#isaac olson

Joseph Allred — O Meadowlark (Feeding Tube) 

O, Meadowlark by Joseph Allred

 Plenty of people get the tag American Primitive Guitarist stuck on their rump these days. It’s not always appropriate and it’s not always welcome, but it adheres to Joseph Allred with the fastness of the truth.  Allred, a Tennessean who currently pursues higher learning at Boston College, understands that whether you use mountain music or raga-derived form as your framework (and he uses a bit of both, alternating between skeletal banjo figures and rushing guitar fantasias), the music has to project something beyond the notes. O Meadowlark not only evokes a cascade of emotions, some explicit and others allowed and bent until they’re beyond name, but he exerts an opposite pull. Like Robbie Basho or Steffen Basho Junghans, he draws the listener through the sound hole and into the tones and overtones that carom about the insides of his guitar.  Climb inside; like a Tardis, it has room for all.

Bill Meyer 

Caterina Barbieri — Ecstatic Computation (Editions Mego)

Ecstatic Computation by Caterina Barbieri

The title of Caterina Barbieri’s third LP suggests a congress of emotional states and cognitive processes; total neural action, you might say. The sound of the thing suggests another, maybe more personal integration. She favors massive, echo-haloed electronic sounds, the sort that would set off all manner of madness in the disco if only she’d subordinate them to a sufficiently clubby beat. But instead she juxtaposes them with wordless female vocals (not her own) and switched-on harpsichord sounds which lock together with a structural logic that probably comes natural to a person who grew up studying classical guitar. And while the sounds promise abandon, the way they lock together requires submission to a Bach-like allegiance to order. Promise delivered.

Bill Meyer

Theon Cross — Fyah (Gearbox Records)

Fyah by Theon Cross

Tuba player Theon Cross was the secret weapon of last year’s excellent Your Queen is a Reptile, by The Sons of Kemet. Fyah is Cross’s debut as a band leader, and  if the melodies occasionally sag, Cross and company generate more than enough energy to keep you, if not intently listening, grooving. Like many in the London jazz scene, Cross has no qualms about pulling in sounds from everywhere, and while not every experiment works (the synths and trap beats on “Panda Village” don’t add much), it keeps Fyah feeling fleet and admirably populist. Cross’s commitment to bring the tuba back to our attention and good graces is admirable, and he’s certainly the right guy for the job, but for better or for worse, he suffers the fate of all lower register players: disappearing when played back at anything less than high volume. As such, the real MVP on Fyah is tenor saxophonist and fellow London hotshot, Nubya Garcia. Fyah is a good record. It gets better the louder you play it.

Isaac Olson

 Drugs of Faith — Decay (Selfmadegod Records)

Drugs of Faith have been making records like Decay, their new EP, for quite a while now. The record is full of crossover hardcore that pushes on the pressure points of crust and sludge. It’s grimy, gritty, sweaty stuff and it’s really good. The focused truculence of a song like “Anonymity” sharpens rather than overwhelms the tune’s tendencies toward melody, and what a frigging breakdown. The whole 7” — all ten minutes of it — is terrifically punishing. Or maybe it’s punishingly terrific. Whatever it is, it goes by quick. But that’s cool, you’ll just flip it and play it again. And like a live hardcore set, music this intense is best enjoyed in small, gut-thumping doses. Toward the end of the excellent track “Nihilists,” singer Richard Johnson (who also plays guitar) growls, “If I go down, I’m taking you all with me.” Sure sounds like he means it.

Jonathan Shaw

Help — Help (Self Released)

Help by Help

One advantage to keeping songs short and lyrics anthemic is that you can throw a whole lot of sludge into the works and still end up with tunes that folks will remember the next day. Portland noise-punk band does this six times on their quite good debut EP, Help. No surprises here, just grimy, coruscating punk that sounds amazing when you’re reading the latest update on our slide into oligarchy/kleptocracy/kakistocracy/planet death/what have you. Best of all is their theme song, which softens up a traditionally macho genre with some very welcome, very 2019 vulnerability (Complete lyrics: “Help!/I fucking need it!/You know I’ve battled but it’s all I can take!”) and the closer, “Class War Now” which is about… well, you know.

Isaac Olson

 HTRK – Nostalgia (Fire Records)

Nostalgia is the self-released 2004 debut EP by Australian experimental trio HTRK (Hate Rock Trio). Nigel Yang (guitar, programming, electronics), Jonnine Standish (voice, percussion, samples) and Sean Stewart (bass, programming, samples) produce seven tracks of heavy, noise intensive electronica with echoes of Throbbing Gristle, Pan Sonic and Suicide. Physically and psychically crushing, the tracks move at a funereal pace with waves of static and feedback crashing against bottom end bass, percussion and drum machines as Standish’s voice intones from a cave, a cross between Lydia Lunch and Alan Vega. Instrumental opener “Hate Rock Trio” begins quietly with the ticking of a clock, a time bomb with crashes of distorted percussion. Thereafter the song titles tell the story of the EP. Run together they form both a record of, and a demand to acknowledge, damage inflicted: “Look What’s Been Done/Look Down the Line/Look At That Girl/Look At Her/You Injured Me/I’m All Broke Up.” The intensity builds with each track as feedback and samples scratch atop thickening layers of black sludge. Re-released by Fire Records, Nostalgia is a bracing experience with a palpable sense of menace.

Andrew Forell

 Max Jaffe — Giant Beat (Ramp Local)

Giant Beat by Max Jaffe

If a curious listener was told Max Jaffe only used one instrument to make Giant Beat, they’d be forgiven for guessing something like a modular synth. Instead, it’s drums, but in a way that makes the question maybe a little bit of a cheat; Jaffe, drummer for JOBS, Elder Ones and others, was also a beta tester for something called Sensory Percussion that allows percussionists to use their instruments to trigger sounds and samples in a way that feels analogous to the chromatic, sometimes abrasive playing Ian Crause and Disco Inferno did with sampling. Of course, with a drum kit and that kind of setup, Jaffe can generate a whole album just by himself in a different way than you might get with, say, a singer and an acoustic guitar. Giant Beat dips its toes into various experimental waters, jazz here, electronics there, noise and musique concrete there, but always with the steady pulse of Jaffe’s one-take percussive playing behind it. The result feels like anything but a product demo; if anything, it feels like a new type of voice articulating itself.  

Ian Mathers  

Ocean Fanfare — First Nature (Barefoot)

First Nature by Ocean Fanfare

Whether you take the words First Nature as a prescription of priorities or a stern reminder of who is best equipped to play the long game in the battle between humankind and its environment, this is a record with a message. But since that message is being relayed via horns, bass, and drums, which play melodies that wind and ascend, one must exercise one’s emotional antennae to decode the vibe. Both trumpeter Tomsz Dabrowski and alto saxophonist Sven Dam Meinild are equally facile with post-bop tunes and extended technique explorations, and the shuttles between these poles gives the music a questing quality. They’re methodically seeking, not giving up hope, and the inventive ways they maintain balance on the fly suggests that they’re conscious of what tools will come in handy if people are going to survive.

Bill Meyer

 Abdallah Ag Oumbadougou — Anou Malane (Sahel Sounds)

Anou Malane by Abdallah Ag Oumbadougou

One of the original Tuareg guitar heroes, Abdallah Oumbadougou recorded these dreaming, droning, melancholic-with-a-swagger tunes in Benin in 1995 with the West African producer Nel Oliver. It was a step up for Oumbadougou, who had previously recorded mostly on boom boxes in encampments during breaks in the Tuareg rebellion, but the songs, even embellished with electronics and studio effects, have a raw, lonely power to them.  “Thingalene” drifts towards funky pop in its syncopated drum machines and squealing synths, but Oumbadougou’s voice carries over time and distance with a bracing authenticity. Other tracks, like “Tenere” splice the echoing snap of gate-reverbed drums to a beat that sways like camel caravans; the guitar work here is particularly fine. On its original release, Anou Malane introduced the world to the Tuareg’s keening, ambling desert blues; now it reminds us that artists like Tinariwen and Terekaft and Mdou Moctar are interpreting and extending — not inventing — a vibrant art form.

Jennifer Kelly

Savage Republic  —Gods  & Guns (Mobilization)

Savage Republic doesn’t pack the band schedule very tightly nowadays. The band, currently a quartet (Thom Fuhrmann, Ethan Port, Alan Waddington, Kerry Dowling), took the whole of the 1990s off and has made just two albums in this century. But when they do make a record, it hits hard. In days gone by they sounded like Rhys Chatham fronting the Ventures on an album of Aegean surfer themes, but now they sound just a bit like Michael Gira fronting Echo & the Bunnymen in some Bladerunner-like hell of a dark hole. “God & Guns,” sung in dire and reverb-swaddled tones by Fuhrmann, articulates understandable dismay at the twin lumps of stinky meat that are being held in front of the vast heard of fascism-embracing Americans. The instrumental on the flip is named “Tranquilo,” but you won’t rest while they’re charging you, driven by chain-gang shouts, oil drum lashes, and epically massive bass. Heavy shit for heavy times.

