Davies and several other members of the twelve-piece ensemble are part of the community of musicians for whom Radigue has developed new pieces, known collectively as the OCCAM series. Most, but not all of them have been performed on acoustic instruments. While it might be tempting to consider Asymptote Versatile to be a foreshadowing of OCCAM, because it is played on acoustic instruments, it is methodologically quite different. Each OCCAM piece is developed collaboratively and transmitted orally. This music, on the other hand, employs notation, albeit idiosyncratically. Radigue developed a series of mathematically determined curves, which she placed on transparent acetate sheets, which were in turn laid upon pages containing notation. As with OCCAM and her electronic works, Asymptote Versatile is made up of long, patiently changing tones. But these tones are fashioned into arcing passages which swell and contract as instruments are added and removed. The resulting music has a harmonic component that is absent from Radigue’s other music, and changes come at a quicker rate than in her later work. It is also a bit less demanding, although that’s a relative statement when made about a piece that lasts three quarters of an hour. A listener can easily lay back and let this stuff wash over them, unlike Radique’s subsequent music, whose subtle rate of change demands close attention.

This album’s packaging is, like the music it contains, austere and beautiful. The double-gatefold digipak opens up to reveal excerpts from the score, and the booklet contains texts by Davies and violist Julia Eckhardt that explicate the music’s methods.

The original Indian Talking Machine might not have changed how we understand our world, but it did provide reliable transportation to a couple of them. First, it enabled a listener to steep in the sounds of musical traditions that had been around for centuries, but had not yet been transformed by capture and reproduction. Second, it introduced its audience to the surviving Indian 78 rpm culture. The album came as a 245-page hardcover book that presented both reproductions of sleeves, labels, gear, advertisements, and ephemera from back in the day, and color photos that Millis had taken of the places where you can still find them and the people who make that possible. It was possible to treat its two CDs tucked into pockets in the cover as accessories, which was a shame given the musical riches they contained.

That won’t happen with Indian Talking Machine Part Two. It contains the same number of sides as the first volume, this time on two LPs. The transfers subdue most of the 78s’ noise without compromising the sounds of the instruments. While it does include a booklet with a dozen pages of images of records, players, and the animal byproducts used to make shellac, the annotation is much more bare-bones, conveying only the names of the artists and the instruments featured on each track.

And what music! By narrowing the focus to instrumentals, Millis has foregrounded two elements of Indian music of the early 20th century. One is the concentrated power and beauty of the music that made it to disc. Reproducing hour-long ragas and other musical forms that had evolved ungoverned by the small amount of music that a 78 could contain was out of the question, so these tracks capture foundational themes and climactic moments; just the good stuff. The other is the spectacular virtuosity of the playing and the easy but focused rapport between the musicians (usually just a couple per performance); in a culture where music was made mainly by people playing every day, they got really good at playing it.

Indian Talking Machine Part Two is not a musicological enterprise, and anyone looking to be told anything about what they’re hearing will be disappointed. This volume presents the music as something you listen to, period.

Angine de Poitrine — Vol.II (Spectacles Bonzaï)

Who picked it? Ian Mathers.

Did we review it? Yes, Ian wrote, "Precision, abandonment, spectacle; that’s Angine de Poitrine’s second record in a nutshell."

Ray Garraty’s take:

These Canadian mutants draw their origins from two distinct influences. One is Arto Lindsay and his contemporaries; the other is much more recent: the various punk and weirdo rockers who populated underground tape labels in the 2000s. It is difficult to figure out why this band generated so much buzz when similar weirdos still struggle to sell their home-dubbed tapes. Perhaps it is because Angine de Poitrine is cleaner, less punky and more visually oriented (it wasn’t even the music that initially drew attention to them). Still, the album offers 36 minutes of pure fun. It is hard to highlight just one track out of the six; the entire tape is catchy and deserves repeated listens.

Juliana Barwick and Mary Lattimore — Tragic Magic (Infiné)

Who nominated it? Jennifer Kelly

Did we review it? Yes, Ian wrote, “However singular or slightly uncanny their work together seems, one thing that’s much less mysterious is just how good it sounds.”

Christian Carey’s take:

Vocalist/electronic musician Juliana Barwick and harpist Mary Lattimore are a simpatico duo. Barwick’s use of vocal processing and gently wrought electronics matches well with Lattimore’s atmospheric harp playing. Their Infiné recording Tragic Magic embraces the ambient aesthetic while never succumbing to its cliches.

Barwick has a beautiful soprano voice, which in “Perpetual Adoration” is deployed in ethereal overdubs, reveling in reverb. Lattimore responds with cascading arpeggios that swirl around the vocals, both supporting their harmonies and extrapolating from them in nimble passage work. There are some aphoristic selections, like “Temple of the Winds,” where a modal sequence of chords underpins a simple, eloquent vocalise. “Rachel’s Song” features soaring singing and some of Lattimore’s most florid arpeggiations.

Elsewhere, such as on the multilayered yet still ethereal “Stardust,” the music is stretched out, building into multifaceted textures. “A Haze With No Haze” uses successive stacking of loops to good effect. Particularly winning is “The Four Princesses,” which begins with a folk-like melody on the harp that is gradually morphed into syncopated lines and augmented by haloing vocals and mellifluous counter melodies on synths. On the final track, “Melted Moon,” cascading polyrhythms in harp lines create a phase-like rhythmic structure, over which Barwick provides ostinato synth passages. The belated arrival of vocals finds them nimbly fitting into the already detailed musical landscape, with chorused singing leading the music aloft, a stirring valediction to an arresting recording.

Bobbie — Lessons (Orindal)

Who nominated it? Ian Mathers

Did we review it? Yes, Jennifer Kelly wrote, “There’s real pleasure to be had in watching these cuts take shape like pictures in the clouds, the swell of electronic sounds accumulating into melodies, then sputtering out like sparkler trails.”

