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Acid Mothers Temple & The Pink Ladies Blues, "The Soul of a Mountain Wolf"

The second release from this Kawabata Makoto-less Acid Mothers splinter group consists of three fairly similar instrumental blues tracks. While not a huge departure from their last album, here the band comes across as more focused and succinct in their songwriting.
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11167 Hits

Northampton Wools, Self-titled Double Cassette

If you're a Western Mass townie, its likely that you've experienced more of Thurston Moore's side projects than you've ever thought possible.  Of all his recent non-Sonic Youth outings this little piece of analog realy exciting.
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17576 Hits

Bernard Parmegiani, "Chants Magnetiques"

Bernard Parmegiani’s fascinating, long out-of-print album finally gets its much-deserved release on CD. Originally released in 1974, this recording is as dark, unsettling, and alluring as anything being released today.
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12314 Hits

Bill Callahan, "Woke on a Whaleheart"

For his umpteenth album, Bill Callahan drops his Smog/(Smog) band designation and now goes by his given name, if only to distance himself from the gloom, misogyny, and misery of his previous incarnation and start fresh. Although his subject matter is indeed sunnier and his songs more polished, he thankfully retains his sense of humor and knack for wordplay.
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7842 Hits

Valet, "Blood is Clean"

I remember hearing a supposed "recording from hell" on Art Bell's Coast to Coast radio program years ago and upon hearing the latest project from Honey Owens (Jackie-O Motherfucker, Nudge), I was immediately reminded of those apparently satanic vibrations. Blood is Clean isn't particularly vicious, tormented, or evil in character, but Owens' ghostly voice and hazy songs on this record are uniquely haunting.
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8045 Hits

Stephen Vitiello, "Listening to Donald Judd"

Here is sound art created from recordings made in Marfa, Texas, on and around the Donald Judd installations in 2002. It is solidly in the camp of those who consider elements of weather and the environment to be musical, and silence to be something much rarer than gold.
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9114 Hits

Halibet Tin Metal Sewage Band

This fag tapes release features a bunch of unidentified nut jobs exploring out-of-the-ordinary vocal sounds in what is probably an abandoned cellar in Ohio. Depending on which way they are interpreted this collection of tracks can either be a set of anthems for despairing mental patients or the sound of really depressingly sour group sex.
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9560 Hits

Wolf Eyes, "Shattered"

Split over a C10 cassette, this wheezy grind and its dark cousin lie in the middle ground between their big label releases and the scratched nothingness of some of their CD-R jams. Nate young's unintelligible vocals on the untitled A Side say more about his possible profligate ways than any lyric sheet could.
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10074 Hits

Two Lone Swordsmen, "Wrong Meeting"

The title of Wrong Meeting should be taken as a fair warning, and a very apt title, for those expecting business as usual for Keith Tenniswood and Andrew Weatherall. On first listen it certainly feels like someone's replaced this TLS album with the wrong record. Despite these initial doubts this record quickly becomes one of the duo's finest efforts to date, without sounding like any of their previous records. Anyone expecting the bumpy electro of their Emissions era or the low end basement sleazy jams of From the Double Gone Chapel, will be sorely disappointed and needs to start keeping up with Weatherall's total lack of continuity.
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6809 Hits

Anders Ilar, "Ludwijka (Extended Visit)"

The fifth LP from the Swedish producer is a significant expansion on its early vinyl only incarnation, with a massive bonus track added.  It's a dark, yet comfortably fascinating journey through the wilds of Sweden.
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8142 Hits

"The Virus Has Been Spread: A D-Trash Records Tribute to Atari Teenage Riot"

A note for note cover of any Atari Teenage Riot song is a silly idea but that is what D-Trash Records have offered up with The Virus has been Spread. Nearly every track here is a straight-up cover lacking in any imagination, vision, or sense of danger. As such, The Virus has been Spread is a limp and impotent attempt at a tribute. It is most likely a way for this label to get its acts some spotlight; it has bitten them in the tail because after listening to this CD I do not want to hear any of these artists again.
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7131 Hits

Drawing Voices

This project takes a unique approach to music: rather than instrumentation, it is based around the sound of writing and drawing. It makes for some original textures but it lacks a coherent feeling and compositional structure that would have made it more compelling.
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6201 Hits

Hungover Breakfast, "Goyner"

The thick oily pulse on the opening "Beerbath Two" is the only thing here that resembles that morning after feeling of an actual hungover breakast. This unseemliness is short-lived as this three-track cassette spreads itself between the gaps of noise and rhythm without the need for comforting but extraneous fatty musical factors.
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9113 Hits

Circle, "Tyrant"

The latest entry in Southern Records' Latitudes series is from Finland's mighty Circle. Even though the combination of the band's name and the title of the album seems like a nod to one of Celtic Frost's classic songs, this release focuses on the band's more spacey sounds than on their classic metal-worshipping moments. Like most of their previous albums, there are some amazing moments on Tyrant but also a few stumbles along the way.
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8140 Hits

Bhob Rainey & Ralf Wehowsky, "I Don't Think I Can See You Tonight"

This extremely long-in-the-making (five years!) collaboration between these two titans of the avant garde finally arrives with high expectations that are summarily met.  Rather than something academic and difficult, it is instead a captivating and visceral work.
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8947 Hits

Throbbing Gristle, "Part Two - The Endless Not"

Throbbing Gristle activates a certain part of my brain that immediately responds with the idea of noise. Then, after more careful reflection, harsh noise, death, industry, sex, pain, exploitation, and a host of other generally negative and exciting responses come to the fore and resolve the picture I have of the band, however incomplete and misinformed it is. Part Two - The Endless Not surprises me because it doesn't evoke that picture of Throbbing Gristle and in fact calls the presence of that name on this recording into question.
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9823 Hits

Courtis/Wehowsky, "Return of the Stone Spirits"

Anla Courtis and Ralf Wehowsky combine their talents to create an album of distorted, erratic textures that scrape the eardrums to inspired, ecstatic effect. The spirits they conjure don’t seem very happy to be awakened, unleashing their exquisite vengeance with a wrath like the Furies.
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7794 Hits

Cex, "Sketchi"

Rjyan Kidwell is going on ten years of musical output and his music is growing accordingly. Of his most recent endeavors, Sketchi is his most immediately mature work, abandoning what might be called his more adolescent tendencies in all places except the artwork that accompanies the record. Don't be fooled by the "Twin Towers" cover, Cex's newest is one of his most sober releases to date.
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8149 Hits

Stars of the Lid, "And Their Refinement of the Decline"

"Dungtitled (in A major)" seems an irreverent title, but announces sonically Brian McBride's and Adam Wiltzie's most doggedly serious recording to date. Compared to The Tired Sounds of... the music on And Their Refinement of the Decline is more direct, relying less on minutiae and emphasizing the power of their music as cleansing and consumptive.
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11047 Hits

"Bombay Connection Vol 2: Bombshell Baby of Bombay"

This compilation captures the Bollywood filmi era of over two decades—the '50s to the early '70s—an era of free love, herbalism, good vibrations and plenty of funk attitude. It's evidence that the Indians didn't miss out on this era!
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9808 Hits