#axis sova

Amulets — Blooming (The Flenser)

Blooming by AMULETS

Like a lot of us, Portland-based noise artist Randall Taylor discovered the solace of long walks during the pandemic. His work, which has always used tape degradation to explore the intersection of time, loss and technology, shifted to incorporate another source of decay: the natural world. So, in opening salvo, “Blooming,” alongside blistering onslaughts of eroded guitar sound, it is possible to hear the sounds of a fertile garden — birds, insects, air movement. You can nearly smell the flowers and feel the sunshine on your skin. “The New Normal” explores sounds of creaking, friction-y word and metal, alongside pristine chimes of synthetic tone. It is uneasy, with skittering string-like squeaks and swoops, but also deeply meditative; it shifts from moment to moment from anxiety to provisional acceptance, much as we all did last year, staring out our windows. Overall, the tone is elegiac, gorgeous, but Randall does not hesitate to introduce dissonance. “Heaviest Weight” thunders with frayed bass tones, a weight and a threat in their subliminal pulse. The contrast between that ominous sound and purer, clearer layers of melody, makes for unsettling listening—are we at war or peace, happy or sad, agitated or calm? And yet, perhaps that’s the point, that the past year has been swirl of feelings, boredom alongside anxiety, hope lighting the corners of our listlessness, the smell of flowers pleasing but faintly reminiscent of funerals. Blooming decocts this mix into sound.

Jennifer Kelly

 Astute Palate — S-T (Petty Bunco)

Astute Palate by Astute Palate

Astute Palate is a hastily assembled group of rockers summoned to support David Nance in Philly on a date when he couldn’t bring the David Nance Band. Participants included Richie Records proprietor Richie Charles, Lantern’s Emily Robb, Writhing Squares/Purling Hiss/all around Philadelphia regular Daniel Provenzano on bass and, of course, Nance himself, all huddled together in Robb’s recording studio for a weekend together. None of this origin story does justice, however, to the pure liquid fire of this one-off musical collaboration, dominated by Nance’s viscous, distorted blues-inflected guitar wail, but knocked sideways by brute force drumming, wild hypnotic bass lines and the ritual incantation of Nance (and later Robb) singing. The long “Stall Out” does anything but, rampaging free-range in unbridled Crazy Horse/Allmans-style abandon for close to ten minutes without a single sputter. “A Little Proof” is somehow simultaneously heavier and more country, spinning out the soul-blues jams like a younger, unrulier cousin to MC5. “Treadin’ Schuylkill” gives Provenzano the spotlight, opening with a growling bass solo soon joined by heavy psych guitars (a nod, perhaps, to the illustrious locals in Bardo Pond). If Nance et. al. can pull stuff this fine out in a stray road warrior weekend, what are the rest of you doing with your lives?

Jennifer Kelly

 Axis: Sova — Fractal (God?)

Fractal - EP by Axis: Sova

Axis: Sova is a combo of three Chicago guys plus one drum machine, which had already been inactive for two or three seasons before the initial COVID lockdown. This digital EP is their way of clearing up some business that could no longer remain undone. The title tune, “Fractal USA,” is a remake of a song from the early days, when the “band” was Brett Sova’s solo project, to full-on, no your pants aren’t tight enough rock band. They just needed you to know about the evolution, you see, so go ahead, do some scissor kicks and gurn while they windmill away; you have enough money saved up from not seeing live music to pay the inevitable chiropractor bill. “Caramel” hypothesizes that a Cluster song that’s played twice as loud and twice as long is twice as good; not sure if I agree, but it’s still not bad at all. Maybe you got a little weird after a few months of putting on your best mask for your daily trip to see if the stimulus check was in the mailbox? The Brenda Ray-meets-Old Black mash up, “(Don’t Wanna Have That) Dream,” is proof that while you were alone, you weren’t alone. If you’ve made it this far, you don’t need to have the fourth track described, so let’s just say that it’s longer.

Bill Meyer

Mattie Barbier — Three Spaces (self-released)

three spaces by mattie barbier

While perhaps best known as half of the trombone-centric new music duo RAGE Thormbones, Mattie Barbier is a member of several other combos and a sonic researcher under their own name. Three Spaces, which is a single, album-length sound file, has the air of experimentation about it. “What do I do,” one can imagine Barbier asking themself, “when I can’t play with other people?” Make music at home, and out of what’s at home, is the obvious answer. But doing isn’t the only point here; the outcome also matters, and while what Barbier has accomplished with Three Spaces sounds quite different from the RAGE Thormbones live experience, it registers quite strongly. Barbier has combined long tones and melodic fragments played on euphonium, trombone and reed organ, that were recorded both inside and outside of their home. Carefully layered, the source material combines into a sound rather like a bell’s toll, which over the course of nearly 39 minutes swells and recedes, but never quite decays; it ends with an imposed rather than natural fade-out. The sound is as deep as it is expansive, inviting the listener to let themselves fall ever father into its realm.

