As part of Important Records' quadruple-vinyl issue of Coil's swansong The Ape of Naples, an album of new material has been included, finally making good on the long-scheduled-but- interminably-delayed Backwards album. For The New Backwards, Sleazy and Danny Hyde have returned to the storied Nothing Records session tapes and created a suite of six songs that engage in an oddly ambivalent conversation between Coil's distant past and its posthumous present.

Both of the artists working on this piece are known for stretching the boundaries of music:  Mueller heads up the Crouton label, one of the most active and prestigious recent electro-acoustic labels, while Jerman has been working for years to redefine percussion, using such things as cacti as instruments.  Here the two take their love of sound to a full on audio-visual level that gives the listener a rare glimpse into the creation of such work.

As an artist whose work often crosses the boundaries into the visual as well as the audio, it is interesting to hear a music only work from Monterio.  His dedication to working with singular sound sources through an album's worth of material may call to mind other artists such as Akifumi Nakajima (Aube) in approach, but the results are in a world of their own.  Here, using only the sound of his voice, the artist creates a frightening soundscape that still maintains a conventional, almost musical feel to it.

Every once in a while a record comes along that does something a little different with a particular genre– it admittedly doesn't happen very often but when it does it makes me sit up and take notice. Such is the case here with this debut full length disc by German rhythmic industrial dance act Ahnst Anders.

While I feel that their peak is still 2005's masterful Horses in the Sky, this new album's energetic stomp is by no means a disappointment. Whereas that last album was heavily focused on vocal harmonies, here Silver Mt. Zion let their rage flow freely through their instruments. High volume riffs and squeals of feedback come to the fore, a rock monster that has been carefully concealed behind the careful arrangements of earlier releases.

Baby Dee's latest album and her first for Drag City is somewhat of a departure from her previous work in a lot of ways, yet many of the new songs still retain the fragility that made her earlier material so intimate. Backed by a band of admirers that includes Will Oldham, Matt Sweeney, Bill Breeze, John Contreras, and Andrew W.K., her music comes alive like never before.

Originally recorded for a radio broadcast, Vini Reilly is joined by Bruce Mitchell on drums for this live set of mostly new material. The concert is a good snapshot of a prolific period in the group's history, and shows another side of some of their better work.

Andrew Liles shuts the door on the Vortex Vault with this final installment which includes contributions from Steven Stapleton, R.K. Faulhaber, and Matt Waldron. It's an atypical entry in the series and one of the most intriguing if only be cause of its spectacular finale.

The San Diego band’s sophomore album ticks a lot of boxes. Loud; heavy; and off-kilter time signatures. When they get into it, the music flows remarkably well for such jerky rhythms. However, the longer the album goes on, the more it feels like something is missing. Sleeping People are able to make solid slabs of rock but at times they live up to their name too much as it sometimes feels that they are on autopilot. At the very least their music is fun, the odd rhythms do not sound totally contrived and instead add a bit of spice to what could have been a boring album.

Of the four albums reissued in this series, this is the most recent studio album, originally being released only 12 years ago on Belgium's Les Disques du Crepuscule.

LTM have recently begun reissuing albums by Vini Reilly's Durutti Column, one of the acts who found a home on the late Tony Wilson's Factory Records. This particular album was originally released in April 1986 on the offshoot Factory Benelux label, a venture between the Manchester label and Les Disques du Crepuscule; this present edition features the original ten tracks in addition to ten bonus pieces, including five culled from various compilations and a further five tracks from the cancelled 1983 album Short Stories for Pauline.

Written for one of the composer's former students, this solemn and fragile piece for piano is played beautifully by Stephane Ginsburgh. The constantly shifting music is like a kaleidoscope; chords change character and fragment into smaller, more discrete fractions before collapsing back into a solid chord again. My description may make it sound frantic but it is delicate beyond description.

A work purely of modular analog synthesizer, Piotrowicz uses the simplicity of the sonic pallet to his advantage, creating a work that captures both the experimental dissonance of what is colloquy known as "noise" while propping up the entire work on a structure that’s more akin to electro-acoustic composition than the average Merzbow disc.

In celebration of the label's 10th year of activity as well as 60 releases, Gudrun Gut of Monika Enterprise has curated this compilation of the label's artists that manages to accurately capture the intent and vibe of the label, from electronic experimentations to pure, unadulterated sugary pop.  Fans will be happy to know these are all exclusive tracks, and those unfamiliar with the label now have a perfect starting point.

Differing from the other reissues, this one collects a slew of singles and b-side tracks that were recorded in the band's early days from 1980 to 1983 for the legendary labels Factory Benelux, Les Disques deu Crepuscule and Sordide Sentimental.  Although the tracks span four years, there still a sense of cohesion to Vini Reilly's delicate chamber pop (mostly) instrumentals, all of which still seem timeless.

Piercing white hot treble hiss gushes from sterile iPod earbuds, pumping out deafening volumes into the passive, helpless skulls of my fellow commuters and fracturing my focus as I attempt to read a self-imposed requisite of at least thirty pages from my fifth book of the month and year.

Honey Owens' sophomore effort for Kranky encapsulates a mystical space with both moments of direct songwriting and more spaced out passages of psychedelia. The album's artwork suits it's contents: a giant siamese cat swims in moonlight bathed waters that are simultaneously issuing forth from and retreating into some sort of God-head before the stars and a plateau ablaze.

The series of deluxe Japanese reissues of Sunn O)))'s oeuvre has peaked with this version of one of the group's finest moments. Long and undeservedly out of print, this early album has had its original vinyl artwork restored (the less than stellar art from the original CD has been relegated to an inner sleeve) and has been supplemented with a reworking of the album by Nurse With Wound. Reissue packages rarely look and sound so good.

This is the sound of Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore getting it on under their Mirror/Dash duo. Recorded in May of 2005 at the Le Weekend festival this improv set couldn't be mistaken for the work of anyone else. There is no mistaking the signature sounds of these players, Gordon's vocal remaining the ultimate love-it-or-hate-it sound in alternative circles.

As this is Stereolab's lead vocalist's side-project, Laetitia Sadier's Monade has to suffer comparisons. Less heavy on the rock or drone than her day job, this four-piece go more for the diamante sparkle of lounge music and toe-tap Gallic cute-pop than her other band's heavier krauty feel. This, their second 'real' LP (their first being bedroom recordings), is another reliably steady and similar set of songs that won't set the world ablaze but retain a certain pop charm.