Christian Carey’s take:

On bobbie’s second full length recording, Lessons, they lean hard into the glistening textures made by an Omnichord, a synth where you make harmonies by pressing a button and then sliding fingers across the “strumplate” found on main body of the instrument, kind of like a Casio crossed with an autoharp. Reverberant guitars, synthesizer drones and delicate singing are also part of the atmosphere, and the session’s engineer, Felix Walworth, adds a judicious dose of drumming to the proceedings. These coalesce beautifully in the song “I Could Call You,” on which strumming and shimmer appear in equal measure. “To My Core I’m a Lover” takes an ambling path through a set of classic pop chord changes, with bobbie earnestly singing a gradually unfurling melody. The title song has a diaphanous cast and a lilting vocal, with the Omnichord providing a seraphic accompaniment. It builds into a yearning chorus of multitracked singing awash in ambient electronics. The final track “I Don’t Wanna Stay” luxuriates in reverb and sustain, with a long-breathed vocal accompanied by distorted Omnichord, guitar and a glockenspiel countermelody.

Boldy James X Rome Streetz — Manhunt (Mass Appeal)

Who nominated it? Ray Garraty

Did we review it? No but Ray has been all over Boldy James in the past.

Jennifer Kelly’s take:

Two veterans of Detroit’s Griselda Collective trade molasses-paced noir-ish narratives, surrounded by a woozy blend of dragging beats, electronic shimmer and old style soul hooks in this brief, between-albums EP. Luxe, decadent violence lurks in the lyrics of “Hot Plate,” doing battle with brutish income inequality; says Boldy, “With Percival on the river, he servin' 'em with inflation/Work for the low, brodie got the chirps and them bitches takin'/Shinin' and they flakin' like the diamonds in my bracelet.“ Throughout, the two mcs drop references to rap forebears and peers, naming Big Daddy Kane and nodding to verses from Nas and Kendrick Lamar. The heartfelt tribute, however, comes up in “Like Biggie Did.” Here lavish soul vocals and spattered rhymes coalesce in genuine, positive affirmation. Says Streetz, “I left it all to faith like Biggie did /Now we so far ahead in this race, ain't no one in this shit.”

Bill Callahan — My Days of 58 (Drag City)

Who picked it? Jonathan Shaw

Did we review it? Yes. Jonathan Shaw wrote, “My Days of 58, Callahan’s new LP, is a return to the sustained unease expressed on a record like Apocalypse, for this listener the highwater mark in the singer’s career."

Ray Garraty’s take:

It’s often said that poetry doesn’t translate well into other languages. It seems age doesn’t translate, either. My Days of 58 is memoiristic and intimate, featuring clearly stated lyrics, and it is heavily preoccupied with thoughts of death. While death is something we all share, our perspectives on it are not universal. Callahan’s view of mortality is distinctly that of an urban white male from artistic circles. This will certainly resonate with some listeners, but isn’t it the aim of art to transcend the differences between us?

Cancer House — The Moth (Motion Ward)

Who Picked It? Tim Clarke

Did We Review It? No

Alex’s take:

In the beginning of “Flowers Over There,” we hear a see-saw sound. I say sound but I really mean there’s something. As in, something see-saws. This is such a cinematic, corporeal record. Bodies emerge from the otherworldly sonics, giving definition to the often muffled, somewhat obscured music. In fact, “Flowers Over There” is a bit of an exception, given the raw rock power of its crescendo. Within the deep folds of the record’s atmosphere, I felt a jolt when the bass bubbles up and the hopeful, progressive guitar rides a strident beat forward. The Moth tends to linger, wandering its fog and bog, but here the music accelerates, building a ragged, undulating wall for the vocalist’s scratched scream to batter against. When I say cinematic and corporeal I mean tactile and formed and visual, full of character. I’m thinking of the banshee synth howling over the morass on “Bloodchimes” and the long, drawn strings of “In My Pocket A Letter, A Red Wrecked Line.” Those strings have a slow, shifting personality, at times mournful and at times a little nauseating in their complaint. Either way, unsettling. The drums are almost spat, which I’ve never thought about drums before. This sort of monstrous presence meant I never quite lay back into the record, despite the aforementioned deep folds. The more literal personification is also notable. The way the strangled, nasal voice on “Waterscene” gets most of the way to vocoded Tom Fec without, to my ears, a vocoder, or how the compressed-to-indecipherable conversation on “Camera Obscura” is at once intimate and intriguing and unreachable. Speaking of monstrous presence, I recently saw the movie Obsession. Besides an array of sinister voices and violent impacts, it shares with The Moth a grim, scrappy artistry in which the effects aren’t high gloss but all the more satisfying and disturbed for it.

Amalie Dahl’s Dafnie EXTENDED — Live at Moldejazz (Sonic Transmission)

Who nominated it? Bill Meyer

Did we review it? No

Jennifer Kelly’s take:

Danish saxophonist and composer Amalie Dahl’s Dafnie was already a large-ish ensemble when it won Danish Music Awards Jazz single of the year in 2024. At its core, it was a quintet comprised of Dahl, Oscar Andreas Haug (trumpet), Jørgen Bjelkerud (trombone), Nicolas Leirtrø (bass) and Veslemøy Narvesen (drums). But for this live performance at one of the oldest jazz festivals in Europe, she expanded her group to include no less than 12 musicians, with multiple acoustic bass players, two drummers, horns, woodwinds and several varieties of keyboards. That sounds like a crowd, but the sound is often lean and focused, for instance. letting silvery chimes and high, metallic keyboards dominate a long passage of “Floating” or focusing intently on the woozy roar of bowed bass at the opening of “Drifting Turning.” Still, the exciting parts are the all-hands bits, such as the bass-thumping, synth-squiggling, drum battering, horn spattered climax of that same cut, which almost literally lifts you up off your feet and carries you off. Bill Meyer would doubtless have more to say about the individual players, but even I recognize the name of Dahl collaborator Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, whose double bass skitters and thuds and rumbles and dances like a very large man who is surprisingly adept at soft shoe. The music cascades and eddies, with different parts taking precedence at different points in the mix. It’s a big, ambitious sound, wildly energetic but always in complete control.

