Released in 1972, Judee Sill's second album is very much in the same mold as her debut. However, for this, Sill took greater control over the production and orchestral arrangements as David Geffen granting her complete artistic control. The result is an album full of arrangements that are a closer match with her cosmic lyrics—celestial vocal harmonies, baroque horns and church organ, shades of gospel music and the ever-present vocal multitracking that is Judee's trademark.

The 1970s was the decade of the singer-songwriter: a golden age in which anyone with passable guitar skills, decent vocal ability and a handful of good songs could land a recording contract. But just as in every other era in popular music, the most original artists tended to be largely ignored in favor of easily digestible, crowd-pleasing pap. In a decade in which Joni Mitchell and James Taylor were selling out football stadiums, an artist like Judee Sill had no chance.

Tigersushi is obviously trying to exceed the benchmark they set for themselves with last year's Miyage mix orchestrated by vegan DJ collective K.I.M. This double-disc mix is billed as the second volume in the How To Kill The DJ series, and is by far the most schizophrenic, eclectic and downright random collection of tunes ever presented under the pretext of a continuous DJ mix. The first volume was a relatively tame affair mixed by Ivan Smagghe, containing a standard cross-section of danceable material drawn from vintage 80s sides, with a full complement of newer electroclash and dancepunk material.

Breathless

A warm, honest record from the deep south.

Hope for Agoldensummer

Piehead
Standing as a fill-in for the unfortunately absent Edward Ka-Spel asPiehead's 11th release this year, Qwerty more than manages to keep theseries interesting as it draws to a close. Qwerty is a solo Croatianelectronic artist who is working in the well-traveled but stillenjoyable paths cut by Warp Records trailblazers and theircontemporaries nearly a decade ago.

Piehead
With Piehead's 10th installment this year, the label offers up apleasant slice of lo-fi electro in the form of the Nippon-o-centricalbum from Robokoneko (or Robot Cat for the gaijin.) The record beginswith a sample from 2010wherein the professor and the machine are wondering if computers dream.From that simple sample, the rest of the agenda for Robokoneko is laidout.

ICR
I have to wonder what the trio of Darren Tate, Colin Potter, and PaulBradley has in mind when they record a set such as this one. Perhapsthey have in mind the construction of psychic hammer dedicated to theeradication of the sensual world or perhaps they simply mean to open upa space where it seems that no such space could possibly fit or exist. Landscapes has the strange quality of being both musical and completely self-indulgent.

Mute
Suicide changed my life. This summer, New York City was treated to anexclusive one-off concert of the legendary duo of instrumentalistMartin Rev and vocalist Alan Vega at the Knitting Factory. Drenchedfrom the downpour outside, I shivered with my beer until they arrivedon stage and proceeded to show this jaded critic just how powerful aseemingly simple two man performance can be. Ripping through a set ofclassics ("Ghost Rider," "Cheree") and more recent material ("DeathMachine," "Misery Train," the unreleased "Friday Night Fever"), Suicideenergized the entire audience again and again, ultimately leaving touproarious hollers and applause. Immediately afterwards and still, Iconsidered this night to be one of the greatest musical experiences inrecent years, rivalling several notable shows including the return ofPsychic TV.

Mute/Spoon
In many ways, Can was (and is) the ultimate rock band. Accordingly,volumes have been written about Can by writers far more eloquent,knowledgeable and pretentious than me, so I will forgo any in-depthexplication of the band's considerable importance and influence.Suffice to say that Can virtually invented a new paradigm for rockmusic, pioneering a marriage of avant-garde techniques andimprovisational rock. They combined classically trained instrumentalvirtuosity with unhinged psychedelic meltdown, and recorded epicrecords filled with massive, funky grooves that were simultaneouslytrance-inducing and booty-shaking.

Kranky
Greg Davis has illuminated the link between sound and light. Perhaps,when the universe was first unfolding, the explosions sounded like buzzsaws or pure white noise, but when the heavens came to be and from itsconvulsions the universe produced stars and angels, the sound generatedmust've been close to the music on Somnia.

Beta-lactam Ring
It is unfortunate for Matt Waldron (Irr.App.[Ext.]) that his reworking of the Angry Eelectric Finger raw material was alotted Volume Three status, as he has used many of the same sounds as Jim O'Rourke used in his Volume One. Although both albums are excellent listens, perhaps owing to the strength of the source material, both artists have done little alteration and their volumes sound a bit too similar at times.