Bill Meyer

Sleeping Ancient — There Is No Truth But Death (Viridian Flame)

There Is No Truth But Death by Sleeping Ancient

In any number of ways, black metal and the horror fiction of H.P. Lovecraft are a good match. The overweening interest in darkness and unnamably horrific, indecipherably complex forms; the highly abstruse mysticism; the tinge of troubling racism and anti-Semitism — it’s sort of uncanny. Sleeping Ancient aren’t the first black metal band to express a deep appreciation for Lovecraft’s weird fictions. Heck, they probably aren’t even the tenth or the fiftieth. But if they’re not breaking any new ground, thematically or musically, at least they’re making good songs. Check out the grand dirge of “Akeru,” or the slow but assured drift, from frigidly delicate melody to batshit intensity, that forms “Taphephobic Hallucinations” (taphephobia, by the way, is crippling fear of the grave—not death so much as the gravesite itself). The songs are typical of Sleeping Ancient’s mannered but powerful playing, which the band sustains across the whole of There Is No Truth But Death. It’s a good record to play as we wait for Cthulu. Judging by current conditions, we won’t have long to wait.

Jonathan Shaw

 Sore Points — Not Alright (Slovenly)

SORE POINTS "Not Alright" EP by Sore Points

If you miss the Marked Men, how ‘bout some hard, fast punk rock from Vancouver? This four-song 7 inch, following a 2018 self-titled on Deranged, snarls and stomps with feverish fury, making the most of its double drummed, guitar stabbed, bass whomped basics. You’d infer a few battered Ramones records in the rec room, but also punks both harder core and more melodic—Black Flag on one end and the Buzzcocks on the other. “Not Alright” rampages at blur speed. The drummer, whoever he is (Sore Points are not big on self-promotion), gets a monster workout here, but really everybody is pushing about as hard as it goes. “Not Coming Back,” is likewise accelerated, but in an anthemic, memorable way. As a non-professional, you’d kill yourself trying to keep up playing these songs, but you can sing along, no problem, after just one or two spins.

Jennifer Kelly

 Tropical Fuck Storm — Braindrops (Joyful Noise)

Braindrops by Tropical Fuck Storm

“Braindrops,” the title track from this second Tropical Fuck Storm album, slinks and rattles and backpedals, its rhythm complicated and syncopated, its stream-of-consciousness lyrics about dreams and waking (“But you gotta get up because time is nagging like a dog humping your leg”) as tangled as the polyrhythmic beat. There’s a slant of ska in the bass, a dissolute hint of post-punk in the cracked vocals and a baroque inclination to stuff things to the gills in the overload of just about everything. Tropical Fuck Storm tilts recognizable forms so far over that they always seem to be careening into chaos. A hip friendly bump of bass and drums is just a landing pad for guitar noises that crash, still burning, to the ground. Even the ballads (“Paradise” both “Marias”) teem with noise and dissonance. Braindrops is never an easy listen. It verges, fairly often, on the unpleasant. But in a world where everything spins down to a grey Spotified entropy, it’s a prickly, fascinating, mess of bright colored wires; go ahead cut one and see if it explodes.

Jennifer Kelly

 Various Artists — Greys (Anachronisme)

Greys by Field Guides

In this day and age, if one even wanted to put together a new “We Are the World,” where would one start? Leverage Models’ return to music last year with the phenomenal Whites was partly so that previously-shelved record could raise money for the Southern Poverty Law Center, and here the band and Anachronisme Records are at it again. Raising money for the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees this time, instead of trying to rope everyone they know into one big aesthetically-dubious singalong, they’ve put together with any number of friends a smorgasbord of 21 tracks all somehow ‘in conversation’ with the music on Whites. There are plenty of intriguing covers, remixes, and other deconstructions, from Field Guides’ glowing, pastoral version of “If I Let You Stay” to the menacing buzz of DOV’s remix of “Dark Pools,” to Concierge Records and The Working Elite’s “transatlantic meditation” on the feeling of the first song on Whites with “Day Two,” as well as two unreleased tracks from Leverage Models. Then there are the contributions that just engage with the emotions and stories of the original album, like Courtship Ritual’s haunting “Uncle Incision” and William Tyler’s gorgeous “She Swims in Hidden Water.” There’s a lot here to absorb, but even if you’re not familiar with the source material it all stands on its own, even as it’s still one of the most intriguing expansions of an album in recent memory. Not to mention hopefully a more effective way to help a good cause.

Ian Mathers

 avery r. young—Tubman (FPE)

tubman. by avery r. young

Here’s the best part about “WZN#3-Verso”: it’s a swelling wave, rolling thunder, one of I Was Real’s most exciting moments and you don’t need to know anything about its construction to enjoy it. All that stuff about overdubs and everything else in the last paragraph is for record nerds, Discogs ogres, formalists, and critics. Yes, 75 Dollar Bill makes music by and for music geeks, but at their best, as they often are on I Was Real, they also make thrillingly direct body music, rooted in tradition and totally far out, the sort of avant-democratic jive that Henry Flynt’s bands never quite nailed. You don’t need to show your underground credentials and identify who “Tetuzi Akiyama” is to get lost in its massive stomp, the blurring boundaries of the guitar and sax’s taffy-like timbres and the way they trade off melodic fragments, fulfilling James Brown’s apocryphal dictum, “Every instrument a drum!” Even the side long faux-raga of the title track is rhythmic and sly enough to, like all good meditations, engage body and brain in equal measure. Truly weird, but never experimental for its own sake, I Was Real is just accessible enough that Bo Diddley, RL Burnside, Chen’s one time tutor Jeiche Ould Chigaly, and your world music/blues loving parents might grudgingly dig it. 

At 69 minutes, I Was Real is a lot to take in. Newcomers are advised to start with W/M/P/P/R/R, the concise, big band counterpart to I Was Real’s occasionally meandering chamber music. Still, I Was Real is sure to puzzle and please whether your devotion to rock and roll and its antecedents is intellectual or physical. Sure, all of that stuff about Mauritanian modes, compound rhythms, and microtones is interesting, but when “Every Last Coffee or Tea” levitates you, all that matters is the music: strange, familiar, stark, funky and new under the sun. 

Steve Gunn — The Unseen in Between (Matador)

The Unseen In Between by Steve Gunn

Who recommended it? Jennifer Kelly

Did we review it? Yes. Jennifer said, “It’s hard to say whether Gunn is paring back or building out. He’s getting better at constructing songs that are as easy and as complicated as life itself.”

Ian Mathers’ take:

There’s something unfussy and unassuming about Gunn’s songwriting, in a good way. He’s clearly a good guitarist (although, again, far less flashy than he probably could be, and its an aesthetic choice that works for him) but he might be an even better observer. Many of the best songs on The Unseen in Between stem from topics that often aren’t covered in songs like this, whether they’re art installations (“Lightning Field”) or bodega cats (the gorgeous “Luciano”). It’s not that Gunn’s adverse to taking on weightier things, as on “Stonehurst Cowboy,” about his father’s passing. He’s also not afraid to rip it up, but when he does as in “New Familiar,” he doesn’t lose one bit of his eye for detail and emotional nuance. On the quieter, more mysterious moments like the mostly acoustic “Morning Is Mended,” Gunn more than proves that he doesn’t need any fireworks to put on a satisfying display.

 Hand Habits — placeholder (Saddle Creek)

placeholder by Hand Habits

Who recommended it: Patrick Masterson

Did we review it? Not this one, but Jennifer Kelly wrote about Wildly Idle in 2017.  

Andrew Forell’s take:

Singer/songwriter Meg Duffy weaves delicate and delicately wrought songs about the voids — of dialogue, of trust, of intimacy, of love — within relationships. placeholder frames these tales in the often-gorgeous melodies of Americana. Acoustic and lap steel guitars, intricate picking, gentle harmonizing, Duffy’s vocals high in the mix. At times it hoves close to the most wounded moments of The Cowboy Junkies. There is a palpable sense of bewilderment at the slippery nature of love and the frustrations of (mis)communication. These are small roses — beautiful, prickly — at once enticing and disconcerting, disillusioned by confinement to a vase on the shelf, whispering for attention. Listen and respond, dialogue takes two.  

