This is already the 15th release in Staalplaat's exhaustive Muslimgauze archive series, but it looks like Bryn Jones has not yet run out of minor posthumous surprises to share with the world. Originally recorded in 1995, but never released, Lazhareem Ul Leper is a series of heavy percussion experiments that stylistically fits somewhere between Jones' harsher post-industrial moments and the hypnotically looping ethno-percussion vamps that he was exploring around that same time. The unexpected twist is that it sounds like Bryn flirted with incorporating some IDM influences here as well.

Michael Gira founded Swans some 27 years ago. Time has brought a measure of nuance and versatility, but the raw, inhuman power of the band persists, even as many of their more lauded peers have succumbed to nostalgia or exhaustion. Pure tenacity, as much as loud guitars and violent lyrics, is what gives the new album the brute force that is characteristic of Swans at their best.

I can't tell if this is a Swans album or an Angels of Light record in disguise. Maybe it's both. Maybe it doesn't matter one bit. In the years between Swans Are Dead and My Father, Gira released several solo acoustic records, a "pop" collaboration with Dan Matz, a "split" with Akron/Family, and five diverse Angels records. That 12 year run concluded with We Are Him, an album that might have been where Swans would have ended up had the project not been terminated. After listening many times to this multifaceted return from the dead, I still can't determine what makes these songs more deserving of the Swans moniker than any of Gira's other post-avian recordings.

It has been twenty years since Laetitia Sadier and Tim Gane formed Stereolab. Sadier's voice remains a classic hypnotic sound and on her first solo record The Trip she meditates on change and loss in a personal response to her life's journey and in particular the death of her younger sister, Noelle.

Swans were dead, but Michael Gira is emphatic that this is not a reunion or a re-hash of a defunct brand. The Angels of Light were a rebirth (the title New Mother emphasizes that), but they have run their course as an outlet for Gira’s music. They represented a different sentiment and a different focus and this album is very much back where Swans left off in terms of feeling. That is not to say that his time spent doing The Angels of Light has not rubbed off on Gira but this feels right as a Swans album. Not only that but it feels like one of the definitive albums of the year, there is nothing here I would remove or alter.

When I first heard the rumors of a possible Swans resurrection, I wasn't quite sure what to think. I never thought for a second that they'd follow the path of other lesser bands that put out an album of re-recorded "hits" and toured state fairs, but I did think there was a chance it could result in a rebranded Angels of Light disc or a Michael Gira solo album. However, neither of those happened, and instead there is a new Swans album worthy of their legacy, and hopefully the first of many.

Location is integral to Manrico Montero’s Sisal, as it is with virtually all of the albums released on Unfathomless. Without it, there is still music, but the context and inspiration driving it is at least partially effaced. Sisal is both the common name for Agave sisalana, a species of agave cultivated for the fibers it yields, and the name of a small port town located in the Yucatán Peninsula, where said fibers play a significant role in the economy. But the album focuses on another species native to the region. With just one exception, each of its tracks are named for the mangrove trees that grow in a nearby area called La Bocana ("The Mouth"), where seawater meets the freshwater of a cenote. Montero’s recordings capture plenty of maritime activity around these trees, including the rocking of ship hulls, strong coastal winds, and a multitude of insect and animal life. They also expose sounds that are not ready-at-hand, that are a part of the place without appearing as such.

Angharad Davies and Tisha Mukarji’s contribution to Another Timbre’s "Violin+1" series takes the already blurry distinction between composed and improvised music and blurs it beyond meaning. As odd a title as Ffansïon | Fancies is, it encapsulates the process of investigation and refinement evident everywhere in Davies and Mukarji’s sympathetic playing. "Fancy" here connotes the formation of images, synthetic activity, and the work of the imagination—a de- and re-construction of both the piano and the violin that produces a pseudo-Cubist view of both instruments. Exploded and rearranged, they slip in and out of familiar configurations, darting constantly between energy and form.

Geir Jenssen is my kind of artist: the kind that now only surfaces when he has something truly new or significant to convey.  Ending a five-year hiatus, Departed Glories is a radical departure from past Biosphere releases, all of which were very much of their time.  Departed Glories, on the other hand, ambitiously takes aim at timelessness instead.  Taking inspiration from the forests around Krakow, the photography of Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky, the story of medieval Polish mystic Bronislawa, and some research into Polish and Ukrainian folk music, the otherworldly, mysterious, and hallucinatory vignettes of Departed Glories jettison all obvious traces of Jenssen's contemporary electronic music past.  I am actually quite fond of that past, mind you, but the best pieces on Glories are on a completely different level altogether.  This is a major creative breakthrough and easily one of the most inspired albums of the year.

