Previously, Gregory Scharpen’s work as Thomas Carnacki has been strange in an unsettling way, finding haunted parts of the psyche and probing them relentlessly. For this latest album, the music retains its strangeness but now there is a fantastic, warm feeling running through the pieces. There remains a darkness lurking beneath the surface but Scharpen’s humor is more evident now than before.
This debut release from Matt Harries as Brennendes Gehirn is a veritable storm of turbulent noises, ranging from freeform sketches to the kind of almost-danceable rhythms that I would expect from classic albums from Scorn. Bleakly psychedelic sounds reverberate and bump off each other like living creatures as Harries builds a magnificent range of pieces from the sort of junk sounds that can easily be boring or clichéd in less skilled hands.
Despite being one of the most visionary and iconoclastic artists to emerge from the early days of electronic music (as well as a rather fascinating and enigmatic person), Daphne Oram has only recently (and posthumously) begun to get the recognition she deserves.  Unlike the similarly wonderful and massive Oramics compilation from 2010, The Oram Tapes is comprised of largely unheard work from Daphne's mountainous tape archive that is currently being sifted through at Goldsmiths College.  That naturally means a tendency towards sketches and excepts, but it also means that it is sometimes alternately weirder, harsher, better, and more intimate than its predecessor.
The exquisitely curated 12k label has always had a diverse roster, but Gareth Dickson may be the most "out there" artist to be working with the label. In this case, it is because his acoustic guitar and vocal work is so much more along the lines of conventional singer-songwriter when placed aside the label's otherwise more electronic and abstract catalogue. However, Dickson's work has an understated complexity and depth that makes it a perfect fit for the label. And furthermore, this is another excellent work from this Scottish artist.
Recorded live at the Oslo Jazz Festival in 2010, Slugfield is a trio of Lasse Marhaug, Maja S.K. Ratkje, and Paal Nilssen-Love, three artists who would rarely have the "j" genre applied to them. The five tracks that make up this improvisation aren't jazzy in the traditional sense, but instead channel that combination of chaotic sonic freedom and moments where the artists lock together as a singular, three headed noise making beast.
Aaron Turner and Faith Coloccia's more esoteric, less traditionally "metal" side label Sige has been responsible for some unexpected, but brilliant pieces of dark sonic exploration in recent years, but with this LP, the most unexpected is simply how normal it sounds. Although lyrically it is as dark and sinister as any metal album, the airy feminine vocals of bassist Sera Timms and drummer Kelly Johnston enshroud it with a certain gauzy bliss that belies its dark content.
Although my initial enthusiasm for this project has been dampened somewhat by Rachel Evans' deluge of similar-sounding releases, her ambitious and divergent debut for Editions Mego's Spectrum Spools imprint demonstrates that she still has some tricks up her sleeve.  While her characteristic layers of gauze-y, ethereal vocals have not vanished entirely, they are unexpectedly infrequent and rarely take center stage.  Instead, this sprawling double-album plunges headlong into burbling, drifting, and subtly hallucinatory synth-based psychedelia and stays there for a pleasantly long time.
Kevin Doherty has long been one of the most quietly compelling artists working in the dark ambient field due to his unusual (and oft-alienating) themes and his inventive artistic purity in realizing them.  This release, which was commissioned by Cold Spring, is constructed entirely from recordings made during the maintenance of a B-2 Stealth Bomber.  While not as objectively impressive as wringing two full albums out of a three-minute recording of a broken heater (Dead Weather Machine) or as musical as his homage to the doomed spaceship in Alien (Nostromo), Stealth is fascinating in its own right and makes a worthy addition to a unique body of work.
Simple, haunting, and frequently plaintive piano music is Robert Haigh's bread and butter. He's a master at making the most out of very little. His career is marked by memorable collaborations with Nurse with Wound, tape shenanigans as Truth Club, pseudo-new age adventures with Silent Storm, and numerous other projects, but his best music is undoubtedly for solo piano. Notes and Crossings is ostensibly a collection of preludes, dances, and improvisations, but the album's collective weight fosters a more cohesive sense. As with much of his work, Haigh's writing here is heavy and introspective, with hints of madness lurking beneath the surface, but it's also immediate and strangely catchy thanks to all the sharp, short, and effective melodies he produces.
As anyone who picked up Siamese Soul or Electric Cambodia last year will probably attest, there was some absolutely amazing music being made in Southeast Asia in the '60s and '70s, so I was pretty thrilled when I heard Soundway was throwing their hat in the Thai pop ring.  As expected, The Sound of Siam is a pretty spectacular album, expertly balancing soulful, funky greatness with exuberant, kitschy fun and unearthing some incredibly obscure artists in the process.