 Dustin Laurenzi — Snaketime: The Music of Moondog (Astral Spirits/Feeding Tube)

Snaketime: The Music of Moondog by Dustin Laurenzi

Who recommended it? Bill Meyer

Did we review it? No

Patrick Masterson’s take:

Chicago-based tenor saxophonist Laurenzi assembled quite the supporting cast of locals one night in January of 2018 at Hungry Brain to take on the music of Louis Hardin, Jr. for this compelling full-length. Some context for those of you just joining us: The Viking of 6th Avenue was a true mid-century icon of Weird New York before his eventual departure and subsequent death in Germany, and if you’re wondering how to tie Julie Andrews, Arturo Toscanini and T. Rex together, Moondog’s one way to do it. Laurenzi’s fascination with the man’s work eventually led to this recording, which interprets Moondog’s many facets for a jazz setting to great effect. Including some players you’ll recognize on the strength of their own records if you follow the Windy City scene at all, the natural energy of the ensemble shines on the not wholly unfaithful highlights of “Lament 1 (Bird’s Lament)” and “Fiesta Piano Solo,” though I’m partial to the soft chant of “All Is Loneliness” and escalating madness of “Lullaby” that closes out proceedings. Laurenzi says in the record’s notes that he thinks this feels like a very Chicago record; I’d agree, though that got me wondering what a footwork full-length sourcing Moondog would sound like. Some other snaketime, perhaps.

Martha — Love Keeps Kicking (Dirtnap / Big Scary Monsters)

Love Keeps Kicking by Martha

Who recommended it? Isaac Olson  

Did we review it? Yes. Jennifer Kelly said, “Martha’s music may be good for you or good for the planet or good for society, but at its heart, it is just damned good.”

 Bill Meyer’s take:

It doesn’t matter how good you are if the listener’s just not receptive to what you do. While Jennifer Kelly is well tuned into what this young English combo does, I’ve been trying to avoid this stuff for longer than the people in Martha have been alive. Tight, earnest, and sung at a pitch that dogs will notice, this music provokes visceral dislike followed by the thought that yes, rock and roll without chaos and heft is just not worth playing. I’m glad they want to make the world a better place, I just don’t want to hear them singing about it.

Mdou Moctar — Ilana (The Creator) (Sahel Sounds)

Ilana: The Creator by Mdou Moctar

 Who recommended it? Isaac Olson  

Did we review it? Yes. Isaac Olson wrote, “Ilana, in its hunger to be heard, political urgency, sonic temerity, seriousness of intent and commitment to pleasure, back to basics simplicity and willingness to experiment, is a piece of pure, subversive pop in the tradition of Catch a Fire or The Clash.”  

Peter Taber’s take: 

Mdou Moctar clearly loves some psych and classic rock, but by the time the music travels to Niger and finds its way back to these North American ears, much of its baggage has mercifully been lost. The centrality of the snare, which insistently gallops or shuffles throughout, unambiguously differentiates it from blues-derived idioms that obviously serve as one artistic resource for the band.  Moctar can of course wrangle a pentatonic scale with the best of them, and manages to sound epic (maybe thanks to a great, layered recording) and highly precise, with turns and slides dancing ornate figures around the rhythm section at every break between stanzas.  For me, Ilana becomes precipitously less interesting the closer it gets to ringer-tee-sporting 1970s rock fetishism (e.g. Tarhatazed), but the brilliant sequencing means that vibe never sticks around for too long. I literally don’t remember the last time I really enjoyed an unabashed Big Guitar Album, but there’s something infectious about a vision so richly realized.

Over the Rhine — Love & Revelation (Great Speckled Dog)

Who recommended it? Justin Cober-Lake  

Did we review it? No  

Patrick Masterson’s take:  

Sitting on my floor is Carolina Ebeid’s You Ask Me to Talk About the Interior, a collection of poems I was making my way through, albeit slowly, just as I was also delving into Over the Rhine’s 15th studio album in three decades of ever-maturing Americana, Love & Revelation. The way Ebeid utilizes nature imagery to convey the difficult fog of human emotion amid loss or sadness had me drawing unconscious parallels to the lyrics found across this record, which grapples smartly with matters of the heart and shifting relationships at a later-life crossroads. Karin Bergquist and Linford Detweiler, the married couple at the core of the Ohio group, very clearly know what they’re about here and come ably assisted by the restrained touches of the Band of Sweethearts, a trio that have lent some stability to the operation after years of drifters. And while I could tell you that there are plenty of beautiful moments where Bergquist’s slightly burnt vocals meld ideally with Detweiler’s or slide guitar or rich piano lines or brush-stick drum work, the one I keep coming back to is “Given Road.”  In the second verse, she sings, “Like the holes bored into the old ash tree / I’m not really sure what’s eating me.” But virtually the entire rest of the song makes plain what gnaws away on a drive with no clear end, and if you’ve been there or something near to it, you’ll know this contradiction well. Sometimes the best way to talk about the interior is by letting yourself drive right into it.

Pile — Green and Gray (Exploding in Sound Records)

Green and Gray by Pile

 Who recommended it:  Patrick Masterson

Did we review it?  No  

Isaac Olson’s take:

The world needs more songs like “The Soft Hands of Stephen Miller.” Sure, they won’t stop the ongoing atrocities at America’s southern border (donate to Raices! or No More Deaths!), but goddamn is it spiritually edifying to have that “translucent lizard” with an “inferiority complex,” attacked with such bile. The short, single riff stomp of “The Soft Hands of Stephen Miller,” despite its glottal, mucus-flecked rage, is among the more accessible songs on Pile’s Green and Gray. More indicative of Pile’s house style are “A Labyrinth With No Center” and “Lord of Calendars,” which stitch the lumbering, dissonant riffs of Jesus Lizard to the vulnerability of early 2000’s emo in a jumble of softly plucked guitars, post-rock swells, Moore/Renaldo clanging, and MacKaye/Picciotto riffing. Making music that reflects the disjointed, febrile experience of anxiety is a worthy aesthetic project, but, as someone who is mostly immune to the lugubrious charm of post-Slint indie/hardcore and therefore less willing to do the work of piecing these tunes together, my favorites, besides “The Soft Hands of Stephen Miller,” are the almost hummable, almost redemptive “Bruxist Grin” and spiralling “A Bug on Its Back,” where (relatively) straightforward structures and (relatively) melodic lines subsume and process the panic attacks that inspired them.

   Sunwatchers — Illegal Moves (Trouble in Mind)

Illegal Moves by Sunwatchers

 Who recommended it: Ian Mathers

Did we review it? Yes, Ethan Covey said, "Sunwatchers have come scratching back from their outer-borough lair packing a fresh blast of psychedelicized punk/jazz splatter.”  

Justin Cober-Lake's take:

Sunwatchers don't like to slow down. Illegal Moves, with very few exceptions, doesn't let up at any time as the quartet makes as much ruckus as possible. Even closer “Strollin' Coma Blues” builds to alarming wake-up rather than remaining sedentary (possibly the ideal of a “strollin' coma”). The blend of psych and jazz would be enough to start the day without percolation, but the group's ability to hold a melody within the surging sounds suffices to steady the sonics, at least long enough for the spaceships to find a spot to land. Jim McHugh's tones — particularly his use of the phin and saz — give the group a distinct overall feel. They may ostensibly looking back to understand music as resistance, but Sunwatchers are more clearly pushing toward a strange but vibrant future.

 Rian Treanor — ATAXIA (Planet Mu)

Who recommended it: Peter Taber

Did we review it? No  

Justin Cober-Lake's take:

On his debut full-length ATAXIA, producer Rian Treanor makes music that's meant to be heady but not simply for headphones. He's explained that these tracks should “make people’s bodies move in unpredictable ways.” He tends to lean more toward the brainy side, his syncopated structures turning more into self-reflection than calls to the dancefloor. The sequencing of the disc serves it well, as it, loosely, opens up as it goes on. The album opens heavy into computer territory, a digitized voice making brief statements about bodily functions, among other things, but it closes almost into house territory. Along the way Treanor pulls from a variety of genres, leaning into his glitch a little. He achieves his goal. It's hard to see much of this album leading to rave ups, but it pulses enough that listeners won't quite sit still. You'll likely find ways to move to it, but possibly not in ways you'd like to demonstrate in public.  

 Vanum — Ageless Fire (Profound Lore)

Ageless Fire by VANUM

Who recommended it:  Jonathan Shaw

Did we review it?  Yes, Jonathan called it, “a thrilling, draining performance of explosive, heroically-scaled black metal.” 

Andrew Forell’s take: 

First up a confession: this is the first black metal album I’ve ever listened to all the way through and then listened to again. It’s about as far out of my musical comfort zone as it gets. Yet Ageless Fire is kind of mesmerizing for Vanum’s complete dedication to their vision.  The relentless wall of guitars and onslaught of drums create a storm into which Kyle Morgan and Mike Rekevics roar like the angriest Joseph Campbell acolytes on the planet. Vanum pummel you mercilessly into submission, the effect is literally physical which is probably the point and a great part of the appeal. What light and shade there is results from the subtle dynamics Vanum construct within their songs. Ageless Fire is a little like an overwrought drunk with a very important but obsessive point to make and little time for disagreement.