Bill Meyer

 Beneath — On Tilt EP (Hemlock Recordings)

On Tilt EP by Beneath

One of the more pleasant surprises this year is the resuscitation of Untold’s Hemlock Recordings imprint. A vital voice in the post-dubstep fracas at the turn of the ‘10s thanks to releases from Hessle Audio’s Pearson Sound (when he was still Ramadanman) and Pangaea, James Blake, FaltyDL and Hodge to name but a handful, the label went dormant following a Ploy 12” in 2017 before the surprise announcement of Londoner Beneath’s On Tilt, which sounds every bit the sensible alliance in practice it looks on paper: These are low-end rumblers with irregular rhythms and spare melodic tics that worm their way into your brain in the best bone-humming fashion (see “Shambling” or “Lesser Circulation” for a good example). Who knows how long the return will last, but for a certain stripe of DMZ-damaged devotee and pretty much no one else, it’ll feel good to have some Hemlock in your life again. Tilt back, pour in.

Patrick Masterson

 Black Spirit— El Sueño De La Razón Produce Monstruos (Infinite Night Records)

More metal comes from South America than Spain, but these Europeans clear the high bar set by Latin America scenesters. The album’s title states that it was inspired by “El Sueño De La Razón Produce Monstruos.” That can testify both to lasting influence of Goya’s art and to the laziness of the current culture which seeks inspiration only from the most popular pictorial art of the past. The track “Ignorance and The Grotesque” perfectly captures the whole mood of the disc: it balances ignorant speeds, undecipherable vocals and grotesque parts with piano interludes and doom-ish atmosphere. It would be better without the grotesque, but that’s probably part of the baggage.

Ray Garraty

 Burial + Blackdown — Shock Power of Love EP (Keysound Recordings)

Shock Power of Love EP by Burial

You might worry, occasionally, that Burial was becoming a victim of diminishing returns. Here, as ever, he uses a narrow palette to create tracks that few can emulate. However, even though the music has its rewards, it doesn’t clear the very high bar that his previous work has set. Thus “Dark Gethsemane” rides a 4/4 beat, angelic murmurs, vinyl crackle and a tightly ratcheted build that morphs into a sermon led by the repeated invocation “We must shock this nation with the power of love.” As his vocal samples become more explicit, the mystery of his music fades. This is all promise and no real resolution. “Space Cadet’ likewise sounds both gorgeous and minor with its soul gospel refrain “Take Me Higher” over an old-school jungle beat. At six plus minutes it would have been enough. It continues another three with an almost cartoonish second movement that lacks the subtlety that characterizes Burial’s best work.

Andrew Forell 

  Colleen — The Tunnel and the Clearing (Thrill Jockey)

The Tunnel and the Clearing by Colleen

While COVID messed with most people’s lives, it was both an endgame and an opportunity for Cécile Schott, the Frenchwoman who records under the name Colleen. She was just coming out of a series of health and personal dislocations, which resulted in her being newly healthy but alone in a new town just as the lockdown came down. Clearly, this was not a time for half measures, so she selected an entirely new instrumental set-up and settled in to make a record that reflected what she’d been through. Out went the viola da gamba and melodica that have figured prominently on her last few albums; in came a Moog synthesizer, a Yamaha organ, a tape echo and a drum machine.  

Colleen’s voice, of course, remains the same. Airy and precise, her delivery doesn’t match the gravity of the experiences her songs describe. But that sense of remove is, perhaps, a reflection of one of adversity’s lessons; if you don’t stay stuck, you can wind up somewhere quite different. Between the keyboards’ cycling melodies and the drum machine’s fizzy beats, the music on The Tunnel and the Clearing imparts a sense of motion that carries her light voice along for the ride, dropping painful sentiments and letting them fall behind.

Bill Meyer  

 Current Joys — Voyager (Secretly Canadian)

Nick Rattigan has been releasing music under the name Current Joys since 2013, and Voyager is his latest offering. It’s a dramatic and often brilliant collection of songs, bringing to mind the urgent rhythmic drive of Spoon, the dour grandeur of The Cure and the unapologetic emotional heft of Bright Eyes or early Arcade Fire. On Voyager’s standout, “American Honey,” a simple strummed backing and Rattigan’s vocal delivery are potent enough, but it’s the string section that proves devastating, cycling around for multiple punches to the gut. While more stripped-back songs such as “Big Star” and “The Spirit or the Curse” offer some respite along the way, Voyager does prove a little unwieldy. With 16 tracks clocking in at nearly an hour, the album’s execution doesn’t quite live up to its ambition. The wonky tom-tom rhythms of “Breaking the Waves” are more distracting than interesting; a serviceable cover of Rowland S. Howard’s “Shivers” feels more like an acknowledgment of influence than a striking interpretation; and the combined six minutes of the two-part instrumental title track may have worked better as shorter interludes. Nevertheless, plenty of Voyager’s tracks demonstrate Rattigan’s knack for a raw, emotive indie-rock tune.

Tim Clarke

 Ducks Ltd — Get Bleak EP (Carpark Records)

Toronto duo Ducks Ltd celebrates signing to Carpark with an expanded re-release of their 2018 debut EP Get Bleak. The pair — Tom Mcgreevy on vocals, rhythm and bass guitars and Evan Lewis on lead guitar — bonded over a shared love of 1980s indie bands. Their intricately constructed guitar interplay carries the DNA of Postcard and C86 over meaty bass lines that evoke Mighty Mighty as much as Orange Juice and McCarthy. The sprightly music belies the miserablism of the lyrics that focus on FOMO, poor decisions, screen induced isolation, the corrosive impact of gentrification and gig economies. Mcgreevy and Lewis don’t wallow, however. Their jaunty jangle is a paean to the joys of jumping about and singing along with those new favorite songs that suddenly mean everything and will stick with you long after the world’s shit slopes your shoulders.

