Kioto Aoki / Haruhi Kobayashi / Mai Sugimoto — Miminari (Asian Improv)

These three women share varying degrees of Japanese heritage and 606 zip codes. Could that be enough to keep the pressure of their diverse creative backgrounds — one is a taiko drummer, another is an electronicist who has renounced pop for experimentation, and the third is a jazz saxophonist — from blowing the project apart? They have found a third commonality in ritual. While different tracks foreground different players, each track feels like a ceremony enacted for some purpose that does not declare its purpose, leaving the listener to intuit the meaning of their aggregations of stolid beats, slowly sinking loops, keening horns, and AACM-style little instruments. One caveat — Asian Improv Records doesn’t mess with fly-by-night operations like Bandcamp, so you’ll have to go to their website to obtain a CD or download of this uncategorizable effort.

Bill Meyer

The Bevis Frond — Horrorful Heights (Fire)

Nick Salomon continues the Bevis Frond’s storied career, onto a 25th LP (with the comps, outtakes and live records, it’s even more…), just short of 40 years down the lane from Inner Marshland. He breaks out the sitar on the title track of Horrorful Heights, for this reviewer recalling the tunes from Any Gas Faster (“These Dark Days” and especially “This Corner of England”) that first pricked up a spaced-out college DJ’s ears in 1990. Salomon’s voice is still a wonder: a mix of North-Londoner working-class nasality, soulful croon and a sense for phrasing that can’t be taught. But the Bevis Frond has also always been about the guitars, and Horrorful Heights delivers. “Hiss” and “Draining the Bad Blood” scorch and groove in ways that will delight longtime listeners of the Frond. “Silver Insects” is a down-tempo number that flirts with bummer sentiments until its last minutes lift into a solo that Salomon takes into brighter skies. But the record’s best track is “Space Age Eyes,” pure cosmic blues (sweetened by Debbie Wileman’s vocals and two of Salomon’s multitracked guitar breaks—there will never be enough of them) and ample evidence that the Bevis Frond can still hit the heights, however horrorful the times.

Jonathan Shaw

Nathan Bowles — Seven Lefts (not on label)

Reportedly J. Edgard Hoover and UPS shared aversion to left hand turns is rooted in their passions for efficiency. On Seven Lefts, Nathan Bowles (of Pelt, Black Twig Pickers, Setting, and a duo with Bill MacKay) cries bullshit and makes a strong case for letting everything fall apart. Most of his solo projects have dealt with some kind of hybrid form. This tape suggests that when he’s really alone, though, pure sound gains the upper hand. The banjo and keyboard licks at the heart of each of its long, forward-thrusting tracks are sturdy frameworks upon which he cakes messy handfuls of fuzz and hiss; if some gunk falls off, no problem, he’s got plenty more in the bucket that catches the slop burping out of his buzzy amp.

Bill Meyer

Matti Bye — The Sea (Denovali)

Swedish soundtrack composer Matti Bye’s new solo record stems from watching the water from the island of Fårö every morning, then decamping to a barn containing a 1920 Steinway piano and a Juno-60 synthesizer and trying to evoke the wide horizon and endlessly, subtly shifting quality of the ocean and the air. The four track that resulted, each between 9-11 minutes, were captured on a tape recorder. Given Bye’s background creating soundtracks to silent films, the faint grain that underlies these placid, glistening compositions fittingly evoke the ageless, remote quality of the sea even as the piano and synthesizer do carefully work their way through changes. It’s starkly moving stuff, and when the final track introduces a slight roil to the proceedings the impact is mighty by comparison.

Ian Mathers

Excess Blood — Porcelain Doll (Unlawful Assembly)

Contemporary postpunk that often sounds like Bauhaus worship of a very high order, Excess Blood’s music works a giddy space of overlap among goth, death rock and punk. Not quite as cold as most goth, too full of the urge to dance to die, sulfurous venom sweating through all the eyeliner — songs like “Turned to Stone” and “Cathedral Park” move in so many directions that they nearly jitter and judder themselves into pieces. The supporting subflooring for all that motion is the bass, which is muscular and supple in equal measure, even if the Daniel Ash-inspired guitars take up most of the room. When things get a little harsher (the vocals in “Clamor of Please,” a great title) or sharper (the tense and tenuous mix of the title track, which sounds at several points on the verge of shattering), the music finds some very effective intensities.