 Venom Prison — Samsara (Prosthetic Records)

Samsara by Venom Prison

Who recommended it? Jonathan Shaw

Did we review it? Yes, Jonathan said, “With Samsara, Welsh band Venom Prison has accomplished two things that are hard to hold in your head simultaneously: the band has recorded a deathgrind LP that legitimizes the use of critically loaded terms like “brutal” and “pummeling”; and they have made a record charged by an uncompromisingly feminist politics.”

Jennifer Kelly’s take:

Joshua Abrams & Natural Information Society — Mandatory Reality (Eremite)

Mandatory Reality by Joshua Abrams & Natural Information Society

Who recommended it? Bill Meyer

Did we review it? No. But Bill has previously referred to Natural Information Society as an “internationally acclaimed post-Saharan trance-groove combo.”

Ian Mathers’ take:

There are a number of different ways to take the title of Mandatory Reality, but one is as a reference to just how inescapable this double album feels while it’s unspooling. Joshua Abrams (here mostly playing the guimbri) and the rest of the Natural Information Society (here comprised of Lisa Alvarado, Mikel Patrick Avery, Ben Boye, Hamid Drake, Ben Lamar Gay, Nick Mazzarella, and Jason Stein) have ditched the drum set, electric guitars and so on that have made up part of their make-up on past records to focus on mostly acoustic instruments (give or take an electric autoharp) with a renewed sense of patience and control. Mandatory Reality is divided into four pieces, although the opening (and linked) “In Memory’s Prism” and “Finite” take up 63 of the 81 minutes on offer here; there, the octet sets up a series of gradual exchanges and tones that can feel richly minimalist, involvingly ambient, or several other paradoxical paired qualities. That first hour and change in particular feels like music you could leave on a loop forever, finding out new things every third or fourth iteration for… years, maybe. The low-key groove of these offerings, the sense of patient investigation, rewards both passive appreciation and active interrogation, so much so that it’s almost a shame when “Shadow Conductor” takes things in a more actively Reichian direction (led by Stein’s bass clarinet). The (relatively) brief, closing “Agree” sees all eight musicians take up flutes for what sounds like an attempt to transform birdcalls into drones, or vice versa. It’s as good a way to work up from the deceptively, subtly heavy trance that the rest of Mandatory Reality can indeed lay on the listener. 

  ASUNA & Jan Jelinek — Signals Bulletin (Faitiche)

Signals Bulletin by ASUNA & Jan Jelinek

Who recommended it? Peter Taber

Did we review it? Yes. Peter said, “The suggestion of inquiry into sonic function reinforces the modernist, formal sensibility hinted at by the overall album.”

Jonathan Shaw’s take:

“Relief, Pt. 1,” the 13-plus-minute track that opens Signals Bulletin, does that thing that long, carefully textured drone can do well: tones and notes keep emerging out of the sonic field, and you wonder, “Is that a new sound, or was it there from the song’s beginning?” It keeps happening. Instead of digitally scanning back and forth in the track, it’s probably more in the spirit of things to let the mystery ride and stay in the drone’s moment, suspended in sound. I like that there’s no “Relief, Pt. 2” on the record. After 20 minutes of this sort of thing, I begin to respond much in the way I do to Alejandro Iñárritu’s recent movies. I get antsy. But there’s no arguing with the way the first seven minutes of “Blinking of Countless Lines” get under your skin. Antsy-ness turns to itch, your teeth grit. Then a cluster of shimmering, chiming sounds leaks into the foreground, and things get much prettier for the remaining seven minutes. Maybe that’s the second part of the “relief.” Perversely, I prefer the itch.

  Boy Harsher — Careful (Nude Club)

Careful by BOY HARSHER

Who recommended it? Ian Mathers

Did we review it? Yes. Ian Mathers wrote, “At the right (or wrong) moment it can feel as threatening as the work of David Lynch, or as warmly empathetic, even fatherly, as the same.”  

Peter Taber’s take:

Careful sees the inherited timbres and arpeggio-driven rhythms of coldwave, new wave, and various other synth-y pop music distilled into a quasi-formal apparatus that ticks mercilessly on. The almost-too-perfectly-executed production is offset by the viscerality of Jae Matthews’ vocals. Sung-muttered in tones that variably evince desperation and resignation, Matthews’ delivery is authentically pained enough to elevate the album above pastiche, but subdued enough to avoid the pitfalls of some overwrought EBM. The sense of reserve lends outsized impact to small gestures like Matthews’ re-sampled howl on “Fate,” or the downward synth glissando on “LA” that punctuates Matthews’ lyric, “You’ll hurt me either way/It’s a matter of your time,” perfectly capturing the sense that, no, things are probably not going to be okay.

   Charly Bliss — Young Enough (Barsuk)

Young Enough by Charly Bliss

Who recommended it: Justin Cober-Lake

Did we review it? Yes, Andrew Forell wrote, “Young Enough harvests pop tropes to express and expel trauma through the discovery and strength of voice.”

Jennifer Kelly’s take:

Charly Bliss’s Eva Hendricks wrote “Chat Room” during the Kavanaugh hearings, dredging up her own memories of sexual assault while the whole country grappled with whether women’s pain mattered (spoiler: it doesn’t). Like the rest of Young Enough, the cut is bouncy and buoyant musically, with phrases like “I wanna see you naked” ripe for taking out of context. And yet there’s a darkness here and on the anthemic “Young Enough,” with its huge serrated guitar sounds, its pounding-heart percussion, its fragile assertion that, “We’re young enough…to believe it should hurt this much.” Like contemporaries in Hop Along and the Cherry Glazerr, Hendricks affirms the power of pop without granting it magic powers to conquer suffering. The hurt and the learning to live with it coincide here, as they do in young female life, both important, neither cancelling the other.

  Dark Blue — Victory is Rated (12XU)

Victory Is Rated by Dark Blue

Who recommended it: Jennifer Kelly

Did we review it? Yes, Jennifer said, “Dark Blue rolls over you like a freight train, a mass of shadowy, goth-y, gut-shocked overload that takes no pains to minimize itself.”

 Isaac Olson’s take:

John Sharkey III, lead singer of Dark Blue, has a booming baritone voice and here’s what it does well: faux-roué fatalism, world-weary derision, and stagey arrogance, all unleavened by wit or humor. Sure, he’s sarcastic, but that’s not the same thing. Furthermore, Sharkey’s timbral and emotional limitations, (intentionally?) campy crooning, clunky lyrics (“ watching the planes go fly”, “take your time to write a letter/that you don’t agree”), and catholic scorn can make it hard to tell the difference between sneering and soaring, and worse, whether his all-encompassing contempt includes Dark Blue’s catchy if static, glittery goth-pop tunes and their audience.

The best song on Victory is Rated, “Challenge of Death” plays it relatively straight, and “Midnight Moon” is straightforwardly nasty enough for Sharkey to sound convincing, but as for the rest…while your mileage may vary, I’ve got no use for boorishly bellowed lyrics — however sardonic — like, “Counterculture in my veins/lack of culture on this plane..but who am I to be the judge/of the dim and lonely slugs on holiday?”. Yes, the joke is as much on the narrator as anyone; yes, righteous sincerity can be oppressive; yes, we need morbid, mordant ironists, but cheap sarcasm does no favors to leaden tempos and a voice that ironizes itself. Or maybe I’m just allergic to vibrato-heavy cynicism.

  Drahla — Useless Coordinates (Captured Tracks)

Useless Coordinates by Drahla

Who recommended it? Andrew Forell

Did we review it? Yes. Andrew said, “For all the echoes and ghosts of post-punk past, Drahla sound exactly like themselves.”  

Jonathan Shaw’s take:

Is this Leeds, in the West Riding, or the Lower East Side, c. 1982? One could be forgiven for being confused, listening to this sharply angled record by Drahla. The Yorkshire band’s indebtedness to No Wave’s feral skronk and Sonic Youth’s posed dissonance is immediately apparent on album opener “Gilded Cloud” (great title, that) and intensifies the longer you listen. So do the album’s considerable sonic charms. Most of the songs are fairly brief, and they rise like a second-degree burn blister that you can’t stop poking. The exception is “React_Revolt,” which comes in on a sax-driven groove primed for a torchy workout à la Richard Hell; but midway through, the song shifts gears and snaps into an anxious contest between Luciel Brown’s brightly chiming guitar chords and her understated, sung-spoken vocals. I like the short songs best: “Serenity” and “Primitive Rhythm” are tightly strung, whirring, clicking machines that evoke the most rock-oriented stuff made by Mars. Art punk!