As far as I can tell, this is the first major Silver Apples album to appear in almost 20 years, though Simeon Coxe has kept busy with singles, remixes, collaborations, and his other band (Amphibian Lark) in the meantime.  Interestingly, the Silver Apples aesthetic of 2016 is almost identical to that of 1968: the production is a bit different and Coxe has adapted to playing without a drummer, but Clinging to a Dream sounds every bit as bizarre and unique as the band's self-titled debut.  If there is a significant difference, it is merely that Coxe has gone from sounding like an iconoclast ingeniously ahead of his time to sounding like an ingeniously retro-futurist iconoclast.  Admittedly, Coxe’s imagination, inventiveness, and instrumental prowess continue to exceed his songwriting and vocal talents, but Dream's weaknesses are generally rendered irrelevant by the singularity of his vision.

Ren Schofield’s reliably bludgeoning Container project is back with a yet another EP of caustic, pummeling beats and squelching, swooping electronics.  He has moved to a new label (Powell’s Diagonal imprint) since his last outing, but otherwise not a whole lot has changed: Vegetation is yet another feast of concise and bulldozing rhythmic salvos.  That is no surprise, of course, as Container has always been the absolute embodiment of the "all killer, no filler" philosophy: Schofield gets in, he kicks ass, and he is gone long before he overstays his welcome.  That said, Container does seem to get incrementally better and better with each release and that trend continues, as Vegetation tempers Container's percussive assault with a bit more dynamic variation and sputtering, squiggling electronic chaos than usual.

This terrific debut from Indonesia shows how passion, rage and sorrow translate into any language. It's a concept album reflecting cultural destruction and persistence; echoing Melt Banana, Naked City, and zeuhl before devolving into folk laments with added flute.

While there doesn't seem to be any specific concept to unify both sides of this split LP, there doesn’t need to be. Instead, it is a strong paring of a relatively young artist and one who has a long and established career, with both providing material that is quite different from each other.

Considering most of the "mid period" Swans material has been out of print for years and exists only in this compilation now says a lot about both Michael Gira's stance on the era, and perhaps as much about the bulk of the fans as well. The title is a bit of a clue, too. While the recent works have been in print since their inception, and the sprawling, but exhaustive collections of older material, this has been the forgotten era. Here songs were picked by Gira out of personal preference, with a smattering of b-sides and World of Skin material. But, is this compilation sufficient to represent this period as a whole?

Last year I reviewed Seaworthy's 1897, in which I was fascinated by Cameron Webb's careful balance of field recordings and traditional musicianship, often working together to create a sound where nature itself was the musical instrument. Working with like-minded artist Matt Rösner, the two use a similar approach, and the result is a work of the same spirit, but a different sound.

Annie Bandez has always been a thoroughly compelling and vibrant personality, but that magic has not always fully translated into her studio recordings. That fact has always been extremely frustrating for me, as she was clearly born to be a brilliant chanteuse- there is literally no one else that I am aware of that can simultaneously evoke Old Hollywood glamor, sultry cabaret decadence, heartbreak, and razor-sharp wit so effortlessly and winningly. Fortunately, her first complete album of original material with longtime collaborator Paul Wallfisch makes enormous progress towards bridging that gap. In fact, I think it might be completely bridged now—this is Little Annie's best album yet.

The last Boduf Songs album featured a reproduction of a Zdzisław Beksiński painting. His fantastic art always conveys a sense of doom which reaches far beyond the borders of the picture itself. On this album, Mathew Sweet fully captures this same sense of unearthly displacement: "There’s no way out and no way home." The music of Boduf Songs has also been pushed further than before; while the dreamy campfire arrangements are still present there is also a massive diversion into previously unexplored (at least by Sweet and company) musical territories. The end result is the best Boduf Songs album yet.

Tietchens, one of my favorite sound artists, approaches this new album from a different tact than his others. Rather than composing with new sounds, he instead chose to recycle existing material and recordings through various processing techniques, some receiving up to ten reinventions before completion, resulting in one of his most sparse, yet diverse works.

It is easy (and not unreasonable) to critique Mark McGuire's voluminous solo output as excessive and somewhat redundant–no one needs every single album he releases.  However, it is worth noting that he has maintained a remarkably high (and still seemingly increasing) level of quality for an artist with over three dozens releases to his name and his "major" releases (like this one) tend to be especially good.  Get Lost explores a lot of ground that McGuire has already covered many times before, but he is still covering it beautifully and even exhibits some welcome signs of evolution.

What initially began as two 15 minute pieces on their first collaboration is now a sprawling four hour surround sound album. Sonically, the result is consistent with the first two installments, leaning more towards Andrew McKenzie's dark, impenetrable drone than the skittering, fragmented rhythms of Sean Booth and Rob Brown.