So many bands are incestuous that using a term like "supergroup" seems meaningless more and more. Nick Castro's third album utilizes the likes of Joolie Wood, Jon Contreras, Brian Dyson, and B'eirth. All in all, representatives from Current 93, In Gowan Ring, Damo Suzuki's Network, and Cul de Sac make an appearance, but the recorded outcome of this gathering is less than super.

This is the second in Fovea Hex’s Neither Speak nor Remain Silent series. It is a logical continuation from Bloom but it is more dramatic and beautiful than its predecessor. Clodagh Simonds, the centre of the Fovea Hexverse, has outdone herself this time; it is truly an astonishing work.

After a mediocre attempt at recording latin versions of rock standards and an appalling attempt at latin standards, Uwe Schmidt revisits the music he clearly knows best: electro pop. This tribute to Yellow Magic Orchestra has the energy and excitement as his Kraftwerk covers despite the overused latin samples and pointless interludes and transitional pieces.

With Baird’s deep, commanding voice, Lullaby for Strangers is more likely to induce troubled sleep than peaceful rest. In fact, her hypnotic singing could very well induce trances, if not somnambulance.

Auto Da Fe use a number of exotic instruments with pleasant, albeit mostly straightforward results. The singing, however, immediately reminded me of class field trips to the Renaissance Fair, an association I unfortunately couldn’t shake throughout the course of the album.

Taking a side step from his series of numbered Astral Social Club volumes, Neil Campbell drops a quick two track smack round the head. Recorded live in April 2006, this may be titled after a bolt from the heavens but it’s much less rapturous than his usual material. This is a simpler, sweatier, and less delicately formed ASC release that shows him in a heads down noisier drive.

The Matinée Orchestra’s debut album is a treat. It is folky and psychedelic but not like the current batch of artists like Devendra Banhart et al. Instead The Matinee Orchestra combines a mixture of traditional folk styles with modern technology and atypical instruments. The result is a wonderful collection of music with only a very occasional lapse in quality.

Field recording isn’t just pointing a microphone at your scene of choice and hitting record. There is a skill in capturing the atmosphere and life of the moment and allowing a listener to recreate the scene in their mind in vivid Technicolor. All of the artists featured on Recorded in the Field by… have this skill in spades.

As the title suggests, this album contains two improvised pieces. Each one was recorded live and shows Gaping Maw in great form. The mix is at times unbalanced due to the nature of the recordings but overall this is a fantastic document of two formidable performances.

No further proof of noise's validity needs to be made; there are plenty of people in the world messing around in their basements and making annoying sounds that their parents, neighbors, and roommates hate them for. Recorded at the Kongsberg Jazzfestival in 2005, Hana had the chance to annoy a whole crowd of people at once and likely succeeded.

Also on Utech, but of more interest than Anders Hana's release, is the multi-instrumental, sound generating outfit Silo. Cello, trumpet, and "traditional Maori instruments" in hand, this group does more than just pump out disjunctive noise; their soundscapes are intriguing and dark, like a stranger episode of X-Files sewn into a blanket and thrown over my head.

For their second album on Secret Eye, this Finnish group salvages gear from some electronic junkyard to make these gurgling basement recordings. Perhaps not, but that’s what the fidelity of this album suggests. It’s not such a bad thing, however, because the recording quality brings a murky depth to the album resulting in an underwater feeling, caressing the music and allowing it so swim.

A founding member of the late Argentinian trio Reynols, Courtis is no stranger to extreme media. Past works like symphonies for blank tapes, chickens, quartets for whistling kettles, and one piece called Reynols Plays The Eiffel Tower make a record of no-input feedback sound rather tame. And it is, in the best way.

This is an Ache label release of spirited electronic experimentation by eleven different artists, all reworking a sample of sound originally created using only a bicycle. Track #12 is that source material, which you are free to use to create your own piece. While some contributors emphasise rhythm, others  favor smoother propulsion. Everyone avoids the temptation to hit-and-run with unnecessary power or weight, in favor of a lighter touch well-suited to this magnificent subject.

This New Zealand group goes underground to summon some nefarious entity to the earthly plane, torment it a little bit for fun, and then banish it back to the void from which it came. None of that is true, of course, but it’s the sort of vivid imagery this strange, dense recording produces.

The recordings made by This Heat during the band's brief existence (1976-1982) are marked by a startling originality, a flame burning so intensely that it used up all the oxygen in the room and quickly extinguished itself.  The trio of Charles Bullen, Charles Hayward, and Gareth Williams made music that was urgent and political and yet esoteric and subterranean; by turns bright and buoyant, then dark, nebulous and scratchy.  The music borrowed freely from krautrock, musique concrête, dub, punk and industrial, but never sounded like anything other than This Heat.

There is a big difference between a musician and a gearhead, and when the music becomes more about the technological process than the product, its creators sadly become the most entertained audience.

I'm left completely confused listening to this album, trying to keep up with Dustin Krcatovich's wily, random sense of humor and creative, scattershot imagination. Musically, Krcatovich is ubiquitous. One moment his music is the product of exposure to home recordings and pop music and at another it is the product of listening to "Revolution 9" too many times.

This album is the soundtrack to a film called A Little Trip to Heaven which unfortunately I haven’t seen. As such, I cannot even begin to guess if Mugison’s music suits the film or not. Without the movie to skew my opinion in any direction I can safely say that this release is pretty damn boring and a chore to listen to.

At the center of this quartet is Fly Pan Am guitarist Jonathan Parent and Shalabi Effect/solo experimentalist Alexandre St-Onge, but the eponymous debut sounds like it might as well be the most logical progression from Fly Pan Am's last record.