Andrew Forell

 Field Music — Flat White Moon (Memphis Industries)

It’s easy to take Field Music for granted. Since 2005, the Brewis brothers have been making smartly composed and tightly executed guitar pop with obvious debts to The Beatles and XTC, and all their albums have fallen somewhere along the continuum from good to great (my personal favorites are 2010’s Measure and 2012’s Plumb). Album number eight, Flat White Moon, features the usual balance between Peter’s more pensive, bittersweet numbers with greater focus on piano and strings, such as “Orion From the Street” and “When You Last Heard From Linda,” and David’s funkier, more staccato cuts, such as “No Pressure” and “I’m the One Who Wants to Be With You.” Twelve songs, 40 minutes, tunes for days — what’s not to love? If you’ve yet to get acquainted with Field Music, Flat White Moon is as good an introduction as any.

Tim Clarke 

 Gabby Fluke-Mogul/Jacob Felix Heule/Kanoko Nishi-Smith — Non-Dweller (Humbler)

non-dweller by gabby fluke-mogul, Jacob Felix Heule, & Kanoko Nishi-Smith

With Non-Dweller, we have a trio of Bay-Area improvisers who certainly do not reside in one place for very long. There is an agitated freneticism about their interactions here, the performers acting like electrons seeking to release energy and break out of orbit. Each player brings a unique collection of timbres to the party with their implement of choice. Heule is a percussionist by trade yet focuses on extended techniques — mainly friction-based — as he wrests an unholy wail from the maw of his bass drum. Fluke-Mogul’s violin sways between tone generator and noise source. Nishi-Smith is a classically trained pianist who here is bowing and plucking the koto, or Japanese zither. The trio spend most of their time in sparring mode, their energies unleashed with synchrony as if in an elaborate dance. It is clear they have collaborated before. Heule and Nishi-Smith have been at it for over a decade; Fluke-Mogul joined the party in 2019. The most gorgeous moments happen when all three players are focused on friction: Heule slides across his drum, Fluke-Mogul soars with their violin and Nishi-Smith gracefully bows her koto. The energy is focused and particles collide, creating waves of tone. The players wrestle intensity into submission, and the ensuing sonorities are unmissable.

Bryon Hayes

 FMB DZ — War Zone (Fast Money Boyz \ EMPIRE)

Ever since FMB DZ got shot and moved out of Detroit, he has continued to release angry music. (He may not be more productive after the assault, but he’s certainly not less so.) War Zone is his latest effort, along with The Gift 3 and Ape Season, and DZ is back in his paranoiac mode and ready for vengeance. That’s hardly unusual in this type of music but DZ stands out because he’s a bit angrier, a bit more pressing and a bit more gifted than the next man. He doesn’t outdo himself in this tape, but rather mostly follows the blueprint of Ape Season. The standout track is “Spin Again.”

Ray Garraty

 Ian M Fraser — Berserk (Superpang)

Berserk by Ian M Fraser

Ian M Fraser is kind enough to provide details about how he created and edited Berserk, although relatively few listeners are going to really know what “nonlinear feedback systems and waveset synthesis” are, let alone “sensormonitor primitives auditory perception software”. And fewer still will be able to focus on what that might mean while Berserk is actually playing, because the output of those programs and systems is immediately, viscerally clear. If a computer were actually capable of going rabid, feral, well, berserk, the human mind might imagine it sounds something like this. Over four shorter tracks and the relatively epic 8:26 of “The Cannibal,” Fraser either coaxes or allows (or both) his tools into the equivalent of something like what someone who knew very little about both genres might imagine is like a power electronics act playing free jazz or vice versa. It is absolutely viscerally thrilling (albeit probably easier to repeat at this length of 16 minutes than, say, 50) and will do the track the next time you feel like your brain needs a good hard scrub.

Ian Mathers 

  Human Failure — Crown on the Head of a King of Mud (Sentient Ruin Laboratories)

Crown on the Head of a King of Mud by Human Failure

It’s tough to figure out if the band’s name is meant specifically to apply to D. Cornejo (sole member of Human Failure) or to the general field of human failure, which grows ever more capacious. Whatever the intent, Human Failure makes thoroughly unlovable music, pitched somewhere on the continuum that runs from the primitivist death metal to stenchcore to harsh noise. This reviewer is especially fond (yep, somehow that’s the only word for it) of the title track of this 10” record: “Crown on the Head of a King of Mud” sloughs and slogs along for two minutes, sort of like one of the ripest zombies in Romero’s Day of the Dead (1985), wandering about and slowly falling to pieces in Florida’s tumid heat. Just as that last bit of flesh is poised to slide from bone, the song unexpectedly breaks into a run. Where is it going? What’s the rush? No one knows. Things eventually bottom out into “Disassembling Morality,” a static-and-distortion laden electronic interlude that might squeak and spark for a bit too long — but then “Your Hope Is a Noose” shambles into the frame. That zombie seems to have found some equally noisome and truculent friends. They djent and pogo around for a while, and the song has a lot more fun than seems called for by the band name. Cornejo might be pissed off by the myriad manmade disasters and outright catastrophes that burden the earthball (he’s sure angry as heck about something…). But the record ends up being sort of successful, if deafening, grinding, growling stench is on the agenda. All things considered, why wouldn’t it be?

