#haptic

Haptic — Ambivalence (Ash International)

Twenty years ago, Steven Hess, Joseph Clayton Mills and Adam Sonderberg initiated Haptic as a vehicle for live performance and improvisational encounters with invited musicians, but far more of their collaborative time has been spent putting home-made sounds under the microscope. But significant anniversaries call for significant measures, so they tossed the boomerang to England, where they undertook an actual tour, including a gig where they stretched sounds and time with bassist Mark Wastell at Café OTO. One track from this digital-only recording presents that concert, the other weaves together parts of three others, and both drift with a subliminal presence that’s persistently beguiling but determinedly insubstantial. Play it at any volume you like, but do consider testing it near the edge of audibility, on repeat, for a day or two.

Bill Meyer

Illusion of Safety & Tam Quam Tabula Rasa — Pàthei Màthos (Luce Sia)

Ever since he reconvened his Illusion of Safety project in 2020, Dan Burke has been quite active. He’s resurfaced legacy work and continues to produce new exploratory sounds. Similarly, Italian post-industrial noisenik Luca Ferrarini recently relaunched Tam Quam Tabula Rasa as a solo endeavor, mining dark caverns of esoteric texture. The two projects share Pàthei Màthos, a split CD on which Burke manifests a single long-form meditation and Ferrarini conjures a suite of six incantations. “Non-Interference” is Burke’s offering, a half-hour-long vignette replete with musique concrète and modular synthesis vibes. On this piece, Burke attempts to get out of his own way by “not interfering too much in how my composition develops.” He succeeds, allowing musical and non-musical images to slide by in rapid succession to create an overarching narrative thread that unfolds methodically and with grace. Ferrarini’s offering is considerably darker hued, with deep drones wrapping around metallic scrapes and clangs that evoke dungeon dwelling and a creeping dread. Pick your poison, as each artist tickles a unique aspect of the human psyche.

Bryon Hayes

Lia Kohl — Music For Union Station (Superpang)

Sometimes they say you had to be there, and sometimes they’re right. In the case of this performance, I was, and “they” have a point. Lia Kohl’s piece for ten musicians to play at rush hour in Chicago’s Union Station will mean something very different to a person who doesn’t get to watch the uptight guy who looks really hard at his gun magazine while trying to ignore the string players sitting on his bench, or the bemused looks on the Mennonite (I assume) travelers as the instrumentalists stood up and moved from place to place. But its brass and string passages, moving slowly through a cloud of echo-laden hubbub and the occasional beeping luggage cart, yields rewards when you play it slowly on repeat. File this one next to Discreet Music and let your attention wander.

Bill Meyer

Modern Silent Cinema — Passages XXXIII-XLIII (for Piano, Guitar, and Bass) (Bad Channel)

Modern Silent Cinema is Brooklyn renaissance man Cullen Gallagher’s instrumental project; he also plays in multiple bands, makes films and writes film and literary criticism. His Passages series collects brief, evocative bits of music, recorded in lo-fi echo and hiss and laced with field recordings. He made this edition while his mother was in the hospital, working in his childhood home to process grief, uncertainty, memory and love through music. (His mother eventually recovered enough to paint the album cover.) You can hear all that in these unvarnished compositions, like the migraine pounding tensions of piano-based “XLII” or the bass that underlines pensive keyboard figures in ominous “XXXIV.” “XXXIX” leans into rock, with its keening, pushing guitars, electric and acoustic layered together, rushing headlong who knows where. Not all is bleak, however. “XXXV” is all lyrical guitar, full of light and space and contemplation. Tracks are engaging enough, but somewhat self-contained. In the end, these cuts work like incidental music to one person’s life story, illuminating Gallagher’s shifting mood and thought process but perhaps not really intended for a wider audience.

Jennifer Kelly

Prymek and Sage — Shelter (AKP)

Shelter is a comforting album to experience. The music is gentle yet exploratory; it’s sweet and kind like sunlight through a kitchen window warming some tasty treat left out for us to enjoy. It’s redolent of the camaraderie of two long-time friends with minds melded in song. Chaz Prymek and Matthew Sage are ramblers who’ve left their sonic signatures across the American Midwest, and they’ve been collaborating for decades. Shelter captures their sonic symbiosis, unfurling with an effortless mellowness that is both pleasant and relaxing. Guitar and piano improvisations form the nexus of the songs, with harmonium, synthesizer, clarinet and vocal moans adding subtle adornment to the proceedings. The lush sonics are as beautiful as they are gentle, as captivating as they are leisurely, and unfold like the warm hug that we all could probably use right about now.

Bryon Hayes

Reeking Aura — On the Promise of the Moon (Profound Lore)

The fellas in Reeking Aura are now calling their music “atmospheric death metal,” seemingly motivated by the inclusion of passages of stringed instruments (cellos and stuff) into some tracks on On the Promise of the Moon. That’s not an especially neck-snapping transition from the sonic profile of Reeking Aura’s previous LP, Blood and Bonemeal (2022), which incorporated some pretty sounds, as well. On the other hand (or in the other nostril), the contrast of those melodious, mellifluous moments with the nasty textures suggested by song titles like “Manure Like Magma,” “A Forlorn and Frozen Vapor,” and “Sifting for Fungal Inheritance (A Mildewy, Acrid Mulch),” is quite violent. The band mostly pulls it off; the players are all quite skilled, having done time in numerous metal projects (among them Buckshot Facelift, Sentient Horror and Artificial Brain), and they work the changes with a sort of subtlety. Then again, it’s hard to know if “subtlety” is a relevant term for music that includes the alarming growl of Will Smith, whose “vocals” sometimes cleave close to the ever-alarming throat fart. Manure and vapor, indeed. Quite the atmosphere.

Jonathan Shaw

Status: Expunged — 2am Tim’s Rip (self-released)

Alberta’s Krystina Windrim, aka Status: Expunged, has had a busy 2026 already. On the heels of her excellent 2025 Skullcrusher LP (also reviewed in Dust) she’s put out the genre boundary-pushing Breaktempo… In Space album and the remastered early tracks compilation EP Your Comforting Warmth in This Frozen Abyss. But as good as those both are, her most recent release might top them both. Which might surprise anyone who bounces off the pretty funny, very Canadian framing she’s given the songs here; after all, how often do you hear something mind-blowing that’s about (to quote two song titles) “Hackin’ Contraband Darts” and “Whippin’ Shitties in the Tim Ho’s Parking Lot.” And yet mind-blowing it is, and no less noisy and fun than anything on Skullcrusher. In places melancholy and foreboding do creep in (like the title track and “Buck Seventy on the QE2”), but without ever letting the pace or the interest drop. It’s riveting stuff even if you’ve never partaken of the titular activity.