Damaged Bug — ZUZAX (Deathgod Corp)

Who nominated it? Byron Hayes

Did we review it? Yep. Byron wrote, “Vocals, synths and drums form the core of ZUZAX, as [John] Dwyer and his pals pit vintage tech against beefy rhythms.”

Jonathan Shaw’s take:

My sharpest interest in John Dwyer’s continuous cataract of music peaked with Thee Oh Sees’ Warm Slime (2010), a terrific record, and started to peter out when he changed that band’s name for the third or fourth time — who can keep track? I have sometimes felt about his musical output the same way I feel about Karl Ove Knausgaard’s often insufferable books: dude needs an editor. When I have tuned back in to Dwyer’s stuff, here and there I have heard some very good records. A Weird Exits (2016) and Endless Garbage (2021) represent markedly different but effective modes of Dwyer’s creativity that sustain themselves beyond three or four songs. This record, his fifth under the Damaged Bug moniker, includes some of the best elements of listening to Dwyer. ZUZAX has the benefit of hanging together as a record, sounding like a band at work rather than an intractable studio rat at distractable play. I really love “Over-Exposed,” and I really like “Sike Witch” and “End of the War.” The strength of those songs makes misfires like “Man Without a Planet” easier to take. The best tunes here are not equal to Thee Oh Sees’ “I Was Denied,” or even “Plastic Plant,” but they are interesting in their own Damaged Bug sort of way. They often make me want to dance, a useful quality in this shitty, shitty Spring of 2026.

Caroline Davis — Fallows (Ropeadope)

Who nominated it? Christian Carey

Did we review it? Yes, Christian wrote, “Fallows may be conceived for a soloist, but it contains multitudes.”

Bill Meyer’s take:

While I’ve been aware of alto saxophonist Caroline Davis for a couple decades, the overlap between her preferences and mine is small enough that I’d barely written about her before Accept When, her collaboration with Wendy Eisenberg, knocked me off my perch in 2024. This project, the product of a month-long residency in Wyoming, continues Davis’ effort to shake off old habits, and the further she goes, the more I like it. So, her overtly lyrical treatment of “Barbara Allen” is a little too soft-centered for me, but I’m all in with the echocardiogram beat on “Flower Sway.” I don’t know how often I’ll play Fallows moving forward, but it’s heartening to hear an artist push themselves harder this far into their career.  

Oswald might be more engaged by Moore’s notion of “mutation.” The two tracks on Diamond Seas are constructed from multiple instances of “The Diamond Sea” out on the road, being played live night after night. Side A is Oswald’s layering and sequencing of performances of “The Diamond Sea” from 1995; Side B comprises sounds from versions of the song from 1996. The plunderphonics approach might be an effective vehicle for indexing some of the mutations the song underwent over the first couple years of its life (emphasis on that “might”…).

Diamond Seas recalls Grayfolded (1994), Oswald’s storied plunderphonics version of “Dark Star,” one of the Grateful Dead’s early career launchpads for longform improvisation. The comparison may extend beyond Oswald’s methodology: “psychedelic” and “jam” are frequently used terms in discussions of “The Diamond Sea” and are all but synonymous with the Dead. One wonders about the adequacy of those terms, in either case.

Intro by Jonathan Shaw

Jonathan Shaw: I am finding Diamond Seas a lot more interesting than I thought I might, though most of that interest has been generated by the 1996 side, which departs more intensely from the original song. What are the rest of you hearing and thinking?

Bill Meyer: When it came out, I warmed up to Washing Machine right away, more so that other mid-90s Sonic Youth records, and “The Diamond Sea” had a lot to do with it. As a whole, the album seemed to reconcile SY’s pop and improvisational sides more naturally than anything that came before it, and I equally liked the material from either end of the spectrum. But I also remember skipping the rest of the album and cueing up “The Diamond Sea” on the CD player many times. The very existence of this project suggests that someone in the SY camp sees “The Diamond Sea” as their “Dark Star,” so it makes sense that they’d give it the Grayfolded treatment.

Jennifer Kelly: I know that Lee Ranaldo was a big Dead Head early on, and Thurston has talked about them, too. So it makes sense that they might see parallels between their longer, more improvisational stuff and the Dead’s.

I’m shocked to find that I like Grayfolded LOTS more than Diamond Seas, the reverse of how I feel about the originals. The Sonic Youth mixes have so much chatter and crowd noise and the Dead ones focus almost entirely on the music. Also, the more you like something, the less you want it fucked with. Could be that.

I’ve been looking for articles/interviews about Oswald’s process and not finding any. Anybody know any good ones?

Bill Meyer: First of all, here is a link to some fairly old interviews with Oswald on his plunderphonics site. He was an early practitioner of what one might characterize as skeptical, critical sampling. He has also been a free improviser, playing saxophone.

Jonathan Shaw: Like Bill, I really like Washing Machine, but more for the spikier songs on it: “Junkie’s Promise,” the title track, “Becuz.” I can lock in on “The Diamond Sea” sometimes, but I would rather listen to “Expressway to Yr Skull” for that extended SY thing. Might be why I respond to the 1996 side of Diamond Seas as strongly as I do. The defamiliarizing and the way crowd sounds and the long periods of aggro amp abuse dig into the structure of the original tune reveal a different experience.

For me the overlaps between this record and Grayfolded feel right because I was going to Dead shows at the same time that I was tuning in to Sister and checking out SY live. Unfortunately, even in 1987, which a lot of Heads are fond of, the Dead were pretty brittle as a live act. The SY shows I saw were musically thrilling, the Dead shows were primarily a social environment.

So I am having the inverse experience from Jenny’s. Grayfolded is interesting, but Diamond Seas — especially that second side — lights me up musically.

Jennifer Kelly: Thanks, I did read that one, but I was more interested in how it works. Like are the different samples of the same thing arranged sequentially or do they overlap? Could you have the bass from one show and the drums from another at the same time?

I guess I see the point of making sound collages from multiple sources (it’s another way of composing with prerecorded notes instead of instruments) but not so much of the same song.

I gather that the respective bands commissioned both of these projects?