Jonathan Shaw

 Insub Meta Orchestra — Ten / Sync (Insub)

Ten / Sync by INSUB META ORCHESTRA

Ten / Sync was recorded in September, 2020; not exactly lockdown time, but certainly not out of the pandemic woods. It’s no small task to keep any 50-strong orchestra going, let alone one devoted to experimental music. So, if you already have one, then having it perform during a pandemic is just another challenge among many. So, the Swiss-based orchestra assembled three groups of musicians, numbering 31 in all, and assembled their contributions during post-production. While this did not provide the social experience that IMO’s gatherings usually impart to participants, an outcome that just isn’t the same seems awfully representative of the time, right? And since one Insub Meta Orchestra subspeciality is making music that sounds like it was performed by many fewer players than were actually present, this collection of sustained chords concealing tiny actions and apparently disassembled passages is actually very representative of the ensemble’s music.

Bill Meyer

Amirtha Kidambi & Matteo Liberatore — Neutral Love (Astral Editions)

Neutral Love by Amirtha Kidambi & Matteo Liberatore

With her own group, the Elder Ones, and in Mary Halvorson’s Code Girl, singer Amirtha Kidambi shows how far you can take a song while still giving the meanings of words and the boundaries of form their dues. But Neutral Love, like her two tapes with Lea Bertucci, explores the territory outside the tower of song. The main structures for this improvised encounter with electric guitarist Matteo Liberatore seem to be a shared agreement to exclude certain options. Song form and overt displays of chops are right out; the patient manipulation of sounds is where it’s at. Liberatore opts mostly for swelling and subsiding resonations, while Kidambi spends a lot of time finding out what’s hiding at the back of her throat, drawing it out, and then tying it into elaborate shapes. Patient and eerie, these four tracks find a place adjacent to Charalambides at their most abstract, and make it their own.

Bill Meyer

 Kosmodemonic — Liminal Light (Transylvanian Recordings)

KOSMODEMONIC - LIMINAL LIGHT by KOSMODEMONIC

NYC outfit Kosmodemonic is among the recent wave of metal bands attempting to effect an organic-sounding synthesis of numerous subgenres: a slurry of sludge, a bit of black metal, a dose of doom, and a hit or two of the lysergic. When it works — as it does on a number of tracks on the band’s long new cassette Liminal Light — it’s an exciting sound. Songs like “Moirai” and “Broken Crown” manage to couple tuneful riffs, dirty tone and a muscular bottom end in ways that feel thumping, groovy and pretty weird. You’ll want to bump your butt around even as you’re looking for something to break. But the tape is pretty long, and the further afield Kosmodemonic gets from that mid-tempo groove, the more middling (and sometimes muddled) the material sounds. “With Majesty” can’t quite find its rhythmic footing in its more technical passages, and the song’s sludgier sections feel like compromises, rather than interesting maneuvers. But the record begins and finishes with really strong songs. Both “Drown in Drone” and “Unnaming Unlearning” embrace scale, letting their big riffs rip. When “Unnaming Unlearning” slips into complex sections of blackened and distorted dissonance, the drama surges. Formal experiment and manipulation of mood fold into each other. The song gets interesting, even as it’s reaching for a peak. And then it ends, suddenly, violently. It’s pretty good. Your impulse is to flip the tape and hear it again, which is just what Kosmodemonic wants you to do. Well played, dudes.

Jonathan Shaw

 Sarah Louise — Earth Bow (Self-Released)

Earth Bow by Sarah Louise

Asheville-based songwriter Sarah Louise wants to be your personal nature interpreter. The titles of her recordings, from her debut Field Guide through Deeper Woods and Nighttime Birds and Morning Stars are like planetary signposts pointing to a more intimate relationship with our planet as a living organism. With each successive release, her music has also become more and more organic sounding, culminating with Earth Bow, in which Louise herself is arms deep in humus, communing with birds and insects. Recordings of creation feature prominently; katydids, spring peeper frogs, a creek and various birds are credited as providing additional singing, augmenting the artist’s own mellifluous voice. For a recording in which the track titles and lyrics are focused on nature and Louise’s experiences therein, there are a lot of digital elements. Her 12-string guitar is prominent in places, but synths are everywhere: in the background, bouncing around like shooting stars, and mimicking the various fauna that they accompany. Yet the earthly and the machine-made are not juxtaposed, they are blended. The vocals, which center the recordings, tie both elements together nicely. Earth Bow is a tasty concoction, in which a variety of ingredients are married in botanical bliss.

Bryon Hayes

 Le Mav — “Supersonic (Feat. Tay Iwar)” (Immaculate Taste)

Nigeria’s alté scene has been bubbling for a couple of years now on the backs of guys like Odunsi (The Engine) and Santi, and Gabriel Obi bka Le Mav is no stranger to the fray, having produced Santi’s “Sparky,” Aylø and a recurring favorite of his, singer Tay Iwar. The two have already collaborated at length (for songs off Iwar’s debut album Gemini in 2019, as well as the entirety of last year’s Gold EP), so the comfort level here is established. It shows: Iwar’s smooth-as vocals match Le Mav’s breezy piano descent and gentle rhythmic shuffle in an easygoing song that matches anything you might hear coming from Miguel, Frank Ocean or the Sun-El Musician orbit. “If it feels right, touch the sky,” Iwar suggests early on. Well, don’t mind if I do.

