boy for the genre. Fuck Buttons (my early winner for subtle band name of the year award) have adopted some of the harsher elements of noise, but framed it with melody and other musical elements that somehow works.

It doesn’t take a psychic to figure that two members of the Boredoms and one from Reynols getting together for live improvisations are probably not going to be creating smooth jazz or g-funk era R&B. Across the four tracks and all possible permutations of the trio (the first three tracks feature each working as duos before the final full trio lineup), there’s enough psychedelic tomfoolery to satisfy even the most jaded of adventurous listeners.

Pan Sonic's Mika Vainio remixes Popol Vuh's "Nachts: Schnee" from the 1987 soundtrack Cobra Verde, and crafts a piece that balances craving and anguish. Haswell & Hecker undertake the impossible: "Aguirre I" from the 1972 soundtrack Aguirre - The Wrath Of God.

These two releases from the enigmatic Anthony Mangicapra's ever-changing Hoor-Paar-Kraat project could have been from two completely different artists. The first, an LP reissue of two older pieces, is a heavy and superb release and the second, a CD-R of new material, is equally wonderful but is cut from a completely different cloth. Both releases are from that same spectrum of musical surrealism as Nurse With Wound and Irr. App. (Ext.) but never apes these obvious influences. Unfortunately, like the rest of the Hoor-Paar-Kraat catalogue, these two albums are quite limited so are unlikely to be easy to find for long.

Austere delivery makes Dagonite everything it is. Aside from the obvious references to H.P. Lovecraft there are few if any embellishments on this record. That fact calls attention to Brown Jenkins' greatest strengths (raw simplicity and a strong sense of purpose) and weaknesses (raw simplicity).

For his first proper full-length album in nearly a decade, Douglas P. sets the time machine back to the early 1990s, returning to the guitars-and-windchimes sound that characterized classic Death in June albums such as Rose Clouds of Holocaust and But What Ends When the Symbols Shatter? The only problem is, you can never really go home again, and this album proves it.