Bill Meyer: Regarding Grayfolded, I can easily imagine it appealing even if you aren’t a Deadhead. “Dark Star” is very much its own thing. What Oswald did with it is pretty different from what he did to “The Diamond Sea,” and the outcomes are correspondingly different.

Grayfolded is like a stretch version of “Dark Star” that does not mess with its essential structure. The tune’s landmarks happen in roughly the same spots as when the Dead played the song, it just takes a lot longer to get there. However, I think that Oswald had access to every “Dark Star” recording in the Dead’s archive, so he could jump between years and versions of the band with every edit. Each side of Diamond Seas is drawn from one year, but neither side retains the tune’s original structure. Instead, they’re like three-dimensional sculptures made out of pieces of a given year’s “The Diamond Sea.”

Oswald did plunderphonics first under his own steam. I think that commissions came after he got cool because he got into predictable trouble for appropriating copywritten material, but doing something recognizable artistic with it.

Jonathan Shaw: I don’t get the sense that individual instruments from individual performances were isolated and then sequenced alongside one another. In the case of Diamond Seas, for sure there are instances in which multiple performances are layered. I really like the density of those moments.

My sense of Grayfolded is that Bill is largely right about the stretched nature of the thing, especially if the Spring 1969 versions of “Dark Star” are considered the foundational texts of the song. There are some later “Dark Stars” that dispense with the intro and outro verses entirely and only briefly engage the key melody. Interesting to think of “Dark Star” having “landmarks,” a cognitive map of the song to hang on to while the Dead drifted and cooked and audiences did their thing too.

Christian Carey: John Oswald certainly treats it as something as durable as “Dark Star.”

Bill Meyer: My impression is that Diamond Seas is made from bigger and smaller pieces of performances. Occasionally a structure is emulated for a spell, as when the lyrics are laid out in the original sequence on the 1995 piece, but each line sounds like it comes a different version recorded in a different theater. But especially on the 1996 version there’ll be a recognizable fragment mixed into the foreground with two or three chunks of chronologically unrelated noise deployed around it. It’s more of a collage made out of Diamond Seas than a stretch limo edition.

Jonathan Shaw: I think the least effective portion of Diamond Seas is in the 1995 side, when Oswald splices together Moore’s vocals in the song’s first verse. A travelogue of sorts, from room to room and performance to performance. But sonically it doesn’t work. Maybe the less he attempts to follow the song’s logics, the more interesting ideas he has.

On the other hand, I like all the stage banter he puts in. SY’s personality and name-dropping tendencies are trackable. No particular shade, there. They knew lots of interesting people.

Ian Mathers: Well, as our resident Sonic Youth... let’s say “skeptic,” first I had to go back and listen to the original “The Diamond Sea” (it’s possible I played it a few times ago years ago, when I kept listening to different SY albums hoping I’d start loving them like I expected to, but I retained little if anything about the experience). One of my big roadblocks with the band is my visceral dislike of Moore’s singing/vocals, so the very beginning didn’t do much for me. But once the whole thing spins off... I may have heard very little Grateful Dead in my life so far, but I was raised by a man who loved the Allman Brothers Band and Neil Young, and safe to say “The Diamond Sea” instantly vaulted onto my short list of good SY tracks by virtue of sounding a bit like some of the latter more extended live explorations.

So it’s maybe not surprising that I agree with Jonathan that the noisier, denser 1996 side of Diamond Seas is my favorite. And I even like the aggressiveness of how the crowd noise is mixed in mid-track on both sides, although fitting with what Jenny said, I am pretty open to Oswald messing with the track a lot.

I’m not super familiar with Oswald’s efforts, and still have to listen to Grayfolded (which I’ve been intrigued by since reading the Rolling Stone review of it back in the day). I’ve also just realized the Bandcamp edition of it appears slightly different than all the other ones I’ve seen? It’s even got version notes!

Christian Carey: The question always for me with Oswald’s work is intention. Is plundering meant to take a celebratory, intellectual, ironic, or destructive stance? What value does he impart to the material? I find the use of spoken word to be a clue that this is a celebratory project. What do you all think?

Jennifer Kelly: And one that Sonic Youth commissioned. Maybe that’s why I found the crowd noise self-serving.

Bill Meyer: Yeah, this was commissioned, and while I have not heard all of Oswald’s commissions, I am not aware of him biting the hand that feeds him.

Bryon Hayes: My belief is that Oswald originally meant sonic plundering as a means of questioning what a musical instrument is, what constitutes a composition and the ownership over it, and so on. He writes about it in his paper“Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative” from 1985. As Bill said earlier, bands started commissioning him to plunder their works, as he became sort of a “cool” transgressor of copyright laws, I guess. So his intentions have likely shifted over time, as well as his M.O.

This particular record is kind of a walk down memory lane for me, as Sonic Youth soundtracked my high school years and if the Detroit shows from 1995 are included in the mix, then I was there (getting kicked in the head by a stage diver during the Washing Machine show at State Theater). I remember when that album came out, thinking that Sonic Youth finally made a “pretty” song with “The Diamond Sea,” wrestling with it. I preferred their noisier side, so I thought that it was a tip of the hat to the fans of their earlier material that they made the song so long and jammy.

I am really enjoying this release, and the nostalgia factor amplifies my enjoyment even more!!

Jennifer Kelly: I’m puzzled about intent, too, though. I’m not sure what this adds to what we know about the song or Sonic Youth.

Bryon Hayes: And to your point, Jenny, reading Oswald’s paper leads me to a question: is this a Sonic Youth record, or a John Oswald record, or both?

Jennifer Kelly: I feel like the multi-source plunderphonics records — like DJ Shadow’s Entroducing and Avalanches and Jason Forrest’s stuff — do make something new out of their material. I’m not sure this does. Though I also have some nostalgia for Sonic Youth live, it was mostly the music, not the interstitial banter.

Both of these records are conceptually interesting, but I wouldn’t run out and buy either one.

Bill Meyer: I suspect Oswald would prefer to muddy the waters of authorship and ownership.

Jonathan Shaw: Great questions from Christian and Byron. Diamond Seas seem clearly to be an Oswald record to me. That may explain some of the disappointment and discomfiture among SY superfans.