Patrick Masterson

 Sugar Minott — “I Remember Mama” (Emotional Rescue)

I Remember Mama by Sugar Minott

At some point after Lincoln Barrington Minott had left Kingston and his early dancehall and lovers rock legacy with Studio One and Black Roots behind for cooler climates and the old world of London, he ran into producer Steve Parr at the Wackies offices. Story goes that the two decided to start up Sound Design Studio with the intent to record and mix for ads, film and music — but scant evidence of this idea exists beyond “I Remember Mama,” released on 7” and 12” in 1985 and reissued for the first time since via Stuart Leath and his long-trusted Emotional Rescue imprint. Parr does most of the work on the recording (Andy MacDonald shines on tenor sax and Paul Uden guitar in the original credits), but it’s all about the sweetness Sugar brings to the table: With backing from two accomplished performers in their own right, Janette Sewell and Shola Phillips, Minott’s naturally relaxed delivery shines through on this. “Sound Design” is a dubbier instrumental version that retains Sewell’s and Phillips’ vocals, and Dan Tyler (half of Idjut Boys) provides an even spacier, handclap-laden 11-minute remix, but while both variants are excellent, the boogie of the original is unassailable. Look for the vinyl to hit in July.

Patrick Masterson

 Jessica Ackerley — Morning/mourning (Cacophonous Revival)

Morning/mourning by Jessica Ackerley

It makes sense that Wendy Eisenberg wrote the liner notes to Morning/mourning, since they and Jessica Ackerley are bound by a shared commitment to string-craft. Both have a deep idiomatic foundation in jazz guitar, but neither is willing to be confined by what they’ve learned. In the case of Morning/mourning, that means that patiently paced ruminations upon Derek Bailey-like harmonics sit side by side with frantic but rigorously scripted forays that sound a bit like Jim Hall might if he input the contents of his French press intravenously. This album’s nine tracks observe passings and new beginnings, since Ackerley pulled the recording together while in quarantine, shortly before leaving Manhattan for Honolulu, and titled some of them in tribute to a pair of guitar teachers who were taken by 2020. But in their attention to tone, harmony, velocity and structure, these pieces, like Eisenberg’s records, speak as much to intellect as to emotion.

Bill Meyer

 Nadja & Disrotted — Split (Roman Numeral Records)

It makes a certain kind of sense for Nadja and Disrotted to tackle a split together; although both bands traffic in a particularly foreboding strain of doom metal, they also share a weird sort of comfort. There’s a sense more of horrible things happening around you than to you, like you’re in the eye of the storm or maybe in a bathysphere plunged to crushing depths. There is a precision to the menace, a measured quality to the noise. And they get there when they get there; as Dusted’s Jonathan Shaw pointed out in his review of Disrotted’s Cryongenics, “Pace seems to be the point.” This excellent split doesn’t shy away from these commonalities while still highlighting the distinct timbres of each act, with Nadja settling into and then returning to one of their indelibly titanic bass riffs throughout the 19-minute “From the Lips of a Ghost in the Shadow of a Unicorn's Dream” and Disrotted somehow conjuring the feeling of a massive structure corroding and collapsing on the 15-minute “Pastures for the Benighted”. When the latter slams to a half, one last hit echoing away, the listener may find themselves feeling equally relieved the onslaught is over and kind of missing both sides’ pulverizing embrace.

Ian Mathers 

 Nasimiyu — POTIONS (Figureight)

P O T I O N S by nasimiYu

Nasimiyu’s songs bounce and shimmy with complex rhythms, her background as a dancer and percussionist for Kabells and Sharkmuffin coming through in the intricate interplay of handclaps, breathy beat-boxing, rattling metal implements, all manner of drums and, not least, her lithe, twining vocal lines. “Watercolor” blossoms out of a burst of choral “la”s, each note allowed to flower briefly before behind cut off with a knife-edge; these are organic sounds shaped with mechanical precision. Against this background, Nasimiyu herself enters, her voice fluttery and syncopated, a bit like Neneh Cherry. The mix is full of separate elements, the backing vocals, a synthesizer working as a bass, handclaps, Nasimiyu’s singing, but the song remains light and translucent. “Feelings,” sings Nasimiyu, “I am in my feelings,” and so, for a moment, are we. Nasimiyu is half Kenyan and half Scandinavian-American, and you can hear a bit of East Africa in the surging sweetness of choral singing on “Immigrant Hustle.” But there’s a post-modern gloss over everything, as the singer brings in sonic elements from jazz, electronica, dance, pop and afro-beat. Yet however many layers are added, the sound remains bright and clear, a bead curtain of musical sensation whose elements click faintly as they brush together, but remain essentially separate.

Jennifer Kelly

 Carlos Niño & Friends — More Energy Fields, Current (International Anthem)

More Energy Fields, Current by Carlos Niño & Friends

Multi-instrumentalist and producer Carlos Niño latest album which straddles and largely crosses the line between spiritual jazz and new age ambience features friends from both worlds including Shabaka Hutchings, Jamael Dean, Dntel and Laraaji. Niño, who plays percussion and synthesizer, edited, mixed and produced the album from recordings made in 2019 and 2020 in a variety of settings. The results are largely low-key soundscapes designed to assist meditation on the fields and current of the title. Much evocation of the natural world, chiming eastern influenced percussion and layers of acoustic and synthetic keys that are lovely but tend to lull. It is the slightly disruptive reeds that prick the ears here, Aaron Hall’s plangent tenor on “Now the background is foreground,” Devin Daniels’ alto phrasing on “Together” and Hutchings’ expressive duet with Dean on “Please, wake up.”