  Fennesz — Agora (Editions Mego)

Who recommended it? Andrew Forell

Did we review it? Yes. Andrew Forell wrote, “Agora is another deep exploration of the boundaries of experimental guitar ambience in which to lose oneself.”

Bill Meyer’s take:

 Ben Donnelly

Kelsey Lu — Blood (True Panther Sounds) 

Steven R Smith —  Sketchbook of Endings (Soft Abuse)

Ulaan Passerine —  New Evening (Worstward)

Cate Le Bon —  Reward (Mexican Summer)

Shana Cleveland —  Night of the Worm Moon (Sub Pop)

Prins Thomas —  Ambitions (Smalltown Supersound)

Weyes Blood —  Titanic Rising (Sub Pop)

Big|Brave —  A Gaze Among Them (RED/Southern Lord)

Derya Yildirim and Grup Simsek —  Kar Yagar (Bongo Joe)

Amon Tobin —  Fear in a Handful of Dust (Nomark) 

 Justin Cober-Lake

Charly Bliss —  Young Enough (Barsuk)

Over the Rhine —  Love & Revelation (Great Speckled Dog)

Gary Clark Jr —  This Land (Warner)

The Mountain Goats —  In League with Dragons (Merge)

Nate Wooley —  Columbia Icefield (Northern Spy)

Linda May Han Oh —  Aventurine (Biophilia)

Patty Griffin —  Patty Griffin (Thirty Tigers) 

Sarah Louise —  Nighttime Birds and Morning Stars (Thrill Jockey) 

Stef Chura —  Midnight (Saddle Creek)

Chris Forsyth —  All Time Present (No Quarter)

 Andrew Forell

Fennesz — Agora (Touch)

Toy — Happy in the Hollow (Tough Love Records)

Bethany Curve — Murder! (Kitchen Whore)

Tyler, The Creator — Igor (A Boy Is A Gun/Columbia)

Charly Bliss — Young Enough (Barsuk)

Drahla — Useless Coordinates (Captured Tracks)

Simulation — Death’s Head Speaks (Hausu Mountain) 

& a couple of re-releases:

Eric Dolphy — Musical Prophet (Resonance)

Stereolab — Transient Random— Noise Bursts with Announcements (Warp/Duophonic)

 Mason Jones

Mdou Moctar — Ilana (The Creator)” (Sahel Sounds)

Centrum — För Meditation — (Rocket Recordings)

Caterina Barbieri — Ecstatic Computation (Editions Mego)

The Young Gods — Data Mirage Tangram (Two Gentlemen)

Cosey Fanni Tutti — Tutti (Mute)

Karen O + Dangermouse — Lux Prima (Lux Prima/BMG)

75 Dollar Bill — I Was Real (Thin Wrist/Black Editions)

Julia Kent — Temporal (Leaf)

Spellling — Mazy Fly (Sacred Bones)

Radiohead — Minidiscs [Hacked]

 Jennifer Kelly

Steve Gunn — The Unseen in Between (Matador)

Dark Blue — Victory Is Rated (12XU)

Mdou Moctar — Ilana (The Creator) (Sahel Sounds)

Uranium Club — The Cosmo Cleaners (Static Shock)

Garcia Peoples — Natural Fact (BBIB)

Michael Chapman — True North (Paradise of Bachelors)

NOTs— 3 (Goner)

Damien Jurado— In the Shape of a Storm (Mama Bird)

Sleaford Mods — Eton Alive (Extreme Eating)

Matmos — Plastic Anniversary (Thrill Jockey)

 Patrick Masterson

Pile — Green and Gray (Exploding in Sound)

Hand Habits — Placeholder (Saddle Creek)

Koffee — Rapture EP (Promised Land Recordings)

Jamila Woods — Legacy! Legacy! (Jagjaguwar)

Rafael Anton Isirrari  — Solastalgia (Room40)

Carly Rae Jepsen — Dedication (Interscope)

Head High  — Into It (Power House)

Overmono — Live in Osaka 2018 (Poly Kicks)

The Twilight Sad — It Won/t Be Like This All the Time (FatCat)

Fresh — Withdraw (Specialist Subject)

Hugh Marsh — Violinvocations (Western Vinyl)

Sikka Rymes — Love Di People EP (Bokeh Versions)

 Ian Mathers

Picastro — Exit (Sleeping Giant Glossolalia)

Boy Harsher — Careful (Nude Club)

Julia Kent — Temporal (Leaf)

Lambchop — This (Is What I Wanted to Tell You) (Merge/City Slang)

Sigrid — Sucker Punch (Island)

Nakhane — You Will Not Die (BMG)

Wand — Laughing Matter (Drag City)

Sunwatchers — Illegal Moves (Trouble in Mind)

Clinic — Wheeltappers and Shunters (Domino)

Pelican — Nighttime Stories (Southern Lord)

Reissue:

Robert Ashley — Private Parts (Lovely Music)

 Marc Medwin

J.S. Bach — Die Kunst Der Fuge (Aeolus) 

Anna Webber — Clockwise (Pi Recordings)

Toshiya Tsunoda — Extract From Field Recording Archive (ErstPast)

Satoko Fujii — Stone (Libra)

Jandek — Ray (Corwood Industries)

Anthony Braxton — GTM Syntax 2017 (New Braxton House)

Gil Sanson and Lance Austin Olsen — Works on Paper (Elsewhere)

Catherine Lamb — Point / Wave (Another Timbre)

Bill Frisell and Thomas Morgan — Epistrophy (ECM)

And a reissue of sorts:

King Crimson — Heaven and Earth (Panegyric)

 Bill Meyer

Steve Gunn — The Unseen In Between (Matador)

Masaki Batoh — Nowhere (Drag City)

75 Dollar Bil l— I Was Real (Thin Wrist)

Dustin Laurenzi — Snaketime:The Music of Moondog (Astral Spirits/Feeding Tube)

John Butcher / Rhodri Davies — Drunk on Dreams (Cejero)

Elkhorn — Sun Cycle / Elk Jam (Feeding Tube)

House and Land — Across the Field (Thrill Jockey)

Jacob Wick — Feel (Thin Wrist)

Christian Lillinger — Open Form for Society (Plaist)

Joshua Abrams and Natural Information Society — Mandatory Reality (Eremite)

Reissue:

Masayuki Takayanagi New Direction Unit — April is the Cruelest Month (Blank Forms Editions)    

Isaac Olson

Mdou Moctar — Ilana (The Creator) (Sahel Sounds)

Martha — Love Keeps Kicking (Dirtnap Records)

Jake Xerxes Fussell — Out of Sight (Paradise of Bachelors)

Stella Donnelly — Beware of the Dogs (Secretly Canadian)

Sunn 0))) — Life Metal (Southern Lord)

Bill Callahan — Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest (Drag City)

C Joynes & The Furlong Bray — The Borametz Tree (Thread Recordings)

House and Land — Across the Field (Thrill Jockey)

75 Dollar Bill — I Was Real (Thin Wrist)

Joshua Abrams and Natural Information Society — Mandatory Reality (Eremite)

 Michael Rosenstein

Toshiya Tsunoda — Extract From Field Recording Archive (ErstPast)

The Seen —  Archive : Volumes VI —  X : 2014 to 2016 (confront collectors series)

Tim Olive + Yan Jun — Brother of Divinity (845 Audio)

Magnus Granberg & Skogen — ‘Nun, es wird nicht weit mehr gehn’ (Another Timbre)

James Tenney: Changes — 64 Studies for 6 Harps (New World)

Anna Webber — Clockwise (Pi Recordings)

Bertrand Denzler — Four Saxophone Solos (Remote Resonator)

D'Incise — Assemblée, Relâche, Réjouissance, Parade

Anne — F Jacques, Ryoko Akama, Takamitsu Ohta — The Magic City (Hasana Editions)

Mdou Moctar — Ilana: The Creator (Sahel Sounds) 

 Jonathan Shaw

Venom Prison— Samsara (Prosthetic Records)

Depressor — Hell Storms over Earth (Sentient Ruin Laboratories)

Epectase — Astres (I — Voidhanger)

Victims — The Horse and Sparrow Theory (Relapse Records)

Panopticon — Crescendo of Dusk (Self released)

Sunn O))) — Life Metal (Southern Lord)

Vanum — Ageless Fire (Profound Lore)

 Peter Taber

9T Antiope & Siavash Amini — Harmistice (Hallow Ground)

Asuna & Jan Jelinek — Signals Bulletin (Faitiche)

Dustin Laurenzi — Snaketime: The Music of Moondog (Astral Spirits)

Helm — Chemical Flowers (PAN)

Lorem — Adversarial Feelings (Krisis)

Rian Treanor — ATAXIA (Planet Mu)

SA — 20 — No Refunds (Business Casual)

Impressive guitar players out of Niger are a franc a dozen these days, but none of them are playing with as much fire as Moctar does here. If you still have a punk-induced allergy to flashy guitar solos, be warned; there’s not a track on Ilana where Moctar doesn’t take every available opportunity to — no other word for it — shred. Fortunately, Moctar earns the right to play his ass off by recruiting a band whose hungry energy matches and spurs on his own and by, for the first time, writing a whole album of tunes worthy of his chops.  