My intellectual training has made questions of intent hard for me to think effectively. I am more interested in what can be heard and interpreted — not saying that’s the right way to see things, but the post-structuralism can do a long-term number on you if you read a lot of it in your 20s. Inasmuch as I understand the “plunder,” I like the usage. Pirates plunder stuff, and exert a measure of control over it, but that’s not ownership, as Bill notes. Rather it moves the material into an unregulated zone. Sam Delany argued in his SF books of the mid-70s that those sorts of sites, of free investigation and play, are especially crucial for innovation.

Christian Carey: Is it a Sonic Youth or a John Oswald record is a great question. If you were looking for it at Princeton Record Exchange, they would certainly file it under Sonic Youth.

Mason Jones: It’s taken me some time to listen and think about this, and I’m still unsure what my take is. I appreciate Oswald’s ideas, but somehow, I don’t feel that this is a successful application of them. Ultimately, I’m left wondering what this adds, and what purpose it serves. Perhaps comparing it to Grayfolded is too simple, but that work took the original and expanded it while to my ears staying within the same philosophical approach, and as a result it became a larger, more extended version that was in some ways “more” than the original. While I’m very much not a Deadhead, I can still appreciate what Oswald accomplished, and I think Dead fans can find in it something new yet connected.

In the case of Diamond Seas, I’m not feeling that. I know the original song well, and heard it played live at least once or twice. For me, this release doesn’t add to it, but simply swaps parts in an approach that feels both too easy conceptually and too lightweight compositionally. I don’t find any reason why I might prefer to listen to this rather than the original song, since I don’t find “more” or really anything very different. It comes across as clever trickery in search of aesthetics, rather than something aesthetically pleasing with elements of cleverness.

Jonathan Shaw: Mason’s and Jenny’s criticisms of Diamond Seas are well put, but they assume that “The Diamond Sea” is the principal aesthetic object or text against which Oswald’s record should be judged. I don’t, so I am not hoping to “find more” or “learn something new” about SY. I love that big, dissonant middle section of the 1996 side. The layering and sequencing gets me somewhere.

I know a bunch of “Dark Stars” very, very well, and for the best of them, I prize them in their individual instances as the particular things they are. That might also contribute to why I don’t respond as strongly to Grayfolded as a musical experience. In that case, I’d rather listen to one of the “Dark Stars,” situated in a specific show from 1969 or 1970 or 1972.

Bill Meyer: I appreciate your first point, Jonathan. 40-odd years after I first heard them, I don’t feel like I need to learn anything about Sonic Youth. I just want to hear their best sounds. I will echo the appreciation for the 1996 side because it’s less concerned with the structure of the song and more concerned with collaging hunks of noise.

Ian Mathers: Relistening to Diamond Seas again last night, the difference for me between the two sides is getting pretty stark (and in ways that are maybe in line with some of the discussion here). I equally feel like I don’t need to learn anything about SY, from the other direction. It felt like I was sitting through “Diamond Seas 1995,” although it passed quickly enough. I don’t have much nostalgia here (my high school engagement with the band was trying to get through all of Daydream Nation instead of just playing “Teen Age Riot” again), like Jenny I don’t get much out of the crowd noise, and it just feels like a lackluster version of what’s going on with “Diamond Seas 1996.” If they’d released the latter as a one-off, I’d be more into it.

I do appreciate that Oswald appears to be something less straightforward here than, say, this compilation of 11 versions of the Stooges’ “Dirt” from the Fun House played at the same time.

And yet, I ultimately have more fun listening to “Dddddiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrtttttttt,” and I suspect that’s not down to just preferring the source material. Something about randomness versus conscious shaping, maybe? I did a quick look to see if Oswald has done any interviews around his work here and didn’t turn up anything, but did find out that 1996 was the last year they ever played “The Diamond Sea live. Here I had been assuming Oswald/the band had just picked a couple of prime years for its live incarnation, instead of the last. Correctly or not, that feels connected to either the performances from 1996 or how Oswald has piled them on.

I also see that at least a good chunk of the vocal SY fans on reddit do not like this album. “Unlistenable” has been thrown around, which feels funny when if anything I wish “Diamond Seas 1996” took things even further into noise.

Justin Cober-Lake: I’m sort of in the middle of opinions on this work. I don’t see why SY fans would find it “unlistenable” — it seems to work for me in a lot of the same ways that Sonic Youth works (and while I’m a longtime fan, this track isn’t one I’ve returned to regularly). I feel a little bit like Mason does in wondering why I would go for this version rather than the original, even if there’s something interesting about it. In that sense, the conversation makes me think that there are multiple ways of approaching this record, which, in my own listening, sometimes come together and sometimes don’t:

1) Is it a good/enjoyable piece of music? Yes, especially 1996 for the reasons that everyone (here and elsewhere) is hearing. Devoid of context, I kind of like it, even if “devoid of context” is an unreachable state.

2) Is it good as a theoretical/aesthetic/compositional/whatever project? I don’t have a strong opinion here, having not taken a dive into Oswald’s whole thing not spent proper time with Grayfolded or other plunderphonic works. I can see how someone else might want to nerd out on it, though, in probably fruitful ways.

3) Does it add to my understanding of or thinking about Sonic Youth or “The Diamond Sea?” For me, it’s a no. It is certainly much better that the “Dirt” thing Ian mentioned, partly just by being a more sincere look at the music. Like Ian, I wish the original went further into noise, too, but there’s SY that does that. This feels a little bit like play to me, and I have no objection to that, but I’m not likely to reach for this over the original and, having listened to it a few times, I haven’t really been compelled to push more into, and I probably wouldn’t even have reached for the original again had it not been for this conversation. Even so, I like that it exists, because the idea at least is provocative, even if this particular release leaves me a little uninspired.

Bill Meyer: As far as context is concerned, I think that Diamond Seas can be seen as part of a long-term project to keep SY alive in people’s minds a decade and a half after the band packed it in. Like many other long in the tooth / retired artists (Can, Wire, Neil Young, the Grateful Dead), they have released a stream of archival live material. They even relented and put out an official version of Walls Have Ears, which was conspicuous by its absence, a couple years ago. This might seem to them like a more creative way of nurturing their commercial presence than another live album.