Andrew Forell 

 Shane Parish — Disintegrated Satellites (Bandcamp subscription)

Disintegrated Satellites EP by Shane Parish

The normally ultra-productive Shane Parish didn’t put out a lot of music in 2020, and none of what did come out was recorded that year. It turns out that he was busy giving guitar lessons via zoom and moving from North Carolina to Georgia, but we’re well into a new year and he’s back in Bandcamp. This three tune EP doesn’t declare a new direction, of which Parish has had many, so much as an integration of his interests in American folk music and far Eastern tonalities. Simultaneously familiar and alien, but above all propulsive, it serves notice that the time for reflection has passed.

Bill Meyer 

 Séketxe — “Caixão de Luxo” (Chasing Dreams)

The thing that gets your attention about Séketxe is… well, everything: how many of them there are (i.e., how you can’t really tell who’s in the group and who isn’t), how they’re all propellant, a musical bottle rocket bursting out of your speakers, confrontationally in your face on camera — and how much fun it looks like they’re having. Somewhere out there beyond the reaches of kuduro and Mystikal lie the Angolan barks and rasps of this youthful sextet, who trade verses (and a soothing harmony drizzled right across the madness at around 1:40) among one another over an Eddy Tussa sample on a beat by producer about town Smash Midas. What are they on about? My Portuguese is nonexistent, let alone my Luandan slang, but even I can tell that title translates to “luxury casket.” Anyway, it’s bonkers and if you’re looking for a jolt your morning joe doesn’t deliver anymore, Séketxe oughta do it. You’ll never catch me thanking an algorithm, but I guess it’s true the maths can serve it up right every once in a while. Séketxe is the proof.

Patrick Masterson 

 Tōth — You and Me and Everything (Northern Spy)

You And Me And Everything by Tōth

The title of Alex Toth’s solo debut, Practice Magic and Seek Professional Help When Necessary, alludes to his belief in music as therapy — that there’s an alchemy in the process, yet one that can’t necessarily be depended on to pull you out of an emotional hole when that hole gets too deep. On his new album, You and Me and Everything, all of his recent personal struggles are out in the open. There’s the tale of when he was so fucked up he couldn’t play trumpet at a family funeral (“Turnaround (Cocaine Song)”); there’s leaning on songwriting as a means to process the pain of heartbreak (“Guitars are Better Than Synthesizers for Writing Through Hard Times”); and there’s his ongoing battle with anxiety (“Butterflies”). While such heavy emotional terrain could prove hard-going, Toth approaches everything with a playfulness, a lightness of touch and a gentle haze to the production. Plus, he gets a helping hand from Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak, Flock of Dimes), who lends backing vocals to standout “Daffadowndilly,” which taps into the woozy gorgeousness of prime Robert Wyatt.

Tim Clarke 

 Mara Winter — Rise, follow (Discreet Editions)

Rise, follow by Mara Winter

For people with busy performance schedules, 2020 posed a problem; how do you stay busy and creative when you can’t do what you usually do? Mara Winter, an American-born, Swiss-based flute player who specializes in Renaissance-era repertoire and instruments, used it to forge a new creative identity. In partnership with experimental composer and multi-instrumentalist Clara de Asís, she began exploring the commonalities between early, composed music and contemporary approaches and developed a platform to disseminate documents of that research into the world. Rise, follow, the inaugural release of Discreet Editions, is an hour-long piece for two Renaissance-style bass flutes played by Winter and Johanna Bartz. The two musicians played long, overlapping tones with contrast attacks, pushing on until they grew so tired from hefting those woodwinds that they just couldn’t play anymore. Effectively the performance unit is a trio, since the two musicians had to accommodate or collaborate with the reverberant acoustics of Basel’s Kartäuserkirche. The church’s echo threw sounds back at the player, turning pure tones into blurred timbres. While the instrumentation is antique, the ideas about sound combination and endurance have more to do with Morton Feldman, Phill Niblock and Aíne O’Dwyer. The result is music that is simultaneously meditative and as heavy as a bench-pressing competition.

Bill Meyer

 Wurld Series — What’s Growing (Melted Ice Cream)

What's Growing by Wurld Series

Some reviewers of What’s Growing, the second album by New Zealand’s Wurld Series, have managed to avoid making Pavement comparisons, but it’s hard to fathom their restraint. Brief opener “Harvester” feels like you’re being dropped mid-solo into a random Wowee Zowee track; the guitar tone on lead single “Nap Gate,” on the other hand, sounds like it's nicked straight from Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. And while singer/guitarist Luke Towart doesn’t attempt to match Malkmus’ flamboyance in the vocal delivery department, their voices and wry lyrical observations bear a distinct resemblance to one another. “Caught beneath a dull blade / What a mess that would make” he sings on “Distant Business” before the song reaches its finale where guitar solos blast off from atop other guitar solos in an array of complementary textures. But besides being a ridiculously fun guitar pop record, What’s Growing is also threaded through with a British psych folk vibe replete with Mellotron flute — and the two styles blend seamlessly together thanks to Towart’s partner in crime, producer/drummer Brian Feary (Salad Boys, Dance Asthmatics). So, whether you're looking for a great summer indie rock record or you’ve ever wondered what the Fab Five from Stockton might’ve sounded like if they’d stuck to short songs and had more flutes, this one’s for you.

