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"Kindermusik: Improvised music by babies"

On paper this album is a great idea. Give some babies toys, instruments or whatever and record the results. Unfortunately Kindermusik amounts to nothing but uninteresting tracks that are essentially field recordings of playrooms. Nursery With Wound it isn’t.
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6993 Hits

Kites, "Peace Trials"

Kites' 12" single with Prurient excited me quite a lot. The circus-like approach to noise that Christopher Forgues took on as Kites sounded fresh because it didn't sound like one long stream of random noises; a popular approach to making "free noise." Forgues' latest on Load is a scattered album, however. His often compelling ideas aren't articulated very well and though I'm convinced a political message peppers the entire album, the music and words are often too scattered to understand exactly what message the album might have, if any.
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7458 Hits

Sawako +, "Omnibus"

Paul Dickow's Community Library label, formed in the Spring of 2005, subscribes to a mantra of sorts: music without borders or community without geography. It's a costly mantra in the case of Sawako's first recording on the label. "Sawako +" is Sawako assembling various sound samples given to her by friends and musicians from all over the globe. If it weren't for its brevity, Omnibus would be a very unsatisfying grab bag of strange, random sound.
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5467 Hits

The Rogers Sisters, "Emotion Control"

The Rogers Sisters are from New York and sound like they were born 25 years too late. If all the members of Blondie and Talking Heads were dead they would be rolling in their graves. I’ve no problem with taking influence from an era but trying to recreate it in such an awful way is obscene.
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5409 Hits

Explosions in the Sky, "How Strange, Innocence"

This is another reissue that is perfect for existing fans, as it's beena sought after item, fetching high prices at online auctions. Honestly,and the band is well aware of this, while there are some great songscontained, it's simply not as strong a caliber as is the writing andproduction that the band have found their international acclaim with.
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6648 Hits

Kinski, "SpaceLaunch for Frenchie"

Kinski blew my mind the first time I saw them. They tore the roof offTerrastock 5 in Boston, unleashing a loud, blistering, and healthy mixof psych-rock and pop with a sound clean enough to hear the great songsrather than be buried in a barrage of overwhelming distortion. The bandworked together and didn't step on each others toes in some sloppy messthat other modern day psych rockers are far too guilty of.
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6975 Hits

The Wardrobe, "Cups in Cupboard"

The Wardrobe is a collaboration with Sol Invictus driving force TonyWakeford and Andrew Liles; the release more resembles Wakeford's workwith Matt Howden than Sol Invictus. Cups in Cupboard is limited to 500signed copies and is released on Wakeford's own label Tursa. 
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10089 Hits

Mick Harvey, "One Man's Treasure"

The world’s longest serving Bad Seed releases another album of covers. Unfortunately it's not another Serge Gainsbourg tribute, but a collection of songs that Harvey felt a strong connection to by such songwriters as Lee Hazelwood, Tim Buckley and Guy Clark. Without hearing it, I knew exactly what was going to sound like: a depressed cowboy with a drink in one hand and a battered guitar in the other.
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8010 Hits

All India Radio, "Permanent Evolutions"

All India Radio are not Indian and they are not to be confused with the Indian radio station. In fact they are an Australian electronic band, but its always great to hear that South Asian music and culture is inspiring music artists everywhere. Permanent Evolutions is in many ways a reflection of a new Global South Asian sound that captures an essence that is quite different from South Asian music that was being produced a few decades ago.

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7980 Hits

Capillary Action, "Fragments"

Theseare the first steps of a band with a definite goal in mind and thoughsome of those steps are awkward, Capillary Action harnesses the abilityto fuse the wide, wide world of music into something new and exciting.Just so long as they don't screw up and write more tunes like"Scattered Remnants."
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6927 Hits

Carlos Giffoni, "I am Real"

Dropping the second release from his Rotten LP series Giffoni brings a chaotic bag of smash and grab noise with a suite of dented robotic sex music and detached damage. The odd choice of title manages to claim individualism and defiance while skirting the inherent hip-hop parody and is represented in the cross section of styles that he turns his bank of electronics to mauling with precision.
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5512 Hits

Andrew Chalk, "Shadows from the Album Skies"

This re-release from Andrew Chalk's newly formed Faraway Press imprintwas written for the soul. Its mental and spiritual power can only befelt by the patient, however. Each of them waiting for that moment ofbliss to sink into their bones and erase their minds of the world ofsame-old-shit errands and tasks. That moment of bliss is, of course,defined by the instant that the music puts a blanket over the rest ofthe universe and convinces the listener that it simply doesn't existanymore.


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7639 Hits

Bocksholm, "The Sound of Black Cloggs"

The very mention of a collaboration between Cold Meat Industry heavyweights Raison D'etre and Deutsch Nepal should garner the attention of "death industrial" fanatics, and all but the uninitiated should anticipate hearing essentially what they expected from the duo's sophomore release.
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6236 Hits

Black Lung, "The Coming Dark Age"

As David Thrussell's Snog project continues to drift further andfurther away from EBM, somewhat recently veering into politicallycharged country/folk music, the abstract technoid funk and industrialinformed experimentation of Black Lung serves more and more as his solelifeline to an otherwise alienated audience.
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6240 Hits

Nadja, "Truth Becomes Death"

Lets just ignore the hype surrounding doom/black/dark/atmospheric/etc. metal for a second and pretend that this approach to making music is a powerful musical tool. A tool akin to an epic-maker in a can.
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14086 Hits

Tomas Korber, "Effacement"

Effacement is quite a divergence,and I think an improvement, on the work I’ve heard from Korber.  Like so many Swiss and Viennese before him,Korber is most easily lumped in the microsound category: digital music rifewith microscopically-distanced sound fragments and closed silences, though lesspulverized towards a glitchist all-over-ness than instead dissected andlaboriously sutured into a celebration of nuance, the notes of the noise ratherthan the noise between the notes.
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10436 Hits

Aoki Takamasa and Tujiko Noriko, "28"

The first time I popped this in I thought to myself, "Oh great, the Japanese have their own version of Bjork." After another ten minutes I was convinced this duo was constructing more than just pseudo-adolescent hysteria for fans of electronic pop.
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9604 Hits

Ocean, "Here Where Nothing Grows"

Ever since the recent, baffling critical legitimization of metal, agaggle of new black/death/doom metal bands, or bands coyly playing withthe same techniques and aesthetic concerns at several removes of irony,have been ushered into existence.
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9227 Hits

Coil, "The Ape of Naples"

I can't think of any experience in the world more emotionally painfulthan a parent losing a child.  No matter the circumstances (accident,disease, etc,... ), one experience is common to all survivors: the need to seek somekind of closure, which nothing can bring.  A gaping emotional voidremains.  Fans and friends looking for closure with the final studioalbum from Coil are not going to find it here.
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32937 Hits

10 Ft. Ganja Plant, "Bass Chalice"

The fourth effort from this side project of better-known group John Brown's Body, BassChalice is a come-down in THC talk for 10 Foot Ganja Plant, when filed next to the previous two albums titled, subtly, Hillside Airstrip and Midnight Landing.
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10422 Hits