Beta-lactam Ring
While O'Rourke presented an LP very much in a Nurse With Wound style,Cyclobe have obliterated most traces of Stapleton and Potter's rawmaterial and instead produced a freak out of frayed electronics thatsounds much closer to the work of their former colleagues in Coil.Although their "Part One" begins with sparse drones and eerie ambience,the stereo field soon becomes a battleground on which sharp bursts fromanalog synths whirr back and forth.

Beta-lactam Ring
O'Rourke's version of Nurse With Wound's source material keeps veryclose to the spirit of a Nurse With Wound album. This is partly due tothe common reference points both artists share, but partly because itseems that he has used much of the raw material provided by Stapletonand Potter without changing it at all. Nurse With Wound and O'Rourkeare two of the few artists who can sustain interest while essentiallypresenting an entire LP side of creaking sounds set against doom ladenambient soundscapes.

Beta-lactam Ring
It's frustrating that one of the best Nurse With Wound albums in recentyears will probably slip through the cracks of formatting politics.Available to purchase only as a bonus vinyl LP with a pre-order of allthree collaborative albums, Raw Material-Zero Mixmay not be heard by many people. Although it was merely meant toprovide source material to be reworked by Jim O'Rourke, Cyclobe andIrr.App.(Ext.), this album should have been released on its own.

Temporary Residence
Though Ned Oldham has never needed to live under the shadow of hisfamily name — like it would be a bad thing if he did — he has recordedmusic with his brothers in a number of projects over the years,including his own The Anomoanon. This has helped shape the style of hismusic, but on Jojihe steps out large in his own direction, creating one of those recordsthat many will point to for years to come as the sound that defined theband and others in the genre.

In July of 1983 the emaciated corpse of Cole Berlin, a world-weary lounge singer and occasional prostitute was discovered in his Chelsea Hotel apartment, an early victim of AIDS-related illness. He was 37 years old, and his passing from this world went largely unwept and unsung. None of his neighbors could have guessed that a decade earlier, Cole Berlin had been Jobriath, an internationally hyped glam diva and the world's first openly gay rock star.

Attack

Jobriath Salisbury was born Bruce Wayne Campbell, a classically trained piano prodigy from an early age, who joined a hippie rock ensemble called Pidgeon. There he was discovered by Jerry Brandt, who had previously signed such talented luminaries as Patti Smith, and, er, Barry Manilow. Brandt saw in Jobriath the opportunity to create a stateside equivalent of David Bowie, and wasted no time signing the youth to Elektra and recording a pair of albums that showcased Jobriath's songwriting skills and piano virtuosity, as well as his Broadway-style vocal flamboyance, complete with thinly veiled lyrical references to homosexual love, male prostitution and sadomasochism. Jobriath's songs were wrapped in cataclysmically huge arrangements including overwrought orchestral interludes and a bevy of female backup singers. Monumental space oddities like "Morning Star Ship" rubbed shoulders with emotive piano ballads like "Inside" and utterly bizarre, campy Jack Smith nightmares like "What A Pretty."

Load
Sightings are keeping music dangerous. At a recent local liveappearance guitarist Mark Morgan was not ready to hit the stage untilhe was almost unable to walk through the crowd without falling over. Arrived in Goldis the sound of a band unafraid to shred the rock 'n' roll rulebooklike so much cheese going through a grater. They are capable of beingeither a devastatingly intense noise outfit or a kick-ass rock 'n' rollband, but their strength is in combining the two approaches. Althoughtrack three, "Odds On," hints at a linear structure, not until thefourth track does anything resembling a "song" appear. Because thefirst three tracks are so abstract and fragmented, "Internal Compass"sounds all the more powerful with its chugging guitar and drumspattern. It's like a train is on an express through the eardrum canals,not stopping for pedestrians. On "Sugar Sediment," the rhythm sectionis locked into a steady, rolling groove, yet the guitar sounds morelike a chainsaw than a melody making instrument. This tension is whatkeeps the music so exciting. Rather than merely relying on trendyelectronics for strange sounds, Sightings achieve a much tougher goalby producing foreign sounds on familiar instruments. They often lockinto live patterns that sound looped, such as on "Switching toJudgement." As a whole, Arrived in Gold has just the rightproduction quality, sounding raw and spontaneous without soundingamateurish. The full spectrum of frequencies is certainly representedduring "One Out Of Ten," in which throbbing bass and screechinghigh-end guitar are simultaneously competing to deafen. All of theinstruments are clearly audible at all times, yet the set maintains apleasant grittiness throughout. Ten minute album closer "Arrived InGold, Arrived In Smoke" is a perfect distillation of all of theseelements. During the first five minutes Sightings gradually buildlayers of grinding, repetitive patterns until they arrive at all-outfeedback mayhem. The remaining five minutes of sparse pitter-patterelectronics and rumbling guitar feedback are a necessary come-down fromthe intensity of the album's preceding 33 minutes.