ZZ TOP — “Under Pressure,” “Gimmie All Your Lovin’" and “Sharp Dressed Man” Live On The Tube 1983   

When it comes to the Little Ol’ Band from Texas, the first few records are undeniably hot and where it’s at. But Eliminator is mostly Billy Gibbons working with a drum machine if legend has it right, and top to bottom it delivers with extremely high impact. It’s a big commercial sound, for sure, but that type of ambition following a successful formula is a credit to Gibbons’ vision and willingness to morph and change creatively. BFG’s guitar tone here in particular is one I was after a little bit on Motor Earth — distorted amp saturation that feeds back whenever you’re not playing, bleeding. Something I always listen for with ZZ is the number of guitar tracks on each song — while they’re an exemplary power trio live, Billy tends to at least double track his guitar on a lot of recordings, and sometimes he’ll have two rhythm tracks panned to either side along with another track for the solo (check Tres Hombres, for example). Always pretty tasteful and subtle. (Axis: bandmate) Tim Kaiser and I set out to make our version of a boogie rock record with Motor Earth, and along with Beefheart’s Clear Spot, some Crazy Horse, and some requisite Stonesian scuzz, ZZ provide much blueprint for something of that nature for me, personally. All that aside, this footage of the band doing “Under Pressure” on 1980s British TV show The Tube is simply badass and I'd question the health of anyone who doesn't enjoy it.   

Les Rallizes Denudes  "Night of the Assassins" 3rd Sunset Festival Live 1976  

Been on a mild Japanese psych kick, and this is the original artifact: Les Rallizes Denudes playing one of their iconic songs live (of course) at a festival at dusk against a glorious, mountainous backdrop. Their noise comes atop something simple and repetitive to latch onto, which allows their feeding lead guitar squalor to fully envelop and carry me around as if strapped to a horse on a patient gallop. It's yearning for something, like anything FSA, if FSA was ever accompanied by Link Wray-ish, rhythmic progressions. Melody and groove on the foundation, a screech of feedback over the top: "I Will Follow Him," but decapitated. 

Electric Eels — “Splittery Splat”  

One of the interesting things about growing up in Ohio and then leaving at the age of 18, when your brain is still mushy, is slowly realizing, especially once outside of it, just how much great, fucked up music has come from the state. There are the obvious and hugely successful ones, like, say, Devo, and there are some like Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments, a band I saw numerous times in high school and sorta just took for granted as simply being ‘the guy from Used Kids Records’ band.’ I just saw TJSA in September at Cropped Out Festival (a.k.a. the most important festival on the planet), in Louisville, KY, for the first time in 15+ years and they were phenomenal — they represent to me a lineage of Ohio punk/weirdo music that is entirely genius yet also entirely too out for a broader audience (major label support or no), much like V3 or Tommy Jay, or Electric Eels. This Electric Eels song was on a Scat Records cassette compilation that my friend discovered when we were teenagers in the late 1990s. Apparently I borrowed it and never gave it back, because I recently rediscovered it when going through a box of tapes not too long ago. It’s a perfectly fucked punk song, from composition to delivery to recording and mix. Seems like they’ve gotten a lot of reissue treatment, but I’ll always remember this song from the Scat tape.  

Fumio Miyashta (Far East Family Band) Live On Boffomundo 

Embedding is disabled but you can go here and watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHNLtEMl2dg

Killer live performance of mellow headtrips via one of Japan’s psych-rock purveyors in the proggiest sense, Fumio Miyashta (of Far East Family Band). These dudes he’s playing with really lock into it, with tasty, mellow guitar leads and a pulsing bass mingling with the space-synth sounds Miyashta is laying out there. A relaxing and deep listen, but also buoyant and light, at times reminiscent of Blackouts by Ashra, which came out three years prior to this performance on The Boffomundo show, an early cable TV show dedicated to progressive music.  

The Stooges — “My Girl Hates My Heroin” from My Girl Hates My Heroin 

Unmatched depravity — like The Stones recording at Nellcote to get that dusty, humid summer basement vibe for Exile, this jam/gem from a rehearsal around the Raw Power era comes from a neighborly basement with similarly thick air. I make no bones about worshiping at the house of Ron Asheton (Fun House forever), and therefore must point out his nimble and fluid bass playing on My Girl Hates My Heroin, pushing this grimy riff forward, but Williamson really had a gnarled, unhinged nastiness to his playing that’s immediately enjoyable, as well. Iggy sounds like hell, like he should. Bought this on CD at a record store in Paris when I was in high school, and listening to it made me feel like a tough dude for the rest of that year.

Alice Coltrane — Huntington Ashram Monastery  

Lacking depravity — empowering! Impossible to do a list without including Alice Coltrane. Journey to Satchidinanda is one of the few records I’ve ever bought new that I’ve truly worn out from excessive plays. Huntington Ashram Monastery might be more consistently played currently. It’s a power trio album, the Rashied Ali and Ron Carter rhythm section out to quake. Relatedly, last time I was in San Francisco I visited the Saint John Coltrane Church, where we listened to and meditated on A Love Supreme in its entirety. As a congregation — which didn’t consist of more than a handful of people — we collectively chanted/sang along when it was time, and otherwise actively listened free of distraction. The experience felt like an open window into the spirituality so prevalent in his and Alice’s music.