Saharan guitar music (tishoumaren to the locals), like roots reggae, delta blues, black metal, and other styles developed in relative isolation, can be formulaic and, let’s be honest, repetitive, especially given its predilection for trance. Moctar’s earlier records were a bit light in the hook department and leaned on groove and skill to pick up the slack. Formulaic though they may be, there’s not a boring track on Ilana. Moctar has amped up his songwriting through judicious use of a few trade secrets, like the breakdowns of the title track “Ilana,” which break up the insistent groove without sapping it of power. The best songs, like the swaggering “Asshet Akai” and triumphant “Wiwasharnine,” are all sticky licks, whirlwind, heat and flash, the sort life affirming stuff that makes you think rock and roll might have some fight in it yet.  

Tight songwriting isn’t all that elevates Ilana. Credit also goes to Moctar’s band, a classic guitar/drums/bass set up without a calabash or hand drum in sight and a heavier, more dynamic, rhythm section than is often found on tishoumaren records. The interlude “Inizgam” features pained, bluesy playing by Moctar, but the drums and bass make it funky, make it something you can feel. The band’s sinewy, propulsive energy give conviction and strength to Moctar’s riffs, and keep Ilana from devolving into a shredding showcase.   

Ilana is Moctar’s first studio record with a full band, and though the production emphasizes the sort of gritty guitar tone heard on his early recordings, and avoids the bright overproduction characterizing recent records by his compatriot Bombino, Moctar isn’t above spicing up his tunes with studio trickery. Prudent use of reverb and overdubs, the low drone that adds weight and drama to “Kamane Tarhanin,” and the ethereal slides of the closer “Tumastin,” are a few of the subtle touches that give depth and dimension to Ilana without sacrificing its garage band immediacy.

Another new trick: Ilana is an old-school, perfectly sequenced album, greater than the sum of its parts. Even the ecstatic, over-the-top, seven minute guitar meltdown “Tarhatazed” is earned by the rising, bass-heavy excitement of the interlude, “Takamba,” that precedes it and cathartic release of “Wiwasharnine” that follows. Ilana’s show-like flow is its secret weapon; it surges forward, high on its own momentum, turning excess into virtue. Authenticity fetishists beware: Ilana (The Creator), with its smooth sequencing, higher production values, rhythmic dynamism, and Hendrix worship that (finally) manifests itself more in licks than sonics, is a full-fledged pop product. 

You can hear within seconds that there’s a lot at stake on Ilana. Like Purple Rain, Ilana is the sound of a talent coming into its own, skill becoming craft and wanting the world to hear, but auditory audacity alone isn’t enough to explain its vitality. Moctar wrote these songs to let the world know that “the women of the desert need help. They don’t have water to drink, there’s no medicine in the hospitals”[1] and that “for 48 years France has exploited the uranium in our country, and yet we still don’t have roads, medicines and in many places there is no water or electricity...we are modern slaves”[2].  For non-Tamasheq speakers, the lyrics of Ilana will be subsumed by its utility as a great party record, but Ilana’s thematic gravity is inseparable from its more muscular approach and the pleasure it provides. After all, in this life, things are much harder than in the afterworld, but if de-elevator tries to bring you down, go crazy.  

Purple Rain is one point of comparison, but Ilana, in its hunger to be heard, political urgency, sonic temerity, seriousness of intent and commitment to pleasure, back to basics simplicity and willingness to experiment, is a piece of pure, subversive pop in the tradition of Catch a Fire or The Clash. Ilana (The Creator) fiercely and joyously breaks through the groovy solemnity that has become a Saharan trademark because Mdou Moctar wants your attention. Check him out. Before the night is through, you’ll see his point of view even if he has to scream and shout. 

Martin Brandlmayr — Vive Les Fantômes (Thrill Jockey)

Austrian drummer/composer Martin Brandlmayr’s award winning radio opera Vive Les Fantômes (Long live the Ghosts) combines spoken word and jazz samples with experimental electronics and percussion to create a dialogue across time and genres between Brandlmayr and some of his influences including Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Jacques Derrida and Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Snatches of live music - a trumpet tuning up, a piano run – emerge between Brandlmayr’s understated free drumming, subtle electronics and the occasional bracing burst of noise. Monk talks sound, Miles issues instructions, and Derrida answers the telephone to speak with an unheard interlocutor. Over an engaging 53 minutes samples repeat in various juxtapositions to create relationships and emphasize their mutability. The spectral voices of long gone cultural giants speak of human frailty and the strength of the creative act. Vive Les Fantômes poignantly addresses memory and mortality. The piece closes on Derrida speaking for the first time in English “OK, I’ll be very glad to meet you. Goodbye.” Et Fin.

Andrew Forell

Burial — Claustro/State Forest (Hyperdub) 

Claustro / State Forest by Burial

William Bevan AKA Burial changed the face of electronica with the release of his eponymous debut album in 2006. His take on dubstep, jungle and ambient continues to influence producers, and his releases are highly anticipated. This first release since 2017 distills the elements that have enthralled and intrigued since the debut. A-side “Claustro” returns to Burial’s roots in jungle and rave. Vinyl crackle coats a four-to-the-floor shuffle and a vocal sample repeats in glorious swells of billowing, cloud-like sounds. It’s exhilarating albeit tinged with Burial’s signature yearning melancholy before it drops, dissolves into twinkling stars “Are you ready?” repeats and then “This song goes out to that boy.” before it kicks back in with an almost cheesy refrain “I got my eye on you, tonight.” which in turn fades back to crackle. “State Forest” is a completely different beast. A rich ambient narrative rich in atmospherics, found sounds and keening waves of synths creeping through a desolate landscape of shadow and dread. The funereal pace unfolds with miniscule details — broken twigs underfoot, drips of rain, quiet exhalations — then sudden silence. Burial places the listener in this environment, observant if not omnipotent or omnipresent, like the narrator of a classic Antinovel. Yet “State Forest” is not alienating or discursive. It shows rather than explains — a direct experience like a Beckett tale. It is his most effective piece of music since “Come Down to Us” and its obliqueness is the key to its power.  

Andrew Forell

Cy Dune — Desert (Lightning)

Akron/Family blended so many influences during their ten-year run that they avoided easy classification. With the collaborative nature of the group and its members switching instruments, it was hard to know what came from who, or whether the whole thing was just a bit of folky synergy. Then the band split up, and the years passed. Dana Janssen created Dana Buoy, an unexpected electropop duo more suited for clubs than for Akron/Family's wildernesses. Seth Olinsky, after a couple quick release years ago, emerges now as Cy Dune, with a sound much more in line with the Akron/Family aesthetic.

On Desert, Olinksy's songwriting and guitar playing provide the center of the album, but only to set up the weirdness that surrounds them. The bluesy stomp of “When You Pass Me” puts Cy Dune in the roots tradition, but the jazz influences remain strong enough that it's no surprise that bassist William Parker shows up. “Desert 2” offers chamber oddity, more a sketch than a song, but then “Desert 3” steps into the garage for some rock. Across this short album, Olinsky crams in a five-year hiatus's worth of ideas. The freak-folk of “It Is the Is” closes with some dissonance, a hint of a jazz, and a happy reminder that Cy Dune's desert archives are only beginning to open up.

Justin Cober-Lake

  Angharad Davies / Rie Nakajima / Alice Purton — Dethick (Another Timbre)

What is a score? Sometimes it is a series of staffs marked on lined paper. Sometimes it is a set of images, which may be followed according to varying degrees of specificity. Sometimes it mandates a piece of music down to the smallest detail, sometimes it offers suggestions, and sometimes it gets ignored. It’s common enough for improvisers to select partners based on their musical personalities rather than the instruments they play, so one might say that the selection is a compositional act. In this situation violinist Angharad Davies, cellist Alice Purton and sound artist Rie Nakajima (she plays kinetic devices and found objects) chose to play together for a couple days in a small church in Dethick, England. The choice to play together, the instruments they brought, the chapel’s accouterments and acoustics — that’s the score. The CD’s ten pieces sound like artifacts of a search for possibilities. How close to the language of chamber music, the shared vernacular of the two string players should they hew? How do things sound when you shake them? What does this organ sound like? What will these stone walls and stained glass windows do to the sounds? And what will one player do in the face of each other’s actions? Decisions in the face of puzzlement; that’s how these three women played this score.

