I am ashamed to say that I slept on this volcanic French ensemble's woefully underappreciated and face-melting debut album when it came out, but I have since embraced them as one of the finest purveyors of squalling guitar noise around. With this, their second formal full-length, the quintet expand the borders of their expected firestorm into some darker and more idiosyncratic territory. Such an excursion deeper into the outré is hardly surprising, however, given that Joëlle Vinciarelli collaborated with My Cat is an Alien just a few months before this album was recorded (it is impossible to imagine that anyone could spend time with the Opalio brothers and not emerge with some interesting new ideas about how music can be made). The results of that evolution are a bit of a mixed success here, as the band's more simmering and lysergic side yields some interesting results, but sacrifices the awesome visceral power of their more explosively kinetic moments.

Featuring Can’s Jaki Liebezeit on drums along with Helmut Zerlett and Dominik von Senger amongst others, on Phantom Band’s eponymous debut they try to bring the new musical frontier of '70s Germany into the then sprightly '80s with varying degrees of success. This mixed bag of krautrock-cum-world music lacks the punch of their Freedom of Speech album but acts as a fitting introduction to the group’s brief career.

The news of this intriguing collaboration delighted me, as Klara Lewis has carved out quite a wonderfully idiosyncratic and incredibly constrained niche over the last few years by largely avoiding any recognizable instrumentation. Consequently, I had no idea at all what would happen when her surreal collages collided with Simon Fisher Turner's formidable talents as a composer. As it turns out, a pure collaboration resulted, as Care does not particularly resemble either artist's previous work. Instead, it feels like several divergent albums have been deconstructed, warped, and obliterated to leave only some lingering shards in a shifting and hallucinatory fantasia of drones, textures, and field recordings. That fundamental disjointedness can admittedly be a bit challenging at times, but Care ultimately comes together beautifully with the lushly rapturous closer, "Mend."

Freedom of Speech bursts with tons more energy than the group's debut. Whereas the first Phantom Band album seemed to meander with more style than substance, here the group have a target to use the sharp edge of their music on. Although not a perfect record, this is head and shoulders above their debut as they finally manage to fully integrate their new world music influences into their tight, groove-based music.

I will admit that I have always been a bigger fan of Masami Akita's collaborative efforts than the unscalable mountain that is his solo material. As the de facto figurehead in the Japanoise scene (and arguably, noise as a genre, including the artistic controversy, irreverence, and the platitudes of misanthropy so seemingly representative of the scene), Merzbow has, for me, always remained a reliable proof-of-concept but not something I would consistently find myself listening to. However, there has always been interesting results to come from his working with just about anyone who would dare test his aesthetics, and this latest product is no exception. Scott Miller and Lee Camfield (ex-Sutekh Hexen) provide a backdrop of (relatively) human instrumentation and occasional sense, which is then deliciously cannibalized by Akita's digital processing.

Were it nothing but the title song alone, Landing's Wave Lair would have still made a pretty strong impression on me. Prodding curiously at the fabric of pop songwriting, Landing finds an experimentalism in a new style fit to augment its hazy sentimentality. With drummer Daron Gardner on bass, the band turns to drum machines for rhythm and finds direction in heady drone and blurry passages of sedate dream pop. It also happens that the rest of the material on this album is solid as well, finding a few glimpses of brilliance in familiar forms.

On this second full length release, Geneviève Beaulieu (Menace Ruine) and James Hamilton (Nebris). continue their partnership in this uniquely medieval tinged modernized folk ensemble. Working with a rather Spartan selection of instruments, From The Wells is six songs that at first sound deceptively simple, but are much more layered and nuanced than that first impression gives.

Of Justin Broadrick's multitude of ongoing projects, Jesu has perhaps been the one in the most constant state of flux. Initially capturing the more introspective side of Godflesh its demise, it soon shifted on electronic pop and then finally back to a shoegaze metal sound. Here, some ten years after its inception, Broadrick has finally unified all of those sounds into a single work.

Most of Chartier's recent work and collaborations, both under his own name and his Pinkcourtesyphone alter ego, have focused mostly on presenting tones, both natural and synthetic, in a myriad of understated, minimalist contexts. It is perhaps for this reason that Interior Field has such a different character and mood in comparison, as it of a completely different approach. Made up of field recordings, a technique he has not used since 2010's Fields for Mixing, there is a more hollow, bleaker darkness to be explored here that is quite different for him.

Invention happens when an artist uses the tools at hand to create something novel, whatever those tools may be. This thought is particularly relevant in considering how to use a 300 year old church organ for a new piece of music. Whatever inspired its first listeners, whatever tastes they possessed, have long since expired. On Fantasma di Perarolo, Burial Hex employs that sense of dusty, half forgotten ambiance as a catalyst, using the instrument’s antiquity as a concrete element in the recording.

With their dual bass and drum lineup (in addition to samples and other electronic elements), Comparative Anatomy may sound like peers of Lightning Bolt, but their approach is very different. Rather than their scum-rock inclinations, CA are more adherents to the absurdist, bordering on batshit insanely comic school of rock. This is an album where each song has a different mammal as a guest "vocalist."

Recorded live amongst the very definition of urban decay, this duo of contrabass players demonstrate their exceptional ability at improvisation. Presented here as naked as possible (no overdubs, editing, or post-production), the result is a compelling minimalist document of both improvised music and a study of sparse, natural sound.

The beauty of this record is in how it makes the idea of space travel not only catchy but entertaining. I hope a lot of kids get a chance to hear it or watch it on youtube, because the lyrics, a collage of utterances made by Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, and other scientists, as run through an autotuner and placed atop a moving beat and driving melody are truly inspiring. This is popular science at its best.

Following their excellent eponymous debut, this outré music supergroup reconvened after a brief break sans Elke Skelter, but with a pretty exciting new addition in her place (Jim O'Rourke). Given the pedigree of the players involved, it was no surprise at all that the resultant album was a strange and difficult one, but it managed to subvert my expectations anyway. Of course, having my expectations subverted when my expectation was "this will be a brilliant album!" is not entirely a good thing. Mimir clearly had admirable intentions and a formidable line-up for these sessions, but Mimyriad's success is much more evident as an artistic statement and an experiment.

This 1991 release marked the beginning of the trilogy that many regard to be some of Andrew McKenzie's finest and most inspired work. Appropriately enough, its 2004 reissue by devoted super-fan Frans de Waard (Beequeen) marked the beginning of something still more notable: an ongoing campaign to track down and reissue as many hopelessly unavailable Hafler Trio albums as possible—with all omissions, glitches, and compromises eradicated and all financially suicidal packaging triumphantly intact.

Considering the album’s title suggests a bleak monochromatic soundscape, Colin Potter and Phil Mouldycliff quickly confounded my limited expectations with their vivid field recordings and processed sounds. They take us by the hand and lead us on a tour of a sleepy village found somewhere between the Mediterranean coast and the edge of consciousness. Trembling and sonorous, the music the pair generate over the course of the album is rich with delicate textures and hidden beauty.

For Sub Rosa's second blues compilation, they swing their gaze from relatively unknown blueswomen to unsung bluesmen. Crackling, distorted recordings betray the battered, forgotten nature of these individuals but through the murk of time come songs and voices that sound utterly alive and unblemished by almost a century of pillaging at the church of the blues. Although varying in quality (both in terms of the songs and the recordings themselves), I'm Going Where the Water Drinks Like Wine is a fine presentation of undeservedly obscure musicians long lost in the dusty recesses of personal record collections and thrift stores.

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