Royal Trux — Untitled (3rd album) 

“Your beautiful skin, your beautiful spine / You’re beautiful all the time.” Chunky acoustics, insulation, isolation and utter abandon in the form of serrated guitar squeals from the edges of Neil Hagerty’s torn up plectrum straight to your ears. The album begins as something earnest, almost pensive, a light haze akin to just waking up, and proceeds to slowly rise out of bed and begin to walk around, shaking out the legs and cracking the joints til the moss rolls off and the stimulant (or analgesic) hits the vein. From there, its loose openness stretches into a broad expanse, allowing for glorious feedback-laden solos to cover the sonic horizon, barely-there rhythm action holding it together by sheer will. Not much percussion, no bass? More room for what matters! Herrera’s voice right in the sweet spot with bad intent, “on top.”  The things I want and need from rock n' roll.  

Randy Holden — “Blue My Mind” from Population II

Randy Holden, the badass who spent a year and half an album in Blue Cheer, realized his vision with the unmatched velocity of his solo album, Population II. I was just hipped to one of his earliest bands, The Other Half, for whom Randy Holden played guitar prior to his stint in Blue Cheer, and the power and brilliance of his song construction is evident and completely identifiable even there— but Population II is the full realization of Holden’s six-string swagger damage, and “Blue My Mind” is the highlight for me. There’s barely a drop of effects (ok there are overdubs), it’s just the sound of one man blasting through a literal wall of 200 watt Sunn Amps (16 of ‘em?) with minimal bass and drum accompaniment. Sunn amps have a distinctive sound: their reverb isn’t close to sounding “sparkly” the way someone might describe a vintage Fender with admiration. Instead, when cranked, they sound kinda like a guitar being played through an overheated A/C window unit or maybe a tube-powered hairdryer in a tile bathroom that’s meticulously mic’d through a high powered PA System. It’s not for everybody, but that gnarled and blunt quality cannot be matched, requiring zero fuzz or distortion pedal whatsoever to achieve a gloriously saturated molten tone that somehow retains bell-like clarity. Early days for Axis: Sova was playing through a ’67 Sunn Sceptre exclusively. While that’s not the case anymore, it’s very present on songs from our previous album, Early Surf, especially the title track’s main riff. Guitars in front!  

Velvet Underground — “What Goes On”  Live at the Hilltop Festival 2nd August 1969  

Featuring Mo Tucker, the human metronome. I wish I could get a snare sound out of my drum machine like this. Its rhythmic simplicity set against skittering guitars produces counter beats and accents that start to feel like Terry Riley’s sat in — especially once the organ begins to fry. 

Sonny Sharrock — “Once Upon a Time” from Ask the Ages   

Stately and serene, a song beholden of wisdom and truth. You know, hopeful. The melody has a patient emotion that doesn’t force itself on the listener, but rather amplifies whatever feeling the listener has at that moment — be it upbeat, uplifting, or melancholy.  Especially gritty tone and saturation. Sonny Sharrock’s last album is amazing, with a killer band including Pharaoh Sanders and Elvin Jones.  

Steve Hillage — “Salmon Song” live in 1977   

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Hypnosis via riff-phrase, let it slip, put a driving, unwavering bass line underneath it, and soar towards a gassy nebula… its space-prog breakdowns and solos cascade and shimmer, and then the riff rises again. The whole album, Fish Rising, is cool, but not as tough to beat as this live performance of its best jam, "Salmon Song."

Rafael Toral — Wave Field   

Wave Field - Remastered by Rafael Toral =

Not that the New Pornographers should start looking over their shoulders. The guitar skree lurks in the background of even Sova’s most well-behaved songs, and the lyrical content is darker and more disturbing than you expect. “People,” for instance starts in a robot rumba of programmed rhythms, a minimalist foundation encroached on by swirls of sweetened, mid-range guitar. The words come in a soft, inoffensive warble, but watch for the kick in them: “People will be the end of people/people will snuff the light.”  Yeah, not the happiest stuff.

“I’m a Ghost” blares with visceral, tactile bass (that’s Jeremy Freeze) that roils your innards. Its drums, live this time and played by Josh Johannpeter, rattle around in a boxy beat and break out, once in a while, in exclamation points. Sova shreds in a trebly, careening style instantly familiar to anyone who grew up with 1970s guitar bands, but the singing is clipped and futuristic. It’s a weird mesh of Devo and Iron Maiden, but exciting. “Join a Cult,” later on, is constructed from the same materials, the ankle deep murk of bassy undertow, the sci-fi deadpan singing, the crazy things that happens when Sova’s guitar gets loose. These are songs, not jams, the trio is always blasting verse-chorus structures apart.

That last song’s chorus, by the way, has more than a whiff of producer Ty Segall in it. Like Fuzz or Ty Segall Band, it wraps thick, fuzzy blasts of overdriven guitar around the catchiest of melodies. Axis:Sova used to be more about texture and emotion. Now it’s more concerned with song structure. But you can do both. Ask Ty.