When Michael Gira closed the door on Swans over ten years ago, the title of this album spelled out clearly that he was done with the concept. Swans have always taken perversity in their stride and the perversity of a (then) final, live album being their masterpiece fits comfortably within my view of their work. It is easy to scoff now and talk about the financial benefits of reunions but it is obvious from every note on this double live album that the sheer energy required to fuel the fires of a group like this could not last forever. Changes of life pushed him away from Swans and now a similar situation has caused him to abandon The Angels of Light in order to pick up the flame that burned at its brightest here.

Guru Guru were one of the finest groups of their era, the closest any of the krautrock groups to the progressive rock of Gong or The Soft Machine but still they stood apart. They contained enough rock and blues to make them accessible but pushed these forms into new shapes thanks to their impressive improvisations. Containing both Mani Neumeier and Ax Genrich, Gurumaniax are an almost complete reunification of the classic line-up of Guru Guru. The name change is in part due to the passing of bassist Uli Trepte whose large shoes are now filled by Guy Segers. This album is the result of one week’s work in the studio and sounds as vibrant and stunning as Guru Guru ever were.

Across the five pieces on this album, Ernst Karel and Annette Krebs explore an expansive but tiny sound world; the crackles and rough noises are akin to macro photos of the components of unknown objects. The whole item is out of frame but the viewer (or in this case, listener) is given a generous amount of detail of a small part. Here the sources of the sounds are deliberately kept obfuscated but it forces the listener to pay attention to the minutiae of these noises. The result is an engaging and exhausting album which challenges and drains in equal measure.

I first heard Swans in 1997 when I bought Soundtracks for the Blind in a downtown Portland record store. I picked the album on the strength of the title, but mostly because it was erroneously filed in the "Gothic" section. Immediately after buying it, I went with my father on a trip to Central Oregon. I vividly remember looking out at the blasted volcanic desert along Highway 97 to the accompaniment of the noxious, churning guitar noise of "The Sound". At the time, I had no idea that Swans were braking up or that they had been playing music for as long I had been alive.

While there never seems to be any shortage of Nadja related material being released, this release of older material (recorded in 2005 and previously only available as MP3s) drops a lot of the metal elements to Baker's sound and replaces them with trumpet and violin, and emphasizes the ambience and also the underlying melody and structure of these songs.

Long has Brad Rose maintained Digitalis, a beacon of experimental music nestled in the heartland of America. Spreading across the landscape like an epidemic, Rose—along with his wife, Eden—has delivered stack upon stack of gratifying discoveries both influential and enjoyable. But recently the pioneering duo has upped their own musical game, flooding an eager market with a steady stream of fantastic releases. Mechanical Gardens, however, stretches Eden and Brad’s Alter Eagle outfit to the brink of the mainstream.

While Michael Gira certainly wrote many of his finest songs in the late '80s and early '90s, I was never able to embrace the "softer" phase of the Swans oeuvre as readily as I could the rest (a trait that is not uncommon). The main reason is that Gira's defining traits, for me, have always been his iconic intensity and his willingness to be bluntly honest and ugly. Such content was complemented perfectly by the Swans' early, more primal aesthetic, but the more traditionally melodic late-period material made things a bit more complicated.  I have no problem with the change in direction itself, but the central emphasis on melody and conventional rock structure often has a tendency to undercut or obscure the weightier themes in Gira's lyrics. Hearing Gira wrestle with that central conflict as he continues to expand his sound is what makes Love of Life both fascinating and frustrating.

Tepid and, at times, hesitant, James Blackshaw's latest record for Young God is a disappointment. For much of All is Falling he and his band work diligently, trying to weave Blackshaw's erudition into something unique and captivating. Unfortunately, their success is all too infrequent and what results is an unsatisfying collection of stoic songs.

Leona Anderson's mock-pompous operatic voice can provoke amusement and nauseous grimacing. Music To Suffer By is as beguiling as a jar of pickled walnuts: nectar for a few people, odd and repulsive to others. Either way, this re-mastered album shouldn't be swallowed in one sitting.

After the two most recent Jesu works had returned to the heavy guitar sound the project began with, Justin Broadrick saw fit to separate that project into two distinct entities: Jesu for heavy guitar music, and Pale Sketcher (named for the Pale Sketches compilation) for the more ambient and electronic pop sounds. Considering that the two most electronic Jesu releases are among my favorites from that band (the split with Envy and Why Are We Not Perfect), I had high hopes for this project. After hearing it, I think there's a lot of potential with Pale Sketcher, though I don't know if this album demonstrates that inherently.

With a few exceptions, most of Mehdi Ameziane's recording career can be broken down into two simple categories: "great albums" and "albums that would have been great if they had been pared down a bit." Then Fell the Ashes... happily falls quite squarely in the former category. There is definitely some evidence here that Mehdi is continuing to evolve and improve, but the more important thing is that this is one of the most perfect distillations of everything that makes TwinSisterMoon so unique and wonderful. This is one of my favorite albums of 2010.

Although Factory Records has certainly earned its iconic status, most of the label’s best work was released during its early years. While always adventurous and unpredictable, the label began to drift towards decadence, questionable whims, and trends doomed to rapid obsolescence as the '80s unfolded. To his credit, curator James Nice manages to unearth a couple of long-forgotten gems from this dicey period, but most of the songs collected here succeed only as curiosities or mere footnotes in the evolution of contemporary dance music.