Bill Meyer

 Dehd — Water

Water by DEHD

Dehd’s Water is spare and sharp, with ambling jangles of prickly guitar, a thud of bass, a shattering clank of snare on the upbeats. The Chicagoan trio — that’s Jason Balla (of Ne-Hi and Earring), Emily Kempf (of Vail and ex- of Lala Lala) and Eric McGrady — situate their songs within the tradition of scrubbed bare garage clangor, albeit with a rockabilly-ish twang sometimes flaring in the guitar lines. The one lavish, elaborate element is vocals, which twine and descant and swirl around each other, though never with undue precision. “Wild,” which leads off the disc, conjoins their various cracked and yearning voices in complicated points and counterparts, sometimes in lush, romantic sustained notes, others in percussive, time-keeping chants. “Lucky” starts in single-voiced sincerity and erupts into massive, girl-group sha-la-la-las (though some of them sung by men). Balla and Kempf recorded these songs while breaking up as a couple; they currently tour them as exes, which must lend the tunes a bit of extra ragged edge. Perhaps that’s why songs like “On My Side” are so fetching, sung with shredded hurt and blistered melody, but reaching for sweetness and finding it.

Jennifer Kelly

 DJ Lag and Okzharp — Steamrooms EP (Hyperdub)

Steam Rooms EP by DJ Lag and OKZharp

Durban-based South African Gqom producer DJ Lag teams with London’s Okzharp on the raw, percussion-heavy EP Steamrooms, their first collaboration for Hyperdub. The word Gqom, an onomatopoeia based on the Zulu word for ricochet, is said to mimic the sound of hitting a drum. Steamrooms contains none of the joyful lightness one expects from South African house. This is strictly a woozy, dangerous, disorientating amalgamation of heavy militaristic drums, Zulu chants and stabbing synths tempered somewhat by Okzharp’s grimy London influence. The effect is late-night sweaty club as the drugs are wearing off ad euphoria slips into something sinister and unhinged, but it’s undeniably exciting. I can’t go on; I must go on. Steamrooms’ four tracks exhort you to move till you drop. “Nyusa” encapsulates the atmosphere, shrouded in hiss, a funky unadorned synth riff clangs over an exhausted chant from a breathless dancer and drums thud beneath. The end of the night if not the world.

Andrew Forell

  Fetid — Steeping Corporeal Mess (20 Buck Spin)

Steeping Corporeal Mess by Fetid

This new record from Seattle death metal band Fetid may be the essential corrective to our national imaginary’s notion of that city as a monolithic site of liberal social policy, coffee “drinks” with lots of soy and greenwashed, vaguely cosmopolitan modes of cultural production. How many of us remember that Sir Mix-a-Lot, he of boundless enthusiasm for humanity’s anterior, is a Seattle native? Fetid share his interest in the undersides of bodies, and of things. There’s a decidedly intestinal — if not rectal — vibe to the unpleasant cover art for Steeping Corporeal Mess, and songs like “Dripping Subtepidity” and “Reeking Within” indicate a willingness to palpate beneath the Pacific Northwest’s famously moist terrain, to squish and squelch away in its rot and lukewarm organic goo. For a certain kind of listener, this may be the most fun you’ll have with a record this spring. For sure it’ll make you remember why David Lynch chose Washington state for Twin Peaks: who can forget the scene when Agent Cooper slides his long tweezers under Laura Palmer’s fingernail, to pull out a letter “R”? Or how long he has to dig around under there for it?

 Jonathan Shaw

 The French Tips — It's the Tips (Self Released)

It's the Tips by The French Tips

First: if The French Tips come to town, go. They recently toured with fellow Boiseans Built to Spill and blew them off the stage. As for the self-titled, self-released souvenir I took home: it’s got three great songs, (the first three, conveniently) five that are never worse than good, no duds and a lot of potential. It’s an excellent EP padded into honorable debut. The French Tips’ sound is indebted to, among others, Sleater-Kinney and Savages, but their guileless commitment to community, manifested in onstage instrument switches, shared vocal duties, their embrace of disco beats and a fat, confident, bottom end warms up their post-punk sonics considerably. The disco influence is as much spiritual as it is rhythmic: despite their righteous skronk und drang, despite oceanic guitar and bass which rage and release, surge and ebb, flash and hide, this is dance music, music to help you exorcise the bullshit. The French Tips is a bit green, but should they wish to pursue it, this is a band that deserves a record deal. Thesis statement: “Me and my witches about to burn it down”. I hope they do.

Isaac Olson  

 Friendship — Undercurrent (Southern Lord)

Undercurrent by Friendship

In this period of endless sub-sub-genres and hybrid forms in heavy music, it’s refreshing to hear a band with a sound that’s so straightforward. Friendship play hardcore: fast, vicious, intense songs that establish a riff and stick with it. Song titles say a lot: “Punishment,” “Lack,” “Garbage,” “Wrecker.” And so on. They’re succinct. There’s usually a breakdown section. There’s a bunch of d-beat songs. If you average the track lengths, you get almost exactly two minutes. It’s all really loud. They probably play really loud when you see them live. They can probably clear the room pretty quickly. It’s sort of fun that these guys call their band “Friendship.” It’s a good record to play when the neighbors put on Fox News. It’s a good way to say, “I don’t want to be your friend.”

Jonathan Shaw

Froth — Duress (Wichita)

Duress by Froth

It’s been a million years, it seems, since we were captivated by the “Yanni/Laurel” debate, a single murmured phrase that sounded like different things to different people. It was like that baked late-night meandering discussion about whether what I see as red is the same as yours come to life, and it vanished into the ravenous maw of internet culture. Except that Froth, an L.A. band currently on its fourth album, made a song about it, “Laurel,” full of clashing guitars and slow unspooling anarchy and whispery narratives. It could be the softest heavy rocker ever or the loudest twee fuzzed bedroom pop, depending on how you hear it. There’s a constant buzz at the bottom of all Froth’s songs, broken more often than not, by a reach for radiant melody. Froth makes an altogether engaging racket that borrows sleepily from Teenaged Fanclubs, in a fuzz-needled daze from MBV. “77,” the second single throws off the anorak for a denatured krautish groove, while “John Peel Slowly,” an instrumental, sketches a dream-landscape with loose-stringed bass, piano and space noises. Make your own sense of it, though. What you hear is largely up to you.

Jennifer Kelly

 Burton Greene / Damon Smith / Ra Kalam Bob Moses — Life’s Intense Mystery CD (Astral Spirits)

Life's Intense Mystery by Greene / Smith / Moses

If you can translate words into vectors, the name of this album tells you a lot about the forces at work. While pianist Burton Greene and drummer Ra Kalam Bob Moses were born over a decade apart, both were touched by the 1960s’ cosmic spirit. And when you put Patty Waters’ preferred pianist on the same stage with Weasel Walter’s most enduring bassist, intensity is on the agenda. But if you had to boil this music down to one image, it would be the symbol for yin and yang. Opposing forces often complement each other. When the pianist mugs a bit on “Kid Play,” the bass goes with the ferocity of a bull that just figured out that the fight is rigged; and when Moses and Smith dance light and lithe on “Perc-Waves,” Greene deploys some more percussion that asserts an unbudging center of gravity. And if you want to ignore all the metaphors, you can just let yourself fall into the force of this music’s mercurial flow.

Bill Meyer

 Invasive Species — Adapter (Baggage Claim)

Adapter by Invasive Species

You know the story; the drummer takes his solo, and the audience heads out for a beer or a piss. Invasive Species’ LP suggests that the problem isn’t drum music, it’s just that you’ve been listening to the wrong drummers and maybe there aren’t enough of them. Kevin Corcoran and Jon Bafus have been playing together for nine years, performing mostly within the city limits of Sacramento, California. Separately, their affiliations range encompass prog bands, Asian fusion ambient music and improvised exchanges with members of the ROVA Saxophone Quartet. Together, they play music that is concerned less with genre than with the possibilities of two augmented drum kits. Grooves collide and mesh, textures interweave and pull tight, meters multiply and never do these combinations seem designed to show off either musician’s prodigious chops. Rather, they show what a marvelous brain massage intuitively organized beats can provide.

Bill Meyer

  Tyler Keen / Jacob Wick — S-T (Silt Editions)

 Tyler Keen and Jacob Wick may employ different means, but their sounds make sense embedded on either side of a short strip of tape. Both men make noise that gets more complicated the closer you listen to it, and neither particularly needs volume to get noisy. Keen starts out with a blast, but once that subsides unintelligible walkie-talkie chatter, sputtering static, and the sounds of a cassette being snapped into a player pass before your ears. This is restless stuff, paced for the days when you haven’t been able to refill your Adderall RX and can’t be bothered to wait. Wick plays trumpet, probably muted by things they don’t tell you about in jazz school and definitely filtered through the sounds of room and non-invisible recording gear. Fueled by circular breathing that sustains a rarely broken stream of air, Wick’s horn rasps and hisses. Imagine that the sounds of a moth made of steel wool masticating its way through a warehouse full of old army blankets have been transmitted down a gutter and thence onto tape, and you just might imagine the sounds of Wick’s side of this cassette.

