All India Radio are not Indian and they are not to be confused with the Indian radio station. In fact they are an Australian electronic band, but its always great to hear that South Asian music and culture is inspiring music artists everywhere. Permanent Evolutions is in many ways a reflection of a new Global South Asian sound that captures an essence that is quite different from South Asian music that was being produced a few decades ago.

Theseare the first steps of a band with a definite goal in mind and thoughsome of those steps are awkward, Capillary Action harnesses the abilityto fuse the wide, wide world of music into something new and exciting.Just so long as they don't screw up and write more tunes like"Scattered Remnants."

Dropping the second release from his Rotten LP series Giffoni brings a chaotic bag of smash and grab noise with a suite of dented robotic sex music and detached damage. The odd choice of title manages to claim individualism and defiance while skirting the inherent hip-hop parody and is represented in the cross section of styles that he turns his bank of electronics to mauling with precision.

This re-release from Andrew Chalk's newly formed Faraway Press imprintwas written for the soul. Its mental and spiritual power can only befelt by the patient, however. Each of them waiting for that moment ofbliss to sink into their bones and erase their minds of the world ofsame-old-shit errands and tasks. That moment of bliss is, of course,defined by the instant that the music puts a blanket over the rest ofthe universe and convinces the listener that it simply doesn't existanymore.

The very mention of a collaboration between Cold Meat Industry heavyweights Raison D'etre and Deutsch Nepal should garner the attention of "death industrial" fanatics, and all but the uninitiated should anticipate hearing essentially what they expected from the duo's sophomore release.

As David Thrussell's Snog project continues to drift further andfurther away from EBM, somewhat recently veering into politicallycharged country/folk music, the abstract technoid funk and industrialinformed experimentation of Black Lung serves more and more as his solelifeline to an otherwise alienated audience.

Lets just ignore the hype surrounding doom/black/dark/atmospheric/etc. metal for a second and pretend that this approach to making music is a powerful musical tool. A tool akin to an epic-maker in a can.

Effacement is quite a divergence,and I think an improvement, on the work I’ve heard from Korber.  Like so many Swiss and Viennese before him,Korber is most easily lumped in the microsound category: digital music rifewith microscopically-distanced sound fragments and closed silences, though lesspulverized towards a glitchist all-over-ness than instead dissected andlaboriously sutured into a celebration of nuance, the notes of the noise ratherthan the noise between the notes.

The first time I popped this in I thought to myself, "Oh great, the Japanese have their own version of Bjork." After another ten minutes I was convinced this duo was constructing more than just pseudo-adolescent hysteria for fans of electronic pop.

Ever since the recent, baffling critical legitimization of metal, agaggle of new black/death/doom metal bands, or bands coyly playing withthe same techniques and aesthetic concerns at several removes of irony,have been ushered into existence.

I can't think of any experience in the world more emotionally painfulthan a parent losing a child.  No matter the circumstances (accident,disease, etc,... ), one experience is common to all survivors: the need to seek somekind of closure, which nothing can bring.  A gaping emotional voidremains.  Fans and friends looking for closure with the final studioalbum from Coil are not going to find it here.

The fourth effort from this side project of better-known group John Brown's Body, BassChalice is a come-down in THC talk for 10 Foot Ganja Plant, when filed next to the previous two albums titled, subtly, Hillside Airstrip and Midnight Landing.

Try as it may to convince us otherwise, rap is a silly thing. So muchso that it becomes self-defeating, too: rappers swagger and boast,strutting like peacocks as they spin fantastical yarns and spendcountless hours in comical self agrandizement so farcical you'd have tobe a suburban adolescent to swallow it all. And all this in the name ofrealness.

An incredibly fertile and industrious musical world is going on right beneath everyone's noses. While this or that magazine is busy trying to pin down the next 10 big bands or the next big scene, musicians like Darren Tate of Monos and Andrew Liles are busy making music, lots of music, and nearly everything they release tackles some new sonic territory.

Each song on this record illuminates a sense of loss, like leaving Chicago was akin to losing a lover whose influence was indispensable and comforting. Employing violins, guitars, trumpets, pianos, vocals, harmonicas, and a whole host of instruments I won't bother naming here, McBride has produced a symphonic record that may well suck most audiences right in and cast them into orbit.

There are a number of pieces of music that have attained mythical status. Cage’s 4’33” is the first to come to mind but Satie’s Vexations is another one of those musical legends. Consisting of an instantly forgettable piano motif that lasts about one minute, repeated 840 times, Vexations is a work of endurance for both the performer and the audience.

C. Spencer Yeh is a name that everyone might start hearing more of, now. There are a couple reasons to support this statement: one of them having to do with sheer prolific force and the other because he's blazingly listenable and will appeal to a lot of people who like a lot of different music.

Change Ringingfollows Block’s Pure Gaze and Mobius Fuse in a trilogy of sorts,and like those belovedpieces, Change is a perfectly paced,not-a-second-too-short, 30-minute suite for chamber group and environment, everin a limbo state between where found sound ends, instrumentation begins, andwhere digital processing tangles the timeline.

Invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1763, the glass harmonicais quite different than today’s mouth harmonica.  Sound is createdby the movement of wetfingers along the rims of more than two dozen glass discs, arrangedhorizontally and moved using a foot-pedal. Apparently, playing the glass harmonica became a hip activity no doubtbecause of the enigmatic sounds its produces, compared at thetime to heavenly voices, perhaps also the cause of “serious nervousbreakdownsamong its mostly female players.” 

Chuck Palahniuk's meditation on silence and noise gave me an idea last night while listening to this disc—all those harsh noise providers out there must be afraid. They sit in front of their equipment and they come up with ways to drown the world around them out of existence, at least for a little while.