Not only can a Various Artist collection succeed thematically, but it can shine due to a curator's impeccable taste, and Imaginational Anthem 2 is a nearly flawless collection. Whereas the first volume featured acoustic guitarists from the past and present, this volume seems more forward-looking, slightly more focused on the newer guitarists who have their future stretching out in front of them.

I strongly feel that Various Artist compilations are both fun and useful but it's always good to have some kind of underlying theme.  This one succeeds in concept, and a fantastic concept it is, but the contents end up taking it down a few notches.

As tribute albums go, one dedicated to a painter is not something I’ve encountered before. Being a fan of Francis Bacon, I was very excited to hear this album but alas half of it is useless. The other half though is great although only one of the four tracks really nails the feeling that I get from looking at one of Bacon’s paintings.

Every time I think I’m done with Merzbow he releases an album that grabs me by the face and screams “LISTEN TO ME!” F.I.D. (standing for Fur Is Dead) is one of those albums. It is powerful and burly but surprisingly not as brain drilling as usual. The chaos normally unleashed is instead channelled into a droning, pulsing muscle. This is one of the most exciting Merzbow releases I’ve heard yet.

You can either be wowed by the fact that this is his first piano/vocal LP in a series of 54 LPs, or by the fact that this is one of the outstanding releases of the year; this should be a compulsory listen either way. It’s unfortunate that the Jandek myth has swollen to such a ridiculous size that it’s coming between people wanting to hear the music. Those cranky elitist fucks that obsess over their reclusive prodigious artist are going to shit the bed over this double CD.

Bibio's second release on Mush is a looped daydream of the English and Welsh countryside. It is a fluid affair with acoustic guitar, manipulated field recording, sparingly used fipple flutes and piano, tiny scraps of found sound, and—in a new departure for him—singing. As pleasingly blurred as a half-developed photograph or a landscape painting smudged by spots of rain, I only wish the elements of treatment and decay went further.

For all of The Ties That Blind I may as well be listening to any other one of a number of Neurosis clones that have emerged in the last five years. Even Neurosis sound jaded playing in the chin-stroking style they pioneered, so when a band like Mouth of the Architect trot out the same formula it gets to be a pain. The band play well but I question the necessity of another album that is too familiar the first time I hear it.

The new album by Alexander Tucker is pure bliss. I had high expectations of this release and they have been more than met. Taking his droning, folk improvisations further than before, Furrowed Brow is his best work yet. In the short time I’ve had this disc I’ve found it impossible to stop listening.

Most of the Arthur Russell material (re)issued by Audika Records so far has been in the idiosyncratic chamber-pop mold (World of Echo and Calling Out of Context), with the recent First Thought Best Thought collecting the artist's orchestral works.  In contrast, this CD contains material much closer in style to the "Mutant Disco" of Russell's classic Sleeping Bag 12" sides, packaging never-before-released avant-dance tracks alongside a DFA remix and a scattering of rare material.

His most relevant work in what seems like ages, Gerald Simpson's latest matches the feverish vitality of the early acid house era without resorting to Vibertian schtick or pure retro reproduction.

 

The latest album by Bardo Pond is a corker. Many of the pieces on Ticket Crystals combine floaty and sparse playing with heavy concrete dirges. Mostly this formula pays off in spades and only rarely does the album lapse into mediocrity. Some great songs on this CD make the lesser ones seem worse than they really are, overall even mediocre Bardo Pond is still worth listening to.

This tour-only 3" CD is a postscript to Matmos' recent The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of the Beast, a masterpiece of audio portraiture that payed homage to queer heroes.  This three-song EP continues the theme, taking as its subject the mathematician, philosopher, cryptographer and homosexual martyr Alan Turing, and featuring the vocals of David Tibet as well as sounds sourced from a functioning Enigma Machine.

Following the 2003 release of Like Hearts Swelling, Sandro Perri began performing under his own name, incorporating more organic sounds as opposed to the processing, and perhaps overprocessing, that Polmo Polpo was regarded for. This five-track EP provides a conceptual bridge between the older sound and new sound as it began as reinterpretations of the songs from Like Hearts Swelling but has evolved a bit further.

Proof that Jesus must have had soul sits in this collection of "gospel funk" songs. The grooves on these songs are as thick and rockin' as anything any secular performer put to wax, but they're all songs of praise, tolerance, hope, brother/sisterhood, redemption, and soul-fueled love. If the churches around here played this stuff at their Sunday service, I'd be there every weekend, ready to communicate with God.

Disliked in their native country of New Zealand, associated with drug-assisted hallucinations and blackouts, and evidently crazy enough to plan their own deaths, the trio of Michael Morely, Robbie Yeats, and Bruce Russell also happen to be more brilliant than most bands they're compared to. This collection is superb: competent enough to entice new listeners and pull in folks that already love their music and want more.

This worthy album by sextet Sparrows Swarm and Sing links traditional song with post-rock and pantheist imagery. SSAS create beautiful music with apocalyptic undercurrents which at times achieves a cinematic splendor.

This is a poorer than average effort from Christina. The four pieces are all meant to sound similar as they are all in the same key and made of the same chords, but for me, the results show little development beyond self indulgent jamming and sound thrown together and boring. This concept sounds less than exciting on paper and in practice it doesn't work as well as hoped.

While back in San Francisco after a lengthy self-imposed European exile, Tuxedomoon recorded these spontaneous compositions for a film loosely based on Brion Gysin’s novel The Last Museum. The result is an inspired and tantalizing album that thrives independently of its designation as a soundtrack.

At last! Someone has had the good manners to include a CD-R with their lathe cut release. This 8” split sees both acts going in the opposite direction of their usual material, making the best records of their discographies so far. The Low Point label continues its roll of great music, with label head Gareth Hardwick offering up something a little more composed than usual and Last of the Real Hardmen hitting subdued free rock.

With the sleeve featuring portraits of grandparents and great grandparents, it is easy to think that We Can Driving Machine will be soft on the ears. The opening piece (none of the tracks have titles) is a scratchy recording of an old lady singing about nightingales. The cuddly grandmother theme led me into a false sense of security and I was totally unprepared for the sheer chaos that ensued. The rest of the album hurtles out of the speakers like a comet; it is a seriously heavy adventure.