Ten years ago, Analog Africa released the landmark African Scream Contest, an album that instantly established the fledgling label as one of the most intriguing and distinctive imprints in the global crate-digging milieu. It was not exactly a perfect album, but it was certainly a perfect and resounding statement of intent, plunging deep into an eclectic vein of forgotten African funk outside the celebrated regions documented by Soundway, Strut, and Ethiopiques. To celebrate that auspicious anniversary, Samy Ben Redjeb has released one hell of a sequel. Sadly, it will not make quite the same impact as its predecessor, as a new label can only burst onto the scene once, but African Scream Contest 2 is actually the superior album in many ways. Admittedly, some people will be disappointed that a bit of the weirdness and rough edges have been sanded away, which is a category that I would normally expect myself to fall into. Redjeb has gotten significantly better at his job over the last decade though and that definitely shows here, as this latest installment is pared down to a wall-to-wall feast of tight grooves and great hooks that never overstays its welcome.
The Book of Sounds was composed between 1979-82, when Hans Otte was reflecting on his previous artistic output, by distilling hundreds of pages of improvisations he had written down, and looking ahead to a future dealing with his cancer diagnosis. The work was originally released in 1984 and consists of 12 solo piano pieces which blend older and newer traditions: the intimacy and poetic style of Chopin and the pantheistic eulogies of Debussy as against the Eastern rhythms and pointillist pulses familiar to Reich and Glass. Yet these influences are subsumed beneath an artistic vision: music stripped to the bone and laid open to deep listening and personal reflection. There is neither great variation nor exact repetition in these 12 tracks. Instead there is a deep exploration of sound, the sound of an acoustic piano, with great emphasis on harmony.
Over the last several years, Hallow Ground’s eclectic curatorial instincts have hit the mark so frequently that I am now deeply curious about anything they release from any artist completely unknown to me. While I do quite not love everything they release, they have unearthed quite a few lost post-industrial gems and are often far ahead of the curve with promising new artists or projects. This project from Daniel Alexander Hignell very much falls into the latter category, wielding the conceptual complexity of a less mischievously arch Hafler Trio to craft a seismic drone opus that falls in roughly the same league as greats like Eliane Radigue and Phill Niblock. The album's second half is admittedly a bit less revelatory, but it does not matter because the opening piece is such an absolute monster.
Phill Niblock is an artist that, despite his penchant of expansive, subtle and nuanced recordings, always seems to make every release an epic one. His fifth album for the label (hence the title) is yet again another double disc one that holds only five compositions. Although it takes a conceptually similar approach to those albums, namely Niblock's use of layered instrument drones with microtonal adjustments to pitch, it still has a different feel when placed alongside his other releases.
Chondritic Sound label head Greh Holger initially began work as a harsh noise artist, but like many in that field, his tastes and art has changed and evolved, and on this pair of new releases that is completely evident. With both his synth pop project Pure Ground becoming a tighter band and his solo noise guise Hive Mind displaying even greater compositional tactics, he is definitely at the top of his game.
Vitiello and Berg have collaborated before on 2009's The Gorilla Variations. Like that work, the two improvise together, Vitiello primarily on guitar and Berg on clarinet and vocals. However, due to heavy amounts of processing and editing, only a ghost of untreated instruments shine through, resulting in an album rife with sadness and longing, but never in an overly bleak or depressing way.
An album presented in two distinct movements, one on each side of the LP, Olivia Block's latest work at first seems like two diametrically opposed pieces, but are thematically, if not evidently from the sound, tied to one another. Based partially on the idea of presentation, both in the form of musical performance and in the sociological perception of the self, Karren has conceptual depth, but is captivating even stripped of that fact.
The Stranger’s second album sounds very different from his 2008 release Bleaklow. Whereas that debut was doused with a sense of trekking over ancient stones and moors of Northern England, this record feels much more interior, claustrophobic and urban. The rhythms boom and snake through a threatening, shattered, dystopia like rats crawling through pipes beneath a recently evacuated building.
An entire album's worth of field recordings can be a daunting proposition. As an added instrument, they often are mixed into other albums all the time to great effect, but the idea of a full album of nothing else can be intimidating, unless it involves Chris Watson.  However, this five artist/one track performance works splendidly, emphasizing the varying elements of the genre and staying compelling throughout its nearly 18 minute duration.
A six year absence means nothing to Melt-Banana. Fetch is a minor refinement of past efforts in the band's 20 year career, unraveling over a bevy of short, aggressive songs to reveal itself as either an irreverently noisy pop album, or an intermittently poppy noise rock album, depending on your point of view. They have a knack for straddling the fence between kitsch and the vaguely obscene, and that grey area has never seemed so lived-in and comfortable as on their newest work.