samples:

• Dudes
• Internal Compass
• Arrived in Gold, Arrived in Smoke

Stones Throw Records
In the years since his near-miraculous rediscovery in 2002, the author of 1977's cry for help You Think You Really Know Mehas taken time off from his busy porn bookstore clerking duties torecord a second collection of fear and loathing ridden love songs. Forthe uninitiated, Gary Wilson is Endicott, NY's ("A very, VERY smalltown," as if that is ever an excuse) favorite poster boy for neurosis.A legitimate musical phenomenon in his youth, he was proficient withmultiple instruments at the age of eight and collaborated with avantgarde composer John Cage before the age of 16. But by the time GaryWilson and the Blind Dates joined the burgeoning new-wave/punk scene inNYC, something happened: no one knew what to make of Wilson or hismusic. Appearing on stage wrapped in cling film and occasionallyaccompanied by mannequins, the Blind Dates would tear through theirbizarre setlist stopping only to cover Gary in flour and milk,dismember their mannequins, or to destroy their equipment. Frustratedby New York's head-scratching response, Wilson retreated to hisparents' basement with a four track recorder and no small amount ofrepressed sexual energy to record You Think You Really Know Me, a stinging rebuke to any who professed that they did. The album'smere survival is a story in itself. By his own admission, most of the600 copies pressed were smashed over Wilson's forehead at shows. Soonafter the album's release, Wilson packed up and left small townEndicott and literally vanished, dropping off the scene entirely.Thanks to near-constant exposure on underground radio and a fewcelebrity endorsements, his legend lived on until he was uncovered inSan Diego at the turn of the milennium, playing in a house band at anItalian restaraunt and sitting behind the bulletproof glass at anallnight adult bookstore. After playing sold out shows in LA and NewYork and even releasing a film documentary, Wilson finally releases Mary Had Brown Hair,the follow-up to his cellar opus. Gone are his testosterone-fueledbellows, his uniquely organic synthesized grooves and any vestiges ofthe delightful soul/punk/funk blend that could get anyone up and movingand singing along to lyrics that are at times near-psychotic. Now mostof the 14 original tracks on Mary Had Brown Hair (the album also includes two pre-You Think You Really Know Mecuts, "original" versions of "Chromium Bitch" and a less freaky, morepsychedelic cut of the trademark "6.4 = Make Out") are backed by aCasio keyboard, playful but not particularly challenging orinteresting. Worse yet a simple drum track keeps the time for most ofthe album's 30 minutes, a marked departure from his earlier technique(though it might not have been worthy of John Bonham, Wilson wouldstill do his own drumming). Wilson's disco-era voice, scary andmesmerizing, has devolved into a warbly whine, showing the effect theyears have had on Wilson both physically and mentally. In some tracks,it is sped-up to provide a sort of duet. (Gary conversing with hisinner demons?) The bravado on You Think You Really Know Me isnow but a vague memory, perhaps just a defensive front all along. Onecould hardly imagine the swaggering Wilson of 1977 lamenting "GaryWilson feels so bad/Gary Wilson feels real sad for you/Cause you're allalone." It appears that when Wilson packed up and left Endicott, he wastrying to leave something behind, and failed miserably. Hisdemons—whatever they were, lost loves, departed lovers, the kiss neverdelivered, a cute girl he saw on the bus—have followed him, and theirheads are reared for the world to see on Mary Had Brown Hair .Now Wilson, 18 years old, balding, his voice receding, is "all alone towalk the streets of Endicott all by myself." Whatever his personalfailings may be, they are immaterial to the listener, as Wilson'steeming musical genius shines vibrantly throughout all of Mary Had Brown Hair.The hooks are infectious, the choruses are the weirdest lines you willever find yourself singing along to, and Wilson is still a skilled handat guitar and keys. 27 years later, I am forced to admit that Wilsondoes indeed "still got it," though what "it" is remains an enigma: justthe way Gary likes it.

samples:

• Debbie Debbie
• Gary Was with Mary Last Night
• Hold Back the Daylight