One fascinating aspect of the Legendary Pink Dots is that I never know where and when their simmering brilliance will fully manifest itself.  Case in point: this limited-edition solo effort by keyboardist Phil Knight was casually released on CDR on the same day as two other LPD-related albums with only the most cryptic and inscrutable of descriptions ("...aliens here to study mankind had taken control of the airwaves; spread confusion with fake weather reports..."), yet it contains a fluke quasi-noise/industrial collage that ranks among my favorite pieces in the Dots' entire discography.

While it definitely boasted some of the year's best cover art (I am a sucker for shadowy figures wielding curved blades), Implode's 2011 Kranky debut (Black Earth) occupied a fairly unappealing niche for me, offering up a lot of bleak, slow-motion shoegaze with too much processing and too few hooks.  Two years later, Recurring Dream offers more great cover art and more brooding effects pedal abuse, but the band have definitely grown quite a bit better at what they do.  It is still a bit of a slog to make it through the entire album, but the handful of highlights are great enough to make it worth the effort.

The second solo single from Sleep/Om’s Al Cisneros continues from where its predecessor left off. Unfortunately, this means there has been little progression in this new creative approach for Cisneros. With any luck, these tracks will eventually turn into fully-fledged works as the music is nice but, for now at least, it is of curiosity value rather than an essential work from a man who has made an awful lot of essential records.

As half of the black metal influenced duo Menace Ruine, Geneviève Beaulieu gives the project its unique sound via her distinct, idiosyncratic voice that alternates between dramatic and understated. On the debut of her side project Preterite (with multi instrumentalist James Hamilton), the metal is scaled back and the more folk elements are pushed forward, but in a way that defies expectations based on that simple description.

German artist Marsen Jules has been working in sparse, subtle worlds of ambient sound for over a decade, and this single song album follows that template. Living up to its title, throughout the 47 minutes there is a constant change of light and dark, hues and saturations that never stay still.

This single is a particularly divergent release in a career where divergence is rapidly becoming the norm, combining (arguably) the least Om-like song in their entire discography with Al Cisneros' recent fascination with dub reggae.  I expected the result to sound a lot like Al's solo dub debut from last year ("Dismas"), but this is something completely new altogether.  The reason for that is that Cisneros handed over the controls to seasoned British roots duo Alpha & Omega.  The piece is likable in its own way (once I got past reeling from my subverted expectations), but I suspect many Om fans will find that this detour is not for them.

In a very real sense, The Watchers is an endearing improbable album that captures a magical and ephemeral union between two like-minded virtuosos playing together for the first time.  The catch, unfortunately, is that the magic was something of a closed-loop: while the two musicians flowed together as seamlessly and intuitively as old friends, the end product basically sounds like a rough sketch for an unfinished James Blackshaw album (albeit one where Blackshaw himself is often perversely relegated to the background).

I think it is finally safe to say that I do not understand Dominick Fernow at all, as I am completely mystified as to: 1.) why this was released as a Prurient album, and 2.) how it somehow managed to avoid release for two long years (given Fernow's singularly relentless release schedule). Although it was recorded at the same time as 2011's  excellent (but polarizing) Bermuda Drain, Through the Window dispenses with noise almost entirely to indulge a somewhat misguided fascination with house techno.  The result is undeniably more accessible than everything else recorded under the Prurient banner, but accessibility is not what I am generally hoping for with Prurient and these songs are significantly less compelling than Fernow's other dance flirtations with Cold Cave and Vatican Shadow.

Benoit Pioulard's latest release makes a subdued, melancholy journey through watery pop. Peerless at his best moments, Hymnal is very nearly nothing but, showcasing a keenness for murky left-field songwriting that ought to go nowhere. Yet it all feels very direct and focused, very familial. Thomas Meluch probes discomfort, harmony, and unique production techniques to assemble music which flows naturally even if it takes no easy path to be heard.

On this dense little 7" from the Norwegian quintet of guitar, bass, drums, synth and tuba, one half of the improvisations make for a slow burning pandemonium, while the other removes all barriers and just freaks out, with both songs excelling in their attempts. It is sloppy, noisy, and insane, which is the best possible outcome for this sort of work.

