A reissue of a self-release from the enigmatic Grant Smith, the sound on this disc fits squarely in the world of guitar noise, but with a significant amount of development and variation within each of its six untitled segments. Sometimes harsh, sometimes pensive, and sometimes melodic, it results in a wonderful, mysterious album that is enjoyably unpredictable.
Will Thomas Long has been less prolific as of late with material as Celer, his minimal ambient project. That longer space between releases has made each one all the more memorable, and that is no different with Sky Limits. Even though it is conceptually about the ephemeral nature of life and experiences, stopping to listen to these quiet pieces makes for a great metaphor of life on a grander scale.
Richard Skelton has a long history of shifting monikers, unusual concepts, and stylistic evolutions, but this latest project still came as a bit of a surprise to me, as it does not particularly sound like a Richard Skelton album at all.  Not at first, anyway.  Rather, it sounds a bit like a warmer variation on classic Lustmord or one of Steve Roach's space-themed albums–a far cry from Skelton's vibrant and organic signature blend of bow-scrapes and rich, shimmering harmonics.  After a few listens, however, it becomes evident that Skelton's aesthetic is still perfectly intact, but has been slowed down and stretched to something approximating geologic time (appropriate, given his well-documented non-musical interests).  While Nimrod is definitely not representative of what Richard historically does best, it is nevertheless a deep and absorbing listen, boasting at least one piece that is probably as great as anything in the space music canon.
Bastard Noise was not as prolific in 2014 as previous years, with only a handful of releases appearing. From that handful, these two are very different in their respective approaches, with Live at Babycastles consisting of a single long-form piece recorded by the duo of Anthony Saunders and Eric Wood, and Uncertainty Principle being two short pieces in collaboration with two well known Japanese artists. The sound, however, stays consistent: a subtle, at times ambient series of sounds that manage to get very noisy, but never lose their direction.
It has been quite a long wait since the last proper Black To Comm album (2009's wonderful Alphabet 1968), so it was an absolute delight to have Marc Richter unexpectedly re-surface in December with an inspired return to form (and one of the year’s finest and most singular albums).  While this latest release understandably bears almost no resemblance to Marc’s decidedly outré soundtrack for EARTH (2012), it also does not seem to follow any obvious, linear progression from his previous work either. Black To Comm is its own self-contained, anomalous world of vibrant, hallucinatory sound art brilliance, resembling nothing less than the beautiful nexus where drone, space rock, psychedelia, and the flickering unreality of late-night semi-consciousness meet.
Considered "lost" for the better part of the past decade, these two live pieces, commissioned for a performance in Berlin, has some unexpected moments for those familiar with these two composers. Steve Roden and Frank Bretschneider blend their strengths of subtle electronics and improvisation, but also bring in some surprisingly conventional beats and rhythms, resulting in an unpredictable, yet diverse and gripping record.
Regler, the Swedish combo lead by noise artist Mattin and Anders Bryngelsson (Brainbombs) is anything but subtle in their approach to music. On this double CD set, they lay out exactly what to expect from the disc titles: Noise Core is the group (featuring Henrik Andersson on bass) doing an hour of noisy, almost grindcore chaos, while Free Jazz is the trio plus Yoann Durant on sax, making an hour of vaguely jazz tinged racket. It’s not for everyone, but it is an impressive work no matter what.
The word "dance" does not come to mind when I see Ralf Wehowsky's name, so I was intrigued by this collaboration from its title alone. Johannes Frisch is not known for working with electronic beats either, so the fact that they appear here in anything but a conventional sense is not that surprising. Between Wehowsky's electronics and Frisch's double bass, shards of dance music appear but extremely deconstructed, and blended up with free jazz and electronic experimentalism.
For the third installment of his all field recording based Epoch series, López presents material collected at somewhat more conventional sounding locations, at least for an American such as myself. Captured at various parks and nature preserves throughout Cuba and both the Southeast and Southwest of the United States, the sounds are no less fascinating than his rainforest-centric previous entries in this series.
The noise/orchestral ensemble, lead and directed by Reinhold Friedl, have performed the work of power electronics titans Whitehouse before, with their 2010 Whitehouse Electronics release drawing heavily from the band’s final three albums. Following recent performances of Metal Machine Music and collaborations with Keiji Haino, Whitehouse succeeds even more than its predecessor by taking a wider swath through the nearly 30 year catalog, and even featuring an all-too-brief vocal contribution by William Bennett himself.
