The child is safely tucked up in bed and I'm sipping a glass of wine listening to the latest emissions from New Zealand native and Braille records founder David Watson who has previously recorded for Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace label and the John Zorn affiliated Avant imprint.

 

Xi 

An international nine-piece ensemble that combines acoustic and electronic instruments and that brings in a variety of guest singers like J.G. Thirwell and Barry Adamson to help articulate their vision has the potential to add up to something spectacular. While there are some good moments, Our Moon Is Full was too dry and unfocused to hold my attention.

Central Control

Another month, another vinyl only release from Jesu. This time Justin Broadrick shares the LP with Matthew Cooper's Eluvium. The cheap postcard-style sleeve of the pyramids and the surrounding desert belies the organic and fertile sounds on the vinyl. It may not be Broadrick's best work under the Jesu moniker but along with Cooper's contribution, this is a worthy addition to both artists' growing catalogues.

 

Temporary Residence Limited / Hydra Head

There's a type of tranquility which is like a running stream—perpetually in motion and slowly (try thousands of years) changing the landscape—but then there's a still type like a vast lake where a drop that disturbs the surface ripples and resonates. 

 

Darla

Full of top-shelf songs, this disc gets at the heart of what a culture-based compilation should be. It is eclectic enough to adequately represent a nation's worth of musicians and singers, but unified enough to present a cohesive listening experience.

This album more than lives up to its visceral title. It contains some of Bishop's most intense and downright ugly work to date as a solo artist, but also some his most sublime. Bishop willfully defies the traditionalist and academic conventions of solo-guitar work, offering both examples of controlled musicianship and malevolent noodling.

Larsen have always been at odds with most of their contemporaries, almost mythical stories about getting signed to Young God Records, a tribute album to Autechre that features no computers and no obvious references to the band or their music and all sorts of strange rumours abounding about the members of the group. However, the live album/DVD ABECEDA sees them cement their reputation as serious artists (minus any negativity that concept might carry with it). ABECEDA is a well-thought out concept delivered with care and finesse by Larsen and their friends. Musically it is as strong as any of their previous efforts and visually it stands out on its own.

Tom Carter has been one of my favorite guitar players for several years now. Outside of the particular skeletal trance-blues style that he has perfected in work with Charalambides, Carter's many many solo and duo recordings carve out a truly unique improvised guitar method, blending extended technique, purist drone logic, trance minimalism, and a beautifully impure psy-punk energy befitting collaboration with many of today's lo-fi drone or psychedelic noise currents.

Another reissue from the Les Disques du Crepuscule back catalog, The Fruit of the Original Sin is a two-disc compilation appropriately subtitled "A Collection of After Hours Preoccupations." While there isn't anything overt that these tracks have in common, many of them share a tinge of melancholy and beauty in equal measure, qualities that are especially noticeable late at night.

The idea of an orchestral approach to the electronic and tape compositions of Iannis Xenakis may seem like an absurd endeavor, but it works, extremely well.

Take equal parts scummy sludge rock, power electronics, and free jazz and mix them together, and you'll get a loud obnoxious mess.  Which is exactly what this album is, and there couldn't be a better compliment for it.

New Jersey's renaissance man of all things heavy has released his second solo album in as many years that explicitly shows his diverse array of skills at their finest, both in the shaping of complete chaos and the obsessive study of minutiae.

This slab of vinyl is perfectly on point in referencing metal twice in its title. Heather Leigh Murray's pedal steel, the cornerstone of Taurpis Tula's sound and energy drenches both of this album's sides in metallic offal. From rust to the molten spread of wet metal to the hiss of megalithic spear-tip in water, this is amongst their heaviest (and best recorded) work yet.

Eight years after his debut, one of this label's first releases, this producer returns with a sophomore set of moderately appetizing tunes that thankfully haven't been left out to spoil in the summer sun.

Following last year's delightful Leaf or Tree, Stephen Banville's group return with another 3" CD packed with wonderful songs. Elsworth Cambs sound surer of themselves compared to their debut; the pieces here all feel more mature and more natural. 

 

 

Slow Loris

Recorded over different nights of the Final Academy exhibition, this album features Gysin reading early cut-ups from the time of his early collaborations with William S. Burroughs. Musicians several decades younger than he add a spontaneous excitement to his animated recital, lending this document a vitality that far exceeds its historic value.

Waldteufel returns to conjure primeval forces deep within forests shrouded in darkness. Using hypnotic tribal percussion, cosmic drones, and unearthly chants, they have created an album of dense Germanic pagan hymns that is both transcendent and mystifying.

The third album from Michael Moya's wonderful group picks up where the last one left off. The nine hymnal songs here are sung from the soul, each one heavy with emotional weight. Moya and company manage to merge melancholy with hope and joy. The end result is an evocative and captivating journey.

A couple of years ago, when Justin Broadrick decided to sing instead of shout and focus more on atmospheres instead of riffing, Godflesh became Jesu and an entirely new genre ("shoegaze metal" perhaps) was born.  The Angelic Process have been quick to put their mark on the genre, and this disc is a good effort that is unfortunately hindered by spotty production.

Fresh after a couple of collaborations with noise god Merzbow, this disc shows Henrik Nordvargr Bjorkk (no relation) balancing the words of electronic drone and harsh noise across two long tracks.