Nostalgia, and catering to it, can be a dangerous thing. There are of course exceptions, such as the recent Swans tours and albums and Wire's own reappearance in the early part of the 2000s, but too often it is fraught with artists clinging shamefully to old glories with little artistic merit. Which is one of the things that makes this ostensibly new Wire album somewhat hard to peg down. Building upon material that was previously performed live, but overall unfinished from the post-154, pre-first breakup era, Change Becomes Us builds itself upon these and puts a Bruce Gilbert-less sheen to everything, with mixed results.

The material contained within this three disc compilation makes for a point of controversy in the noise and power electronics scene over 30 years since it first appeared. Some of Maurizio Bianchi's earliest material was sent to William Bennett's Come Organisation label for release. Before it finally appeared, the material was overlaid with Nazi propaganda speeches, and Bianchi was credited as Leibstandarte SS MB. Bianchi claimed it was done without his consent, while Bennett's contention was that it was how the albums were intended to be released and it was Bianchi's religious conversion soon after their release that triggered his dissatisfaction with the release. Regardless of the history, the resulting material is a mostly strong entry in Bianchi's early catalog.

For better or worse, this limited-edition vinyl release continues Important's tireless recent string of ultra-minimal drone albums.  Recorded over the course of several very late nights spent with his newborn daughter back in 2011, Lonely Women's Club is about minimal as it gets, essentially amounting to 40 minutes of one-chord organ drone with only the subtlest of variations.  While it is enjoyable for what it is, it definitely seems like the sort of album that several dozen other artists could have made, making it a somewhat exasperating effort for someone as talented as English.

Ba Da Bing are clearly not ones to shy away from massive undertakings, following last year's 4LP Night Coercion into the Company of Witches reissue with yet another quadruple LP.  2008's The Snowbringer Cult was a monumental album for Natural Snow Buildings at the time of its release, as it was their first effort that was not available only as a hyper-limited cassette or CDr.  As such, it was many people's first exposure to the duo and Mehdi and Solange definitely set out to make it count, packing it with just about every single possible facet of their sound.  That "kitchen sink" approach does not make for the most listenable whole, but Snowbringer is not lacking in sustained stretches of absolute, otherworldly brilliance.

A loving tribute to experimental percussionist Matt Weston's collaborator Teri Morris (of Crystallized Moments and Tizzy), the two pieces that make up this 7" showcase his strengths as a one-man band, while crafting a pair of songs that are as independently captivating as they are touching.

Capping off Robert Hampson's impressive return to activity with three recent solo releases on the Editions Mego, he has now officially resurrected the Main moniker, here in partnership with Stephan Mathieu. Ablation is consistent with the recent Hampson solo albums, but feels like a natural extension to the more abstract previous Main material, making for an appropriate new phase in the project's trajectory.

Having been active for over a decade and a half, Stephen Petrus' Murderous Vision alter ego has been a pillar in the US death industrial scene, creating a body of work that captures the essence of the likes of Brighter Death Now or Anenzephalia, but sounding completely original. Perhaps it is the fact that the material is not coming from the central European region but home grown out of Ohio, which is in itself a distinct industrial wasteland.

These two compilations highlight some of the lesser-known composers who have worked at the Groupe de Recherches Musicale (GRM) in Paris. The first volume charts some of the obscurities of the 1960s while the second volume concentrates on works from the 1970s. Taken together, the Traces collections are a fascinating parallel to the reissues of major GRM albums that Recollection GRM have been doing, showing that equally maverick work was been done by names less familiar than Pierre Schaeffer or Luc Ferrari.

It may be that hearing metal means something different than hearing music. Like the Constantin Brâncuși sculpture to which its subtitle refers, Michael Pisaro's Hearing Metal 2 subsists more in the grain and shape of its materials and less in the will of its author. It is composed and performed, and has a beginning and an ending, but it doesn't move from left to right like a song. It feels and sounds more like a space that I can walk through, my position and my frame of mind determining how—and what—I hear.

It has been quite a while since Swanson's last major statement (2011's Man With Potential) and that situation that has not been changed by the release of this 4-song EP (which is only slightly longer than last year's excellent Pro Style 12" single).  Punk Authority shows some very promising evolution though, ingeniously tweaking Pete's love of thumping four-on-the-floor beats while significantly cranking up the punishing brutality.  In theory, that should make for yet another great Pete Swanson release (and it arguably does), but the content is not always on the same level as the leap forward in style, making this EP sometimes feel comparatively bloated and light on hooks.