Michael Rosenstein: I’m curious as to what, if any, connections Oswald sees between his plunderphonics projects and his alto sax playing in improvised settings. Oddly, while I’ve heard Oswald as an improviser, I’ve not heard any of his plunderphonics. I have zero interest in Grayfolded. I listened to and saw the Dead a bunch in the early to mid 1970s. But after seeing Pharoah Sanders live in 1973, I increasingly lost interest in the Dead’s noodling. And I only saw Sonic Youth once, shortly before their breakup and have barely listened to any of their records. But I’ve been listening to Oswald as an improviser since the early 1980s. I think I first came across his playing on Moose and Salmon, his trio with Henry Kaiser and Toshinori Kondo.

I also got a chance to see him with CCMC, the Toronto-based collective including Michael Snow and Paul Dutton, as well as in a duo with pianist Paul Plimley. Taking a quick look at Oswald’s Discogs page, it appears that he still occasionally plays in improv settings. From what I know about his plunderphonics projects, I don’t hear any of those strategies coming through in any of these improvised settings, but I may be missing something.

Knockout Artist — Ramshackle Deluxe (Knockout Artist)

Talk about 80s music, and you’re liable to get gushy pledges of allegiance to gated drums and gravity-defying hair. But there was a counter-movement of rock musicians who rejected artificiality by tapping into country sounds and themes. Whether by design or happy accident, Knockout Artist, a quintet from Chapel Hill NC, nails that vibe. While Phil Venable drawls alternately defiant and shame-faced sentiments, a triple front of guitars and steel snarl and spiral over crisp drum cadences that’ll dispatch rock critics of a certain age to their basements to pull out their Long Ryders, Eleventh Dream Day, and Band of Blacky Ranchette records. If those names mean nothing to you, well, maybe Knockout Artist will.

Bill Meyer

LDL — The Eerie Glow Of Jellyfish (Relative Pitch)

LDL = soprano saxophonist Urs Leimgruber + analogue synth player Thomas Lehn + amplified spinet player Jacques Demierre. This Swiss/German combo has roots in an earlier trio that, with Demierre on piano and the late, august bassist Barre Phillips occupying the space now held by Lehn, had a fine two-decade run. Changes in gear and personnel contribute to the simultaneously bruising and delicate dust-ups that play out across this concert recording. Amplified, the spinet (an old parlour harpsichord) emits a whirlwind of brittle textures that shatter and coalesce with the synth’s alien squelch. Long, lacerating sax thrusts puncture and stir the action, resulting in a group sound that is remarkably unfamiliar given how long these guys have been around.

Bill Meyer

Donny McCaslin / Ingrid Jensen / Bruce Barth / David Ambrosio / Victor Lewis — Civil Disobedience (Blue Frog Records)

Turbulent times can bring out the best in artists, encouraging them to push deeper into themselves to make art that reflects the moment. Such was the case in late 60s jazz, an era that David Ambrosio’s new quintet looks to on their new release Civil Disobedience. Think about it like this: it features a blue-chip lineup (McCaslin, Jensen, Barth, and Lewis) playing Blue Note material. But what could have been just another standards album has slightly adventurous programming: Bobby Hutcherson’s “For Duke P,” Harold Land’s “Poor People’s March,” and Joe Chambers’s “Ankara”. Both McCaslin and Jensen play well here: on “For Duke P,” Jensen’s solo has her darting around the melody and stretching out long lines with ease. Meanwhile McCaslin gets a rich, sweet tone out of his horn on “Irina” and plays some nice, almost circular figures where he goes up and down his horn’s register. And with a rhythm section that gives them plenty of space to work — Lewis’s deft touch on drums never overpowers the players and Barth’s piano keeps them from flying too far into space — it’s an engaging, occasionally exciting listen.

Roz Milner

Pefkin — Unfurling (Morc)

Gayle Brogan has been making albums as Pefkin for over 20 years now, and Unfurling displays an unhurried, patient calm that can come across as lovely or foreboding, sometimes very close together. The two extended tracks anchoring this 40-minute collection, the opening slow-building radiance of “Green Bound in Ice and Snow” and the penultimate, starkly crawling “My Breath the Sea,” show her work in its strongest form, but the more compact other four tracks expand on those strengths in varied ways (from the mournful strings of the Penda’s Fen-quoting “The Dissonance” to the relatively pastoral “Sun Flecks”). Just like her music, Brogan’s sung lines are also careful, enchantingly placed, giving Unfurling a subtly and pleasingly otherworldly feel.

Ian Mathers

Raw Distractions — S/T (La Vida Es un Mus)

Tokyo-based Raw Distractions play a variety of punk rawk that walks (or stumbles) a fine line between pastiche and appealing artlessness. Is the band’s combination of street-punk scruffiness, Dead Boys’ energy and Johnny Thunders-style guitar heroics a calculated simulation of 1978’s overripeness, or are Raw Distractions so out of step with the contemporary that they’re really playing the music that they have to play? The riffs are sweet and then slashing, compellingly melodic and tuff — like Mick Jones working out on an early Sun Records tune. Songs like “Raw Dis” and “Midnight” have a hip-shot snottiness that’s winningly stubborn in its adulation what was so exciting about late-70s punk. But do we really need music this out of time? Aren’t we all just about out of time, as the earthball cooks and platform capitalism gleefully empties everything of real value? Maybe a raw distraction — and guitars this gloriously beat to shit — is precisely made to order for 2026. Amazon can next-day the vinyl to you.

Jonathan Shaw

Seefeel — Sol.Hz (Warp)

Though they share a label with electronic legends Aphex Twin, Autechre, and Boards of Canada, Seefeel have flown relatively under the radar since they first started releasing music in the 1990s. Their latest album, Sol.Hz, conjures a gaseous, shadowy soundworld that draws influence from the more minimal, industrial side of their labelmates, especially early Aphex and the more accessible side of Autechre. However, the most resonant comparison is probably Slowdive’s Pygmalion, in the way the looped, disembodied elements — synths, beats, Sarah Peacock’s ghostly voice — seem to hover apart from each other rather than locking into a rhythmic grid. “Everydays” rolls past without the individual elements coalescing; “Ever No Way” starts off-kilter, but as more elements are introduced, locks satisfying into place, like Boards of Canada’s “Jacquard Causeway.” It’s a disorientating and deeply atmospheric listen that paints a vivid picture across its runtime without overstaying its welcome.

Tim Clarke

Charles Joseph Smith — Collected Works and War of the Martian Ghosts (Sooper)

The 88 Keys That Opened Doors: An Inspiring Memoir of an African-American Man Who Achieved the Impossible Even As He Faced The Challenges of Being on the Spectrum (self-published)

Dr. Charles Joseph Smith is a living legend of the Chicago underground scene who has self-released over sixty albums on tape and cd-r. In the early 2000s I was introduced to a cassette of Smith waxing poetic on the word “Linden” through mutual friends in the Midwest noise rock scene, and it was immediately apparent that I was experiencing the work of a visionary artist. Despite being an internationally-renowned classical pianist, Smith is often found banging his head at basement noise shows and dancing at under-the-radar house music parties. This long-overdue four-sided adventure from Sooper Records compiles selections from the artist’s vast catalog created over the past thirty years, including both midi and piano realizations of Smith’s sci-fi opera War of the Martian Ghosts. It’s highly recommended that readers also pick up Smith’s autobiography, The 88 Keys That Opened Doors, to more fully understand the remarkable life of this composer. After having spent several years mute as a child, Smith astonished his family by playing perfect classical licks on the piano without previously having played a single note. While navigating the tremendous challenges presented by autism, Smith not only earned a doctorate in musical arts and traveled the world performing, but he also crafted a unique personal world through the power of music and became a beloved member of the underground community. Hopefully this beautiful collection of music becomes just one part of a multi-volume series of releases in the future.

Justin Rhody

Various Artists — Red Xerox: Chicago Youth Beat 2020-2025 (Desert Island)

Chicago’s Hallogallo scene flourished in the early 2020s, an interconnected community that played each other’s shows and sat in on each other’s bands and sometimes shared familial and romantic ties. Horsegirl, the buzzy, drone-y, all-female trio, made the first mark outside the neighborhood, but post-punk noisemakers in Lifeguard weren’t far behind (or too much ahead of poppier outfits like Sharp Pins and Friko). Yet the scene was more diverse that outsiders, perhaps, have given it credit for. This compilation yields the expected amount of fuzz and chime and agit-punk, but also a helping of confessional singer-songwriter music (Amaya Penya’s “Song for Avi,” and Free Range’s “Lost and Found”), dub (Current Union TM’s “Dukkha Coca”) and Tobin Sprout-ish lo-fi (Dwaal Troupe’ “En Utero”). The comp covers a lot of ground, but it’s carefully sequenced, It flows like a mixtape despite the diversity of ideas. And that’s maybe what makes it so special: Red Xerox tracks a scene that was exacting but inclusive, a little nerdy but full of enthusiasm. DIY, it seems, is in good hands for at least one more generation.

Jennifer Kelly

Geiger Von Müller — Neocubist Blues (Self-Release)

Guitar blues can be a traditionalist’s straight jacket, but it doesn’t have to be. In Neocubist Blues, London-based experimental guitarist Geiger Von Müller offers 14 mostly brief interludes that filter the drone and haunt and sting of blues guitar through a modernist lens. Here the slippery tones of bottleneck slide careen slightly off center, the steady thump of the Delta turns abstract and mathematical. “Toys in the Attic (Parts 10-12)” slashes and careens through heavy rhythmic territory, its percussive attack violent, almost punk. The slide gets viewed from three temporal angles: “Before the Slide,” “The Slide” and “After the Slide.” Each demonstrating considerable knowledge and skill in the blues form without pledging fidelity. Lots of guitarists follow Fahey, but few show affinity for BOTH his blues and his sonic experiments. Geiger Von Müller does, and that makes his Neocubist Blues worth exploring.

Anenon — Dream Temperature (Tonal Union)

Brian Allen Simon’s Anenon explores the boundaries of consciousness in a sax-and-electronics ambient set of compositions. He means to evoke the borderlands between sleep and waking. And indeed, there’s a muzzy indefinition to the electronic sounds that haunt the interstices of this fourth full-length, which only serve to emphasize the clarity of organic instruments: saxophone, piano and others. “When the Light Appears, Boy” pulses with echoing, interstellar synth tones — a similar sound, believe it or not, to the opening of “Baba Yaga” — but an ancient sounding melodica winds in and around this gleaming edifice. Space and magic, starlight and gloomy drone, it’s all there in the Dreamworld.

Jennifer Kelly

Rhys Chatham & Nico Guerrero — Athanor (Erototox Decodings)

Post-minimalist pioneer and guitar army composer, Rhys Chatham, works in collaboration with French musician Nico Guerrero to construct these two side-long compositions for guitars tuned in Pythagorean intonation, alto and bass flutes, and effects. Shifting overtones, harmonic clusters, and tottering frequencies create hypnotic and ethereal macrocosmos of sound that mirror the alchemist’s self-feeding furnace referenced in the album title. Operating parallel yet distinctly unattached to Chatham’s rock-influenced works for multiple guitars (which sometimes involve hundreds of guitars), these drone-based pieces focus on textural intricacies through extended playing techniques to sculpt a euphonious air of alien origin. An elegant work of subtlety and riveting liminal vibrations from a psyche that worked with La Monte Young and Tony Conrad, helped establish the No Wave sound, and has never ceased to push itself further into new terrain.

Justin Rhody

Cronies — Demo (Ragdoll)

The internets are not forthcoming with much info about Cronies, the band that has gifted us with this glittering demo recording, tucked into a recognizable 1990s musical pocket: punk-adjacent power pop of unusual quality, previously generated by outfits like the Clean and Tuscadero. Listen closely and you’ll also catch a vibe or two from the underappreciated Eddy Current Suppression Ring. Those are fairly heavy names to be invoking alongside this slim 11-minute tape, but its four songs open the way to a variety of power-pop heaven, sweet and spiked and on repeat so long you fear you’ll squeeze all the joy out of the music too quickly. “Rose” and “MSG Cocktail” are the tape’s unassuming one-two punch, the off-the-cuff feel of which may have you flashing on early Replacements. But these Cronies sound a little less drunk and aggro, a little more sad and twee (but just a little). Apparently, the band has broken up four times, and this may be all we get. It’s not close to enough.

Jonathan Shaw

Nathaniel Dorsky & Mark Birnbaum — The Green and the Grey (Fenrick Books)

Experimental film heads will surely need no introduction to Dorsky, who (alongside his partner and fellow filmmaker Jerome Hiller) has exercised a polyvalent montage method of editing to create some of the most affecting non-narrative films of the last sixty years. However, those same heads will probably be surprised to see Dorsky’s name on a musical release, given that almost all of the filmmaker’s work has been silent. Recorded in one take in late 1978, this cassette plays out like the stylings of a locomotive calmly propelling forward in a meditative furor through an improvised, long-form composition for toy organ and bucket-bongo percussion. Sounding slightly reminiscent of Indian classical music, the notes of the chord organ reach upward in sustain while stretching across a vast expanse colored by the glorious low-fidelity of the recording method. With this cassette edition having sold out almost instantly, rumor has it that there will soon be a re-issue made available on compact disc.

Justin Rhody

Nick Fraser — Areas (Elastic Recording)

One problem with having heavy hitters is that you might not be able to get them together very often. But the advantage of a widely spaced performance schedule is that things stay fresh. Areas is the third album by Nick Fraser’s trio with pianist Kris Davis and soprano/tenor saxophonist Tony Malaby since 2015. Each has its own character, and two elements defining Areas are the contributions of electronic musician John Kameel Farah and Fraser’s own writing. Farah used some drum-sax duets as raw material for short pieces that begin, bisect, and end the record, and that give it a sonic fluidity. Fraser’s writing, on the other hand, uses Davis’s sonic expansiveness and organizational instincts to set up pieces in which one player pulls things together while the others seem to be pushing against that structural imperative. The result is music that feels both thoughtful and unstable.

Bill Meyer

Godless — Adversus Parousia (Nuclear Winter)

Death metal being what death metal is, it should surprise no one that there are or have been at least seven bands calling themselves Godless, from locations as various as Romania, Thessaloniki, Bavaria, Quebec and Hyderabad (and if you include black metal, you get outfits from Puerto Rico and Java, as well). Adversus Parousia has been released by the most venerable act claiming the name, the Godless dudes from Talca, Chile. They have been making a god-awful noise since 1997, and this record is characteristic of their unhinged noise. On Adversus Parousia there’s a blackened tinge to the sonic nihilism, and the pace frequently flirts with grind’s intensities, but the sound is death metal at its core: chunky, suppurating and generally vomitous — like a blowfly expelling formic acid in order to suck up the resulting liquefied yuck. Mmm, more please.

Jonathan Shaw

Huggy Bear — Basic Strategies for Going Out: Peel Sessions (JABS)

By the time I was old enough to become aware of Huggy Bear through their split LP with Bikini Kill, they had already met their self-prescribed expiration date of three years and broken up. But this short-lived British punk band and their fetching blend of “boy-girl revolutionary” enlightened agitation left a wide field of inspiration in their dust. And these unreleased Peel Sessions, recorded over thirty years ago for the BBC, find the band in top form — featuring classics like “Hopscorch,” an early version of “Her Jazz,” and two previously unreleased songs. It’s a shame that the Bikini Kill split LP was later re-issued without the Huggy Bear tracks, and that none of their other albums have been re-pressed (yet). They’ve always struck me as forward-thinking artists though, so perhaps it’s all by design? In any case, this is the only Huggy Bear release currently available commercially— so ya oughta bring it into your life while you can.

Justin Rhody

Illusion of Safety — The Schmetterling Variations (Klanggallerie)

Daniel Burke, the sole constant member of Illusion Of Safety, is a restless sort, and that is reflected across a discography that spans over forty years and encompasses industrial, ambient and less definable stuff. The glue binding the two very different performances on this CD is temporal and geographical; they were recorded on two contiguous nights in Vienna, Austria. The first track is IOS in solo electronic mode, recorded on the occasion of Burke’s first gig in that town in many years. Over the course of half an hour it proceeds from pure, high pitches to a collage of environments and electrical emissions. It feels associative and invites the listener to drift with it, alert and uncertain, as the surroundings change. The second track presents Burke on piano, one of his favorite instruments in recent years, improvising with guitarist Eric Arn, saxophonist Michael Masen and drummer Michi Prehofer. It follows an arc that will be familiar to improv show-goers from exploratory gestures to scrabbling climax, back down and then back up again. The closer it gets to rip-snorting free jazz, the less characterful it becomes, but in the quieter passages there’s some intriguing negotiation going on.

Bill Meyer

Steve Jansen — Primitive Techno 1 + Primitive Techno 2 (That’s Cool)

In 1985 Christian Marclay released Record Without a Cover, a concept LP of sorts sold without packaging in order to designate damages accrued during the object’s life as intentional (and unique) elements of the record’s sound. Four decades later Steve Jansen’s Primitive Techno takes the next step and composes works solely from damaged 45s using a broken turntable. Prepared cassette loops and multiple delay pedals push these difficult rhythms over the cliff, where they pile up in the bloody canyon of dance music that you can’t dance to. With a rich history ranging from the relatively unknown DJ Sonyplaystation to the highly celebrated Maria Chavez, Jansen’s contributions are another notch in the belt of the widely despised field of avant-turntablism. While the rest of the world’s so-called musicians desperately post online about which streaming service subscription is most ethical, we’re passing through the peak era of possibility to be digging late-90s breakbeat records out of the trash. To the ears of a true believer, Primitive Techno is a reminder that there’s still something to believe in.