Jonathan Shaw

Fire Magic — Memories of Fire (Stygian Black Hand)

Richmond is bumping. The Virginia capital has one of the most exciting punk scenes in the States, and the dudes in Fire Magic alone constitute a multiplicity of metal modes and bands that put other cities’ whole undergrounds to shame. Alongside Fire Magic, a USBM project, Scott Bartley and Wes Warren also play key roles in Left Cross, a death metal band whose name suggests an interest in boxing, but whose music is all Dark Ages and rusty chainmail, and in Antichrist Siege Machine, one of the most excoriating black/death bands in an increasingly crowded (and often quite vapid) American field. Fire Magic isn’t quite as exciting as either of those projects; with this band, Bartley and Warren pursue a more mannered aesthetic, all graceful tremolo runs and carefully constructed songs. See the runaway train that is “Break Them against the Mountains” or the more melodramatic theatrics of “Imperishable Flame.” If you are interested in black metal that sticks to the verities and implies contempt for anything avant-garde or progressive, Memories of Fire is worth a spin.

Jonathan Shaw

Drew Gardner — Wave Field (VHF)

When Drew Gardner isn’t playing guitar with Elkhorn, he covers a lot of ground on his own. His last three releases include an archival cassette on which he drums in the company of John Tchicai and Marco Eneidi, an LP of zither and kalimba space probes, and Flowers In Space, a monument to tasty guitar licks realized using marvelously vivid primary colors — tone, melody and groove. On Wave Field, on which Gardner once more hefts an electric guitar in the company of bassist Andy Cush, drummer Ryan Jewell, and additional guitarist Tom Malach. But don’t expect Flowers part 2. Not only are there two guitars, but they’re both louder and grimier, especially when jousting with the bass and filling available space with crumbling chords. Jewell also favors stiffer, more motoric rhythms. If FIS was the sound of Gardner cruising in a low rider to the guitar shop, WF is him hot rodding out of the amp shop.

Bill Meyer

Green-House — Hinterlands (Ghostly International)

Green-House’s new album Hinterlands, their first for Ghostly International, is a shimmery-bright amalgam of Japanese city-pop, new age ambient electronica, and feather-light jazz-pop. The music moves between the background and the foreground, depending on the pace and density of the instrumental layers. “Farewell Little Island” teems with rhythmic details and melodic flourishes, reminiscent of Opsvik & Jennings’ low-key gem, A Dream I Used to Remember. In contrast, “Well of the World” has the kind of melancholic, nostalgic synth tones that Boards of Canada are well known for. It’s all very tastefully handled, but the occasional emergence of pan pipes in the mix is a mite off-putting. Nevertheless, Hinterlands is a beautiful listening experience at a time when we could all use something hopeful and healing.

Tim Clarke

Marielle V Jakobsons — The Patterns Lost to Air (Thrill Jockey)

Deep and immersive, the heptad of ambient pieces comprising The Patterns Lost to Air is a beautiful series of engrossing vignettes. Oakland-based composer Marielle V Jakobsons (Date Palms, Saariselka, Ecstatic Music Band) layers Fender Rhodes piano melodies, violin resonance, and adventurous analog synth textures, crafting lush soundscapes that shift and evolve like intricate animated pictures. Immense, impressionistic drone monoliths glide between sequences of bright tone and gently unfurling melodies. Jakobsons molds these structured and amorphous elements around each other before bringing them together to deliver a beautiful yet poignant experience. This emotional depth reflects but also transcends the personal limitations that motivated her to create this album. Jakobsons’ drive, creativity, and her skill all shine through.

Bryon Hayes

Whitney Johnson, Lia Kohl, Macie Stewart — Body Sound (International Anthem)

Body Sound is the first document of these Chicago-based improvisers collaborating as a trio. It demonstrates three string and voice practitioners crafting immersive realms via viola (Johnson), cello (Kohl), and violin (Stewart). To infuse the improvisations with ethereality and a hint of the uncanny, they add subtle washes of voice and tape manipulation, which accentuates the overall vibe of each piece. Their music seems like an effortless mind meld, but the trio's powerful synergy belies considerable individual and collective experience. Johnson, Kohl, and Stewart expose multiple sides of their nature throughout the album’s unfolding: hypnotic (“shadow | mess”), hallucinatory (“burning | counting (sleeping)”), poignant (“dawn | pulse”), and playful (“cough | laugh”). Coupled with the trio’s angelic vocalizing, the lush arco moans, sprightly pizzicato melodies, and otherworldly growls reveal diverse worlds, each of which is a delight to explore.