Aarktica — No Solace in Sleep (Projekt)

Jon DeRosa has made a lot of music over the past 28 years, and for much of that time has been known for interspersing his ambient work with surprisingly straightforwardly sung (if still lambent) songs. Rarely has he been as stylistically consistent over an LP as he was on this, his 2000 debut as Aarktica. Now remastered by Taylor Deupree for its 25th anniversary, No Solace in Sleep consists almost entirely of DeRosa’s guitar. There are some submerged rhythms here, a choral-feeling arrangement there, but otherwise it’s just endless pools of his beautifully enveloping playing. Slowly assembled at night after losing hearing in one ear, there’s a gloomy comfort to even the harshest efforts here, and even at over an hour it never wears out its welcome. It’s sneakily influential too, elements of DeRosa’s work here having been showing up not just in ambient but in goth and metal circles over the decades. The remaster brings these songs a bit further from their hissy four-track birth and the result feels even more monumental than the original.

Ian Mathers

Bag People — S/T (Drag City)

Bag People were a short-lived outfit who transplanted themselves from Chicago into the grime and soot of New York’s lower-east side in the early 1980s. They fit in alongside that city’s no wave contingent but retained enough midwestern muscle to temper arty abandon with propulsive rhythms and a coruscating chug. The cantankerous sonic maelstrom hovered on the precipice of outright chaos, but Diane Wlezien’s vocal howl positioned Bag People in the Venn diagram at the point where Sonic Youth, The Stooges, and The Slits intersected. Forty years later, Drag City has unearthed some long-forgotten tapes, the only proof of Bag People’s existence, and polished them up as best they could for our consumption. The angst and nihilism are palpable in these energy-filled tunes, which sound just as ferocious now as they must have when the band laid them to tape.

Bryon Hayes

Lawrence English — Even the Horizon Knows its Bounds (Room 40)

Soundscapes for museum installations can be the quintessence of ambient music but often are unimpressive on their own. Lawrence English’s soundscore for the Naala Badu building at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia, demonstrates that work meant to be unobtrusive can also retain interest in closer listening. In Gadigal, Naala Badu means “seeing waters,” and English responds to this idea with washes of synths that ebb and flow like waves and aquatic field recordings. A minor-key piano progression provides a balladic rejoinder. Several guest artists — Chris Watson, Jim O’Rourke, and claire rousay among them — join to ride the waves alongside English.

Christian Carey

Goldmund — Layers of Afternoon (Western Vinyl)

The last time we caught up with Goldmund, that is, pianist Keith Kenniff, he was reinterpreting Civil War songs for solo piano on the lovely and evocative All Will Prosper in 2011. This time Kenniff mines a less conceptual vein and enlists the violinist Scott Moore for moody original reveries. “Darnley” brings the piano to the front, its pure melody oscillating against a crackling popping room sound. Moore enters half a minute in, swooning and lush where Kenniff is elliptical. “Before I Sleep,” likewise, finds mournful beauty amid lingering chords and a rush of layered string sound. Here’s a record that will envelope you like a pearly fog and leave you lost in your own thoughts and memories.

Jennifer Kelly

G*U*N*N* — S/T (Going Underground)

Another excellent punk band in the venerable Orange County tradition (smartassery, suds and lots of skateboards…), G*U*N*N* has finally gotten around to releasing a full LP after six or so years of gigs, 7” records and a handful of tapes. Given G*U*N*N*’s…um, informal approach to existing as a functioning band, it’s a surprisingly substantial album: 14 tracks, averaging two minutes in length, replete with fun samples and a long, pranksome reggae outro. In some nods to punk tradition more broadly, G*U*N*N* includes songs titled “Pig Champion” and “Stukas over HB” (Dickies, anyone?). But the band is at its best when it embraces its own antic violence, on tracks like “Annihilation” and “No Hope.” As G*U*N*N* advises, you’d do well to “Stick with the Plan”: skate an empty pool, vandalize some private property and turn up the tunes.

