With Heather Leigh turning her pedal steel loose on audiences across Europe, this live disc is more sonically aggressive than her previous releases. In performance Heather might have usually sat static at her pedal steel tearing at the strings, but the sounds still have the ability to rear up and forward like some venom sluicing cobra. Her evolution towards something between the state of song and primacy continues, but this time with sinews motorized by force.

Dark, brooding music from Norway usually involves corpse paint and an obscure relationship with Satan or other so-called dark forces; indeed, restraint and delicacy are hard to come by in the world of spiked gauntlets and troll vocalists. On the other hand, bands like Ulver write albums like Shadows of the Sun, demonstrating that fragile arrangements and understatement are often more oppressive than any heavy-handed guitar riff.

Back in 1993, Inade released Burning Flesh on two cassettes which immediately made an impression on the underground music scene, with its blackest of black dark ambient sketches and soul-crushing gloom, and established the reputation and credentials of the two protagonists René Lehmann and Knut Enderlein. The follow-up, Aldebaran, originally released in 1996 equally caused something of a commotion when news of its imminent reissue–in a new third, unlimited, edition–emerged earlier this year. For those of us who missed it the first time around, myself included, this has been something of a much anticipated release.

All the trademark stylings and sensibilities that have helped to propel Masami Akita's name to the top of the list of respected noise artists are here in abundance on this single 41:29 track CD, released on No Fun's own No Fun Productions label and wrapped in a gorgeous cover drawn by Akita himself.

This Portland, Maine based group are members of art-punk-prog-chaos collective Cerberus Shoal along with North East Indie labelmate Micah Blue Smaldone reinvented as a kind of mutant 'bluegrass/folky' quintet using traditional instruments (plus a few unusual ones) such as upright bass, banjo, piano, harmonium, and accordion in addition to harmonized vocals. This is anything but traditional bluegrass or folk, however, as there's a distinctly uneasy edge and fractured sense of reality bordering on dark psychedelia that removes it a million miles from the mainstream forms of those genres, while also acknowledging the debt owed to those uniquely American styles of music.

Although Rhythm & Sound's estimable reissue campaign of the Bronx’s formidable and nearly forgotten Wackies label has garnered much praise among critics and fans, just about every new resurrected release from the comparatively hodgepodge Basic Replay sister imprint garners at least as much if nor more excitement among sound system selectors and hungry collectors.  Compiling sixteen mostly vinyl-only tracks from the label’s small yet potent catalog, this overdue disc finally brings these scorching, mostly digital tunes to the unaware masses.

This double live album documents the group's first foray into Polish territory. The sound quality is vastly superior to last year's In Autumn box set of live recordings. Each little noise right up to the mightiest clamour is captured quite clearly; it is almost possible to smell the sweat.

This is a mixed bag; there are sections that are incredible and beautiful but unfortunately there is an equal amount of music that is difficult to digest. It sounds like something I should be into, however there is something missing or that I am not getting that is preventing me from fully appreciating this album. Maybe it is the fact that many of these pieces were written and recorded for exhibitions and installations that leaves the music feeling a little empty.

The phenomenal Trunk label keep up their unique work by giving Marc Wilkinson's score for a 1971 cult British horror movie its first ever release. Film fans, soundtrack aficionados, and addicts of obscure music will all be thrilled, as Blood on Satan's Claw is beautiful and disconcerting in equal measure.

Presented as a follow up to 2004's Grapes from the Estate, this album continues Ambarchi's exploration of crystal clear ambience.  Sharing the same mix of patient tempos and penetrating subsonics, these songs could fit unnoticed right beside their predecessors. The difference emerges in the details, and the increased use of untreated guitar, strings, and voice makes for a understated yet compelling departure.

This duo issue their first album ("The Toy" in English) two years after their Audiotrauma Processing Industry EP, in a joint release between that label and Ant-zen. Le Jouet explores the many different aspects of toys, from those that children play with to those used by adults, either in role-play or, as they claim, those "deadly weapons used like toys by grown-ups who can never negate the children they once were." The duo do this by utilizing a combination of beat styles, samples, and ambient passages together with distorted vocals and simple melodic structures, ranging across a variety of styles in the process.

It's good to know that rock music isn't truly dead.  Sure, the coroner has been called out many times to check the corpse, but as long as albums like this are around, there will be a bit of pulse left in the ol’ body.  Here is yet another recontexualization of the various fragments of rock in the past four decades into a unique brew that doesn’t specifically sound like any previous band, but the vibe of their legacies are definitely there.

The cover photograph of this disc paints a darker picture than is actually to be heard.  Which is not to say that this release doesn't continue Utech's ARC series of dark, opaque experimentalism, it just has some serene, beautiful elements that are not immediately apparent from the pseudo-1930s crime scene looking photo that adorns the front cover.

With the freak folk empire still flying its tattered psychedelic flag, it a relief to see Dumb Supper arriving on the horizon unconcerned with scrambling the folk format. Mainly a collection of traditional re-tellings, the Tylers manage to both stay true to the form's roughened simple roots.

In 1997, Bristol's trip-hop troubadours Portishead released their self-titled sophomore album, a deeply moving account of agonizing, feverish love and world-weary heartbreak.  Its forlorn brilliance stunned me, leading me to privately refer to it as the soundtrack to a suicide.  Now, another British electronic musician follows up a critically acclaimed breakthrough with a superlative sequel that, for me, shares both that ominous honor and my firm vote for Album of the Year.

For those who don't frequent the sites of MP3-only, Creative Commons-licensed netlabels, Jan Gleichmar's Jahtari is a go-to virtual imprint enamored with the long-departed sounds of 80s digital dub and dancehall reggae. Since 2004, his simulated 7" releases both there and elsewhere in the netlabel world built up enough of a reputation to warrant this physical release to showcase his balmy eight-bit informed productions.

With 2 CDs and around 57 tracks, there's a lot of bang for the buck here, so long as various forms of electronic noodling is a plus, and thematic cohesion is something to stay away from.

Although a rough stab at naming a genre, the UK "noise rock" scene started as a darker outgrowth of the distortion and effect laden shoegaze genre, though with more of a nod to proto-Industrialists like SPK, Whitehouse and Throbbing Gristle.  As a scene it was rather incestuous, with many of the major artists such as Skullflower, Ramleh and Novatron often switching members between projects, and even connections with some of the more rock oriented bands like Godflesh, Cable Regime, and Bodychoke.  If there was a definitive disc for this time, IIIrd Gatekeeper might just be it.

Kevin Hufnagel (Disrhythmia) and Colin Marston (Disrhythmia; Behold... the Arctopus; Infidel?/Castro!), collectively known as the New York ambient noise outfit Byla, team up with ex-Swans siren Jarboe for Viscera, an album of noise and acoustic soundscapes utilising the guitar as its main sound source. A year in the making, from spring 2006 to spring 2007, the five pieces on this CD have been carefully crafted by the Hufnagel/Marston duo to create an album full of atmospherics, harmonics, power, and above all richness, the whole complemented by Jarboe's vocal accents.

These Japanoise legends' first album since 1996 is a triumphant return, a single joyous no-nonsense extreme noise barrage lasting for 43:18, and their second album (after 1996's Flash) on the UK label Cold Spring. The trademark walls of fuzz-drenched guitar overlaid with howls and ear-splitting high-end keyboard screeching coupled with Mayuko Hino's vocals are all there and are a perfect recipe for further consolidating their status in the upper stratosphere of japanoise acts.