This is the second release by Silt Editions, a label with no web footprint aside from an email address ([email protected]). At press time, there were still a few copies in various distributors’ stocks. Happy hunting.

Bill Meyer

  Rob Noyes — “You Are Tired” / “Nightmare Study” (Market Square Records)

You Are Tired b/w Nightmare Study by Rob Noyes

There’s no one way to do things, but the 45 rpm single seems tailor-made for playing late at night. “Just one more,” you tell yourself, fishing old records from the shelf and sitting companionably alongside the memories they conjure out of the commingling of sound, mind and the sensate experience of dust transferring from the sleeve to your fingers. “Well, maybe another one.” Rob Noyes is on to your game, and the tune on A-side of the Massachusetts-based 12-string guitar player’s latest record sees through your self-delusion and tells you like it really is. The chiming melody is as ingratiating as a late-night tug on the arm from a loved one. “Aren’t you going to come to bed?” But you’re on a roll, so you flip the record, expecting to hear another cantering tune. That’s when Noyes pulls you down the rabbit hole and into a state of consciousness that the sleep-deprived know only too well. Noyes has mastered a technique that makes him sound like a tape playing backwards even though he’s actually strumming in real time. It’s a neat trick, but it serves a function beyond showing Noyes’ imagination and technical acumen. By plunging the listener into a state of blurry disorientation, it confronts them with the next-day consequences of playing records late into the night.

Bill Meyer

  Pelican — Nighttime Stories (Southern Lord)

Nighttime Stories by Pelican

Pelican’s sixth full-length starts in a pensive mode, an acoustic guitar ushering in “WST.” The guitar belonged to guitarist Dallas Thomas’ lately deceased father, and it sets a somber tone. Death haunts these bludgeoning, moody grooves, giving Nighttime Stories a heaviness that can’t be ascribed purely to guitar tone. Later, in the crushing stomp of “Cold Hope,” Pelican grinds relentlessly, the drums scattershot volleys of explosive angst. “Arteries of Blacktop” is likewise weighted and slow, a massive bass churn slugging it out with viscous sheets of amplified guitar sheen. Yet there’s a great deal of epic, serene gorgeousness, too — in the minor key strumming of “Full Moon, Black Water,” the mathy, knotty acrobatic riffs of “Abyssal Plain,” the slow building drone of “It Stared at Me.” The album title commemorates a friend of the band, Jody Minnoch, who died unexpectedly of heart problems in 2014; he’d meant to use the phrase for a Tusk album, but passed before he could do so. The title track glowers with volcanic life force. Hip deep in mourning and existential query, it celebrates a muscular, triumphant still-here-ness.

Jennifer Kelly

 Spiral Wave Nomads — Spiral Wave Nomads (Feeding Tube / Twin Lakes)

Spiral Wave Nomads by Spiral Wave Nomads

Spiral Wave Nomads is a two man, two state band. Eric Hardiman (guitars, bass, sitar) lives in upstate New York, and drummer Michael Kiefer lives in Connecticut. This means that distances must be traveled if the two of them are to meet face to face, which is how substantial parts of this LP of cosmic instrumentals was made. And what better thing to do as you cross the verdant hills of the Northeastern USA than jam some tunes? Drifting alone to these ascending guitar lines and undulating percussive surges, it’s easy to imagine one or the other Nomad rounding some valley road and flashing on Popol Vuh’s Aguirre. “Was that a fly fisherman standing in the river, or did I see some conquistador on a raft, hollering at the monkeys?” Drift and drive a little longer and they might marvel at the play of striating light across the clouds and associating to some past pleasantly dreamy experiences involving a CD player loaded with Neu and Jimi Hendrix. All of which is a fanciful way to say that these guys sound like they have done their space rock homework, and they put their knowledge to good use on this LP. So don’t throw away the download code; you might want to program your own rural adventure with these tones.

Bill Meyer 

 Chad Taylor — Myths and Morals (Eyes & Ears)

Myths and Morals by Chad Taylor

One day at the end of last summer, Chad Taylor showed what it takes to be an MVP. Over the course of one long, humid Sunday afternoon on a semi-shaded stage at the Chicago Jazz Festival, he played three consecutive sets with three different bands. He sustained the set-length dynamics of Jaime Branch’s Fly or Die, swung muscularly with the Jason Stein Quartet, and managed the mercurial flow of the Eric Revis Quartet. He might have soaked through a shirt, but he never dropped a beat, nor did he ever seem less than tuned in to the particular requirements of those three quite different ensembles.

Myths and Morals most closely corresponds to another of Taylor’s projects, the Chicago Underground Duo. While his equipment is restricted to drum kit and mbira (thumb piano), his compositional imagination is wide open. These pieces may tarry for a moment on some texture or pattern, but for the most part they are studies in constant development. Precision and restraint yield surprise and mystery; the music is so involving and complete that it’s easy to forget that you’re listening to solo percussion.

Bill Meyer

 Chris Welcome and His Orchestra — Beyond All Things (Gauci Music) 

Beyond All Things by Chris Welcome & His Orchestra

A free jazz octet might sound like caviar soup: too much of an indulgent thing. Chris Welcome makes it work here, harnessing the noisy tendencies of this roomful of younger New York players with some light-touch compositional structure and a willingness to swing. In under half an hour, we go from a free-time fanfare highlighting the gestural playing of trumpeter Jaimie Branch and tenorist Sam Weinberg through to a medium-firm groove laid down by bassist Shayna Dulberger and drummer Mike Pride, over which cornetist Kirk Knuffke blows with a coolness so confident that it sounds like the swing feel of the composition was summoned by his playing, not the other way around. Minutes later, that groove gets harder and altoist Anthony Ware delivers a fiery solo while the rest of the horns chatter in the background like they’re doing avant-garde Dixieland (an approach perhaps being alluded to by the appellation “and His Orchestra”). Welcome himself mostly hides behind the sonic bushes, his heavily effected guitar and synthesizer offering eerie interjections and a short woozy solo halfway through the piece. He’s a virtuoso guitarist, but here he gets to be a virtuoso organizer, savvy enough to know the amount of organization called for.

On It’s Real, guitars and vocals are piled dozens deep; riffs are heavier, tempos are slower, production is flashier, and songs are longer (Average song length on Rips—2:55. Average song length on It’s Real—3:55). However, rather than liberating Ex Hex, their newfound glamour muscles weigh them down. Many of It’s Real’s better tunes, “Tough Enough,” “No Reflection,” and “Radiate,” could drop a minute without losing anything, and there’s no reason for the plodding “Another Dimension” and “Medley” to be break the five minute barrier. While nothing on Rips hit as hard as “Rainbow Shiner,” which is as good as anything Def Leppard ever wrote, nothing on It’s Real is as breezy as “How You Got That Girl,” joyful as “Radio On,” or weightless as “Waterfall” and “Everywhere.” Only “Cosmic Cave” matches the insouciant spirit of their first album’s best songs. It’s kind of fun to hear Ex Hex experiment with their production, but it would have been more fun to hear them take some real risks with, say, an acoustic number or some synths. Truth is, despite its heft, It’s Real isn’t a huge departure from Rips. It’s more like a bulky rough draft of the record that preceded it. 

Lumbering, repetitive tempos and unnecessary length do these songs no favors, but the real issue is that the riffs just aren’t there. I don’t know for sure what alchemy separates a great riff from a forgettable one, but I can hazard a guess. What made Ex Hex’s debut such a treat was how inextricable its desire to please was from its fuck-you audacity. It didn’t matter that “Hot and Cold” sounded just like “Sweet Jane,” or that “How You Got That Girl” was just a rewrite of “My Best Friend’s Girl” because they played it totally straight, with conviction, energy, and the good taste to know when to quit. Not only is the energy on It’s Real diffused among longer, slower tunes, but a few of the lyrics nod at their classic rock forebears, a move that feels disappointingly timid.

There’s a fine line between theft and homage, and in rock and roll, homage is rarely the more honorable choice. “Good Times” opens with: “Let me elope with the good times babe/while you are standing there/ Let me elope with the good times while you brush your rock and roll hair.” It’s no secret that Ex Hex take after The Cars, but this blatant call-back is disappointing. It feels like the wink of the covers band, an admission of guilt, and a loss of nerve. Stealing riffs is a noble tradition, but for god's sake don’t return to the scene of the crime. Maybe Ex Hex is in the nostalgia business now. If so, It’s Real won’t make you miss The Cars, but it might make you miss Rips.