Jonathan Shaw

Kovaa Rasvaa — Tarinaksi Paketoitu Valhe (Svart)

Finnish crossover music that derives its principal interest by keeping the thrash and the hardcore elements at odds with each other. Kovaa Rasvaa writes songs that tend toward the fast and nasty, and tunes like “Nokkakolari” and “Romahdushäiriö” will remind you of Kreator or Voivod, while “Kolmiomainen Nolla” and “Keinotekoisesti Valmistettu” (holy shit!) might make you remember the Electric Deads or Terveet Kädet at that band’s most melodically speedy. For all the stylistic fireworks, Kovaa Rasvaa has a sharply resolved sound. And it's pretty cool to engage a record that’s so stridently Finnish in its insistence on that language’s rhythms and specificity. If you want the lyrics or the Bandcamp text in English and you’re not a fluent Laplander, you’ll need Google translate. Maybe just learn Finnish to sing (and shout) along.

Jonathan Shaw

Johnny Maraca and the Marockers—Little Heart (Perenniel/K)

Rock ‘n roll doesn’t come more basic than Little Heart, a stripped down, flirting, snarling collection of ripped leather romanticism, sourced from Oakland, CA. A trill of organ, a quiver of bass, and then the beat crashes through, drums thumping the fours, guitar slashing in time. Johnny Maraca has a rough, boisterous way of delivering a song, tough but tender. “And I know, how your little heart beats,” he shouts over the irresistible clangor of “Little Heart,” the dangerous guy with a killer smile. Has it been done before? Certainly. Is it worth doing again? Yes, indeed.

Jennifer Kelly

Paal Nilssen-Love Circus with the Ex Guitars — Turn Thy Loose (PNL)

Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love’s Circus started out as a vehicle for him to sustain his involvement with Brazilian songs and forms during the pandemic. That didn’t last; the original septet of Scandinavian-based musicians developed a unique approach to songs of all sorts founded on the agreement that any musician could introduce any song from their collective book at any time. If that sounds to you a bit like the Instant Composers Orchestra dynamic, you’re not wrong, and you might appreciate this recording, which presents the beginning of the Circus’ next phase, which occurred when guitarist Oddrum Lilja left the band and all three guitar-playing members of The Ex joined. The arrival of three newcomers disrupts the immaculate trust and rapport that the Circus had developed, but since they have a deep respect for improvisation as a relational enterprise, their presence is more that of periodic game-changers than total wrecking balls.

Bill Meyer

Pyrex — Body (Total Punk)

Jackhammer punk from Brooklyn judders on a pogostick across a beer-sticky floor. Pyrex makes the kind of hopped-up, anxiety-attack thumpers that foment mosh pit casualties, though that shouldn’t stop you, if you’re so inclined, from full-body participation. All eight cuts make anatomical references from the vortex howl of “Reflex” to the razor-cut “Never Endings” to the nearly anthemic, power-chord-ripping “Digits.” That’s about right for an album that’s pure viscera. Body, indeed.

Jennifer Kelly

Paula Sanchez — Pressure Sensitive (Relative Pitch)

The liner notes of this South American cellist presently residing in Europe reads, “This album is the result of performative experimentations with cellophane and erotic encounters of transparent asphyxiation.” Now, there’s an explanation that raises as many questions as it answers! Particularly since a blindfolded listener might not detect the cello, the plastic or the erotic activity, but instead attribute this recording to oil-thirsty door hinges and tectonic plates. However you explain it, this is vibrantly physical stuff, sound that you can feel in the act of feeling. It’s also rather like the blind philosopher’s assessment of the elephant; having had the good fortune to hear Sanchez in diverse settings at Music Unlimited 38 in Wels, Austria, I can attest to her facility at playing parts and rocking the fuck out matches the performative noise-making of this CD.

Nick Storring — Mirante (We Are Busy Bodies)

The Portuguese word mirante denotes a scenic outlook. Canadian composer and multi-instrumentalist Nick Storring has a family connection to Brazil, so he’s had some time to view the country close-up, and it only takes one listen to know that he’s steeped in the country’s sounds. Dozens of instruments (all played by Storring) appear on Mirante’s seven tracks, but easy-flowing melodies articulated by plush keyboards and complex but uncluttered pulses expressed by a rich array of percussion dominate, while strings and voices flesh out the harmonies, giving the music a humid travelogue vibe. Storring’s pieces do not recreate Brazilian styles; he seems to be more concerned with expressing his feelings about the place, which are warmly conveