Acausal Intrusion — Panspsychism (I, Voidhanger)

Acausal Intrusion continues its journey from the extremes of utterly demented tech death (see the band’s first LP, Nulitas) to this most recent version of the band’s sound. To be sure, Panpsychism still disturbs and confounds, but you can track the progression of song forms through most of the record’s eight tracks, and when the needle lifts at the close of “The Beauty Within,” you will likely be able to locate your extremities in physical space. Your mind? That depends. You can get pretty lost in the twists and inversions in the middle section of “This Inward Separation,” and “Molecular Entanglement” works pretty hard to deliver on its title’s premise (hold on tight through the tune’s second half…). Still, these new songs are much more interested in creating interesting riffs and repeating them than in turning the structures of temporality inside out. It may be telling that the longest track on Panpsychism is called “Pillar of Rationality.” Is Acausal Intrusion becoming invested in cause-and-effect relations? Only time will tell — assuming you can figure out which way time is running after giving this record a spin.

Jonathan Shaw

Arrowounds — The Slow Boiling Amphibian Dreamstate (Lost Tribe Sound)

The Slow Boiling Amphibian Dreamstate by ARROWOUNDS

Back in March, Arrowounds’ In the Octopus Pond cast a spell that’s been hard to shake. In my Dusted review I wrote, “Though there are plenty of precedents for what Chamberlain is doing here, there’s a cohesive vision to this record that proves intoxicating.” This follow-up, the aptly titled The Slow Boiling Amphibian Dreamstate, also has a cohesive vision, but one that’s much darker and more abstract than its predecessor. Aside from a distant muted rhythm on opener, “All Life Dissolved in the Deep,” this is a largely beatless album, with ambient textures brought to the fore. For the majority of these 45 minutes, very little happens at all, aside from the looming of unsettling reverberations, throbbing bass tones and modulated sounds that could be the buzzing of flies. There’s the feeling that something ritualistic is unfolding in the shadows, something that may prove to unleash malignant forces. It’s certainly an evocative listen, but one that requires patience and the casting aside of any preconceived expectations. This one’s all about the atmosphere.

Tim Clarke

Blood Oath — Lost in an Eternal Silence (Caligari Records)

Eternal silence? Not likely when these Chilean freaks are around. Blood Oath plays a proggy variety of death metal, long on musical technique and a lot spacier than not. But those ambitions and atmospherics never get in the way of satisfying tunefulness, and when guitarists Ignacio Canales and Iganacio Riveras (yep, two Iganacios) indulge their desires to shred, there’s plenty of thrashy antics and dive-bombing abandon to enjoy. This reviewer really digs “Reflections of Darkness,” which is shot through with a groovy weirdness; the soloing verges on hair-metal heroics here and there, but in this context, that turns out to be a lot of fun. Lost in Eternal Silence is more smoked out than grossed out, and some of us like our death metal a bit soggier and smellier. But there’s no denying the musical invention on display here, and the speed and dexterity nears intoxicating levels.

Jonathan Shaw

Body/Head — Come On (Longform Editions Remix) (Longform Editions)

Come On (Longform Editions remix) by Body/Head

Kim Gordon and Bill Nace have been exploring the mind-body divide for over a decade, yet they still manage to surprise and delight. The duo sprung the Come On EP on us earlier this year, without notice. Replete with short, song-like impressions, the brief recording was a subtle evolution in the Body/Head oeuvre. They astonish once more with this extended remix of the EP’s leading track, stretching it into a 20-minute ambient opus. Only faint echoes of the piece’s guitar noise remain, as Nace dons his dub producer’s cap to create a smoke-filled atmosphere. Gordon’s sultry voice beckons, yet through time dilation seems to call from the edge of the universe. She and Nace are joined by music video director and Peaches collaborator Vice Cooler, whose slippery synth squiggles add a gritty snarl to the otherwise soothing vapor trails. This is a potent brew, a beguiling chanson rooted firmly in the ever-expanding Body/Head universe.

Bryon Hayes

DJ Muggs — Soul Assassins 3: Death Valley (Soul Assassins Records)

The third part of the DJ Muggs’ trilogy has got an impressive list of guests. How can one even get a verse from Ice Cube and MC Ren these days? But despite the shocking number of rap stars (many of them fell off, to be honest), hardly anything on Soul Assassins 3: Death Valley feels like a real song. These are projects, with phoned-in verses, and Muggs was just doing construction work, putting these verses together. Only three solo tracks with Boldy James (“It’s On,” “Where We At, and “We Coming For the Safe”) sound like he was really working for it. After half a dozen of listens not a single song sticks in mind. You just keep listing these big names in your head.

Ray Garraty

Duffy X Uhlmann — Doubles (Orindal)

Doubles by Duffy x Uhlmann

Meg Duffy is a heck of a guitar player, witness their support work for Kevin Morby, their own Hand Habits and this year’s yes/and all-instrumental collaboration with Oneohtrix Point Never producer Joel Ford. Now the artist teams up with Gregory Ulhmann, likely encountered on a recent Hand Habits/Perfume Genius tour in 2022 for an album of improvised guitar duets, laid down in one single takes, look ma, no net. These cuts are lovely and varied. “Half Smile” is precise but lyrical. One guitar sets up a clock-like rhythmic foundation, while another splays lingering chords and pensive runs of melody atop this architectural structure. “Etch” is more luxuriant, with high tremulous melody stepping nimbly over scratchy strums and flowering in harp-like profusion. “Which One Is You” has a pulsing, electronic mystery, guitar notes scattered over an eerie Burial-ish atmosphere (or possibly some of that Oneohtrix Point Never influence rubbed off). “Braid” is cerebral and austere, the notes clipped short, so that guitar sounds like a malleted percussion instrument. The two parts interlock like delicately tuned machinery, the one fitting where the other stops, and both dancing in airy, contemplative joy.

Jennifer Kelly

Alabaster DePlume — Come with Fierce Grace (Intl Anthem)

Come With Fierce Grace by Alabaster DePlume

Alabaster DePlume recorded material for these 12 tracks at the same time as he was making GOLD, working with20 other musicians in various configurations and laying far more sound to tape than he could use, even for a double album. And yet while this music is, strictly speaking, leftovers, it is, in some ways, far more visceral and affecting than its sprawling predecessor. The sounds are rougher, warmer and less baroquely poised. There are African rhythms and tones in many of these cuts, in this rumbling, rattling foundations of percussive “To that Voice and Say,” in the desert flutter of spare haunting “Give Me Away.” DePlume, himself, sings less and plays more, entering into swaggering, blistered dialogue with a drummer, in “What Can It Take,” overblowing long, trembling vibrations on abstract “Fall on Flowers.” Where he does foreground singing, it’s likely to be someone else, like the Guinean artist Falle Nioke in “Sibomandi,” carving rough shadow-y blues arcs across complicated volleys of percussion and sax. Or London-based Momoko Gill, who breathes silky smooth R&B lines into a thicket of plucked bass notes, sounding very much like Sade but without the sheen of slick production. I was lukewarm on GOLD, but I like this one a lot. Let’s hear it for leftovers.

Jennifer Kelly

Erik Enocksson — Räkna evighet som intet (Irrlicht/Ideal)

Räkna evighet som intet by Erik Enocksson

Swedish composer Erik Enocksson explores grief and transcendence in two longform pieces on his new release which translates as “Count eternity as nothing.” Written for a string quartet, voices overlaid and electronic effects, with a libretto taken from the poetry of Lotta Lotass, Enocksson invokes the confusion and despair essential to the mourning process and the redemptive power of prayer, poetry and music. The work plays out like a non-linear operetta, shifting between emotional states and intensity.

Part 1 begins with a babble of voices, an invocation. Inchoate strings and electronics gradually coalesce into form, a wordless male voice, cantor-like, answered by a choral libretto based on the poetry of Lotta Lotass. In Part 2 swirls of feedback, like nails on a blackboard, the bottom end of the strings distorted, again searching for meaningful form. The choir liturgical, before Sara Fors’ vulnerable soprano comes to the fore, barely there in lonely prayer, before a lengthy fade into eternal silence. Räkna evighet som intet is a hauntingly evocative work which doesn’t shy from darkness but ends in purifying light.

Andrew Forell

Devin Gray — Most Definitely  (Rataplan)

Most Definitely by Rataplan Records

One truth of performance is that the performer spends the whole of their life preparing for something that another person might only see during one brief and circumscribed moment. Devin Gray, a drummer who has worked with Kris Davis, Ellery Eskelin and numerous other singular jazz musicians, recreates that phenomenon on his debut solo recording, Most Definitely. If you want to get in touch with the reflection and effort that go into the self-creation of an artist, go to this album’s Bandcamp page when you have some time and read the two exhaustive texts he wrote for it. But in the spirit the actual music, this review will be brief. Gray limited himself to one six-hour session, during which he improvised from a series of prompts. With one exception, the album’s 23 tracks are quite short, and each uses a laser focus to express a particular sound, idea or transitional event. As befits a guy who is engaged with the freer end of things, but also engaged with the music’s ongoing historical development, you can hear a spectacular breadth of sounds, some of which become brief homages to his inspirations.

Bill Meyer

Anthony Naples — orbs (ANS Recordings)

orbs by Anthony Naples

Dusted last checked in with producer Anthony Naples back in 2015, when Patrick Masterson noted that his Body Pill LP made for a transition away from Naples’ dancefloor work to “a peaceful, nocturnal release built for life’s simple, quiet moments.” On the evidence of the lush, accomplished new orbs, Naples has continued to go in that direction, and it’s paying dividends. From the opening “Moto Verse” finding a middle ground between trip hop and ambient to the closing “Unknow” evoking a kinder, gentler Boards of Canada (albeit with a prominent bassline). orbs succeeds in both its sound design and its construction. These ten tracks (kept to a trim 43 minutes and change, although the pace never feels rushed) seem drawn from the same pool of nighttime calm Naples was channeling back on Body Pill, but if anything his approach has gotten more refined and potent with time.

Ian Mathers

Eddie Prévost / NO Moore /James O’Sullivan / Ross Lambert — CHORD (Shrike)

CHORD by Eddie Prévost | NO Moore | James O’Sullivan | Ross Lambert

Shrike emerged in 2021 as an outlet for London’s thriving free improvisation scene. A survey of their Bandcamp page indicates that capitalization matters, so let’s ponder for a moment the determination to render in all caps something that you’ll listen hard to find on this recording. It is a studio encounter between three electric guitarists and the esteemed percussionist, Eddie Prévost, whose involvement ensures that the music is going to enact a process of exploration, but suffice to say that no one is searching for the lost chord. No, they’re looking for ways to contribute to a dialogue of arcing tones, shimmering decays, rough-edge scraps and feedback that’ll resonate in your ribcage. By dint of being the only non-guitarist, Prévost becomes the agent of contrast and focus across seven absorbing exchanges. It appears that Shrike prioritizes visual presentation, and CHORD’s trifold sleeve is a thing of beauty. One hopes that in the future the label will extend that respect to the format itself and put it on a glass-mastered CD instead of the short-run, blue-faced disc used here.

Bill Meyer

Radian — Distorted Rooms (Thrill Jockey)

Distorted Rooms by Radian

Experimental trio Radian — Martin Brandlmayr on drums and electronics, Martin Siewert on guitars and electronics and John Norman on bass — create a splintered, deconstructed form of post-rock with industrial leanings and the low-slung funkiness of instrumental hip-hop. Their sounds are metallic and dank, often blown out with distortion and scattered across the stereo field to give the listener just enough grounding to follow their rhythms, but frequently upending expectations of where their meandering compositions may venture next. Radian’s last album, 2016’s On Dark Silent Off, is probably their finest and most cohesive to date; their new album, the fittingly titled Distorted Rooms, feels like a more fractured effort, its six tracks taking a more abstract course across 40 minutes of music. The band’s sounds are always interesting, but there are passages here where you have to wait patiently for everything to lock into place. Distorted Rooms’ finest moments are probably “Cicada,” which features some of the record’s more breakneck and addictive rhythms, and finale “S at the Gates,” which coalesces its sound sources into something ominously atmospheric.

Tim Clarke

Shackleton & Waclaw Zimpel ft  Siddhartha Belmannu — The Cell of Dreams (7K!)

The Cell of Dreams is a collaboration between producer Sam Shackleton, Polish polymath Waclaw Zimpel and singer Siddhartha Belmannu. Shackleton and Zimpel use harmonium like drones, keyboards, alto clarinet and hand percussion to develop serpentine trance-like ragas. Singing in his native language Kannada, Belmannu, a rising star in Indian classical music, moves through registers of his voice with magistral grace. The 19-minute opener “The Ocean Lies Between Us” features long cycles of drone and buzz, minimal percussion, lapping water and Belmannu modulated and serene intercut with wordless runs through the higher registers. Not understanding the words, you concentrate solely on his tone and emotion to the extent that when he sings in English on “Everything Must Decay” it takes a little readjustment of focus, but the combination of Belmannu’s voice, Zimpel’s treated alto clarinet and Shackleton’s production effects is mesmerizing.

Andrew Forell

Superposition — Glaciers (Kettle Hole Records)

Glaciers by Superposition

Superposition is Todd Carter and Michael Hartman, who also comprise two thirds of the category-noncompliant trio, TV Pow. TV Pow rarely gets together these days since its members have lives and the third member, Brent Gutzeit, left Chicago years ago. But Superposition’s existence proves that Hartman and Carter are still playing together, and still adhering to the essential TV Pow tenet that if they get in the same room and make some sounds, whether they issue from computers, conversations, made-up instruments or a nice grand piano, those sounds might end up on a record. The ten tracks on Glaciers are made by stacking layers of spare keyboard lines and muffled drum tracks, and periodically interrupting their trundling passage in ways that suggest that something has gone somewhere, then stopped and done something else. If that description seems non-specific, so is the music; while just enough of the track titles relate to glaciers to make you look for a concept album in this stuff, it could just as be set to driving instruction films or the progress of Mario from one side of your video screen to the other. This is a feature, not a bug. Put this on and do something. 

Bill Meyer

Thrash Palace — Go (Sub Pop)

Part of the Sub Pop Singles series, Thrash Palace’s “Go” rips as hard as it’ll go, a bludgeoning assault of guitar noise, thwacked to bits by hard, block-simple drums. You might recognize the singer’s florid, blues-nodding belt or her guttural grunt: that’s EMA doing her best rock goddess. The rest of the band is likewise impressive. Sarah Register of Talk Normal and Kim Gordon’s band plays guitar and XBXRX’s Vice Cooler plays hits those brutalist drums. The flipside “Teenage Spaceship” is quieter but also full of drama. Here EMA’s voice tamps down to a whisper, and the atmosphere envelopes rather than blowing the house down. Both are quite good, intense, theatrical and inventive in a way that evokes Savages and, naturally, Kim Gordon. Thrash on, ladies. We need a full-length.

Jennifer Kelly

Vengeance — Sewer Surge (Dying Victims Productions)

Nasty, grimy and dank, Sewer Surge is the first proper LP from Vengeance — or, as they seem to prefer, Fukkin Vengeance. That additional term in the band’s name is close to risible, but it helps to distinguish this speed metal act from at least two other Polish metal bands that call themselves Vengeance, in addition to the dozen or so other outfits claiming the moniker (from Brazil, Germany, the States and elsewhere). Polish? Yep, but you’d be forgiven for assuming that an obscure NWOBHM band recorded Sewer Surge sometime in 1983. This is metal for a bar fight, for a biker run, for a night of whites and pints of Ballantine Ale in Sheffield (or in Warsaw, one supposes). The band seems to be clued into the layers of allusion and potential ironical goofiness that come with this sort of earnest love letter to those halcyon days of leather, spikes and Flying Vs: the best tune on the record is called “Disappointing Parking Lot Sex.” That’s really funny, and the song is pretty great. Just don’t expect Fukkin Vengeance to get out of the gutter (or sewer) any time soon.

Jonathan Shaw

Dustin Wong — Perpetual Morphosis (Hausu Mountain)

Perpetual Morphosis by Dustin Wong

Dustin Wong creates outlandish and beautiful sound worlds that are inspired by his limitless creativity. Originally a denizen of the weird and wonderful Baltimore music scene – he was a member of both Ecstatic Sunshine and Ponytail – the guitarist has since created a solo career around his mastery of loop pedals. Not keen to sit still, Wong continues to extend his performative toolbox. Perpetual Morphosis, his sophomore Hausu Mountain joint, finds Wong fusing instrumentation and digitally sourced sounds. The resulting compositions reside somewhere between the intricate patterns of American minimalism and the post-modern zaniness emanating from the Orange Milk catalog. Fractalized percussive patterns bounce around, obfuscated by neon-colored tone clouds and the gently wafting breeze of Wong’s treated vocalizing. His guitar interjects repeatedly as we traverse this technicolor dream world, zooming in and out of focus as the composer straddles the fragile boundary between inspiration and outright madness. Perpetual Morphosis pokes at Wong’s charged up cerebellum, proffering a pleasant jolt in the process.

Bryon Hayes

75 Dollar Bill — Power Failures (Karl Records)

Power Failures by 75 DOLLAR BILL

75 Dollar Bill was that last band I saw before the pandemic closed everything down. They played a riveting set in a refurbished industrial space on the campus of Amherst College about a week into 2020, and, as a famous playwright put it, the rest is silence, at least for a couple of years. Power Failures comes from that period, as the two principals put together live and unreleased recordings as a way to stay relevant during the lockdown. It came out digitally in 2020 and is just now getting the vinyl treatment. The disc captures 75 Dollar Bill’s hallucinatory desert blues drone, its long haunted notes, punctuated by an ecstatic, primal drumming. Sounds of audiences, of birds, of children filter in through these shape shifting meditations, incorporating the real world like certain just-before-the-alarm dreams bring ambient noises into their narratives. “Snow Jumper’s Harp” shimmers and smolders, the steady friction of shaken percussion intersecting with an elemental blues riff repeated till it transcends itself. “15 (YASI)” sputters with electric distortion, knocks insistently on wood. A flute comes in, dreaming its own dreams. It is very serene, but also full of fire. The long set recorded at the Noguchi Gardens in Queens allows the sounds of nature to drift past, as Che Chen searches for the essence of single notes, letting them hang, repeating them, letting them die out, stopping time, in a good way, not the way the pandemic did.

But that’s exactly what she did with Body/Head, her duo with fellow guitarist Bill Nace. Their previous recordings for Feeding Tube, Open Mouth, and Matador range from molten drip to elemental blast, and their sporadic live shows are well nigh titanic. No Waves, which reproduces their appearance at the 2014 Big Ears Festival, isn’t their first concert recording, but since the others were released in limited editions intended primarily to part art patrons from a bit of bullion it might as well be. It offers plenty of evidence of what makes Body/Head great. Nace and Gordon generate great, conflictual guitar chemistry, each pushing forward or conceding ground with the force and fluidity of the ground liquefying during an earthquake. Sometimes Gordon’s singing occupies the foreground, enforcing song-like qualities upon the maelstrom, and other times it seems to bob upon the sound waves, leaving it up to you to track he signal or let it drift away. 

But if you’ve had the chance to see Body/Head you might also find that the album comes up a bit short of the real thing. It lacks the thrill of seeing Nace stalk the stage, balancing Gordon’s cool command with understated menace, let alone the body English each needs to exercise to procure the sounds that they get out of their guitars. It also lacks the contrasting spectacle of the experimental films that the duo often projects upon the rear wall of the hall. What you get instead is a slightly murky recording that filters their outsize rain of blows and ends up conveying solid representation rather than out-of-body transcendence. But given that Body/Head’s last US tour comprised just four dates of which one was canceled, you can’t always get what you want, and if you can’t get that essential taste this just might be what you need.