Matthew Bower is best known with his work in the noise rock (more emphasis on the noise) band Skullflower, but closely followed with his formless output as Total. The reason I am mentioning both of these is that this new guise, with partner Samantha Davies, is some sort of mutant hybrid of these two: filth ridden lo-fi feedback with the occasional hint of melody or rhythm that somehow sneaks through. Between these two discs, the duo stick with this blueprint, occasionally drifting fully into one direction or the other, but always resulting in material that screams to be blasted as loud as possible.
As one of the handful of truly innovative artists to spring off from the drone metal template, the trio of Locrian had previously been rather prolific, tweaking and honing their sound to something singular and unique amidst a flurry of singles and split releases. However, other than a few high profile collaborations of late (Mamiffer, Christoph Heemann), they have been rather quiet since 2011's The Clearing. Return to Annihilation, the first new material after signing to Relapse, proves that this time and effort was well spent, perfecting their sound in ways that are both more accessible, but also pushing the more abstract moments they have been working with since the beginning even further.
Recently, I have been delving deeper and deeper into Esplendor Geométrico's discography and it has become increasingly clear to me that their prime never actually ended.  Arturo Lanz and his varying bandmates have certainly released some comparatively uneven or tame efforts over the course of their three-decade career, but Lanz has never stopped being a rhythmic genius and can still unleash a crushing masterpiece at any time.  One such gem, "Aplicación Insospechada," comes at the end of this intermittently impressive (and woefully underappreciated) 2009 effort.
Between the final Throbbing Gristle albums and last year's stellar Carter Tutti Void collaboration, Chris and Cosey have been maintaining an atypically high profile as of late, which makes it easy to forget that there has not been a new Carter Tutti album in over five years.  While that situation is not expected to be remedied until sometime in 2014, this very solid 10" single makes for a very welcome teaser in the meantime.
Anonymous emerged from a group of friends who played at each other’s houses in and around Indianapolis in the early ‘70s. They recorded their debut and sole album in a garage in Milwaukee in 1976, the same year that the Ramones and Blondie released their debuts. They pressed approximately 300 copies, but never played a gig, never promoted the album, and released only one follow-up, albeit under a different name and with a different lineup. That one record is remarkable though, a private press gem with excellent musicianship, beautiful vocal harmonies, and imaginative songwriting from their front man, Ron Matelic.
Cécile Schott released a truly impressive string of beautiful, distinctive albums in the early and mid '00s, but went mysteriously silent after 2007's Les Ondes Silencieuses (much to my chagrin).  Now she is thankfully back and seems creatively re-invigorated, yet noticeably transformed: her latest effort is every bit as good as her previous work, but takes her aesthetic in a much more pristine, stripped-down, and song-like direction than I expected.
This was my first exposure to the work of video artist/composer JR Robinson and it more or less left me absolutely flattened.  You've Always Meant So Much To Me is ostensibly just a single drone piece Robinson wrote to soundtrack one of his films, but a far better description is probably "a veritable Murderers' Row of Chicago's finest black metal and noise musicians converged at Steve Albini's studio to perform a truly crushing, slow-burning, and blackened epic."  More remarkable still: the album is even better than that sounds.
This double disc set is an expanded reissue of the first two 17 Pygmies albums and their debut EP Hatikva. It is a fine document of the group formed by Savage Republic member Philip Drucker (aka Jackson Del Rey) in an attempt to make music that was more melodic than SR.
Pan•American's first record in four years comes timidly, marked by magnificently produced songs on eggshells and generally downplaying every one of its own notes. Now a performing band with the addition of Steven Hess and former Labradford bandmate Bobby Donne, the project of Mark Nelson adds a few elements of traditional rock music to his palate but only in the scarcest concentrations possible. What was once scattered becomes rhythmic, melodic, and occasionally more sporadic but still as sparse.
I have historically had a very complicated relationship with William Basinski's work, as he has released some absolutely brilliant albums over the years, but he has also proven himself just as capable of producing fairly forgettable ambient music and/or flogging a single simple motif to death for a seeming eternity.  This latest effort lies somewhere in the middle of those two poles, as the blurred, uneasy title piece favorably calls to mind a more hallucinatory Morton Feldman, while the closing "The Trail of Tears" gradually devolves into an especially cold, dull, and dreary strain of dark ambiance that is best avoided.
