The latest installment in this duo’s quest to pervert well known forms of music may be its most difficult album yet. On the surface it seems the most conventional: a live performance of Anders Bryngelsson on drums and Mattin on guitar with the assistance of some backing tapes, but the way in which these two interpret the blues is anything but.  It is one of those records that is rather unpleasant to listen to, and that is exactly the point of it.

This six disc box set is a nice time capsule for the extremely prolific Drumm's work from 2013 through 2016. Which means, of course, by now this stuff is old hat and there is likely to be another 15 or so albums worth of material available to download at this point. However, Drumm's work is something to be digested slowly and methodically, and with Giuseppe Ielasi ensuring a top quality remastering, it makes for an essential collection of work that is fitting for both new listeners and those who have been there for a while.

Ben Frost continues to mine the rich vein of recordings he made with Steve Albini with this full-length follow-up to this year's excellent Threshold of Faith EP. Naturally, The Centre Cannot Hold is a similarly face-melting eruption of ambient drone beefed up to snarling, brutal immensity, yet it feels a bit anticlimactic and redundant after the EP, as three songs are repeated (although usually in different versions) and one piece clocks in at a mere 13 seconds. A few of the totally new songs are quite good, however, and Frost allows himself to indulge and experiment a bit more with structure and melody than he did with the more punchy and concise predecessor. I personally prefer the punchy and concise approach in Frost's case, but the less essential and somewhat over-extended Centre could have been a similarly strong EP if it had been distilled to just its high points. There is some prime Frost to be found here, even if the presentation is less than ideal.

The second full-length album from this bass-driven Australian "freak unit" is an intriguing evolution from the bleary, haunted atmospheres of 2015's Hide Before Dinner. For one, the mood is considerably less unnerving, but the trio has also incorporated a significant dub influence (a move that always makes my ears perk up). Naturally, F Ingers is still as unrepentantly bizarre, prickly, and indulgent as ever, but they seem to found a way to make their fractured nightmares feel a lot more playful, spontaneous, and kinetic. At its worst, Awkwardly Blissing Out sounds like a batch of willfully wrong-headed, dub-damaged, and sketchlike experiments that blossomed from the corpses of murdered songs. At its best, however, it transcendently resembles a newly discovered cache of extended and deeply hallucinatory dub remixes of imaginary early UK post-punk classics.

This latest Folklore Tapes collection is a perfect illustration of why they are possibly the most unique and fascinating label around, assembling 31 different artists to create free-form sound art based upon their research into a specific plant. I certainly like the concept and appreciate the depth and breadth of their commitment to it (there is accompanying literature, a film, and a pack of seeds), yet none of that would matter all that much if the music was underwhelming. As it happens, the music is absolutely wonderful, as the many brief and varied vignettes form a wonderfully surreal and kaleidoscopic whole. A few of the participants were familiar to me beforehand (Dean McPhee, Bridgett Hayden), but most were not and nearly every single one brings something delightfully bizarre, hallucinatory, or enigmatically esoteric to the table.

Alex Keller and Sean O'Neill may have been collaborators since 2015, but Kruos is actually their debut release. That relative youth does not translate to lack of experience on the album, however, as the duo’s work is a complex, nuanced work of sound art, conjured up from some rather rudimentary sources, largely just field recordings and a telephone test synthesizer. It is a bit of a difficult, unsettling experience at times, but a strong one nonetheless.

Coldkill is the duo of Rexx Arkana (FGFC820) and Eric Eldredge (Interface), and was created as an attempt to get back to the roots of EBM and 1980s industrial music, an era from which both musicians have drawn influence throughout their careers]. With the use of vintage gear and a more minimalistic aesthetic when it comes to construction and dynamics in these songs, they do an exemplary job of being forward thinking, yet still clearly acknowledging their past.

Few artists continually push their art into strange and unfamiliar new places quite like Jan St. Werner has been doing with his Fiepblatter series.  Some installments have certainly been better than others, yet St. Werner always brings a unique blend of bold conceptual vision, rigorous craftsmanship, and playful experimentation.  With Spectric Acid, he continues that noble trend in supremely vibrant fashion, taking inspiration from ceremonial West African rhythms to weave a dense tapestry of dynamic shifting pulses, dense synth buzz, and squalls of electronic chaos.  At its best, it sounds like a particularly visceral blend of exquisite sound art and an out-of-control train.

While I suspect Thomas Meluch will always be best known for his more traditional albums, he has quietly become one of North America’s most consistently compelling ambient/drone artists over the last few years.  On this, his first full-length for Portland’s Beacon Sound, Meluch returns to roughly the same territory that he explored on 2015’s gorgeous Sonnet and his self-released Stanza series: lush, slow-moving, and gently undulating drones drifting through a haze of tape hiss.  There are some intriguing small-scale transformations to be found, however, as Meluch's focus has subtly shifted away from structure and melody into an increasing deep fascination with the textural possibilities of weathered and distressed tapes.

This is a terrific reissue of pieces Spiegel created at Bell Laboratories between 1974-77 when computers were as big as fridge-freezers. Included with her landmark 1980 LP are 15 superb additions, including the entire Appalachian Grove series and "Kepler's Harmony of the Worlds," her contribution to the golden record launched aboard the Voyager spacecraft.

Paul Dickow has reinvented himself. His newest release as Strategy is a huge surprise and an even bigger statement. It comes out left field on the fledgling Peak Oil label four years after the last Strategy full-length. A series of 12" records released in the last year by Under the Spire, Endless Flight, and 100% Silk are its closest brethren, but none of them sound anything like this. Paul’s rhythms are bolder and his melodies sharper this time around. Lyrics are featured prominently throughout and the atmospherics that once defined his sound have been toned down in favor of tighter instrumental performances and punchier songs. Coming along with the new sound is a gaggle of new collaborators, including Thomas Meluch (Benoît Pioulard), members of the Evolutionary Jass Band, and Scott Ryser of Units.

Her first solo full length in over six years, this album leans more into Bailiff's electric guitar and lush atmospherics rather than the more stripped down folk sound. It has a distinctly current sound, but in a way that triggers memories of the best of early 1990s alternative rock, which was a formative time in my musical development. That’s not to say that Bailiff's more folk inclinations are gone, however: the hushed, spectral voice and the slow, acoustic lead "Your Ghost is Not Enough" calls to mind the earlier, more folk heavy work, even with its transition into a more electrified conclusion.

If the term spastic ever needed an audio equivalent, Survival Tricks would easily fit the bill. While it is rooted in an improvised rock context, bits of jazz, noise, and techno fly around like shards of broken glass in an album that is as equally abrasive as it is spectacular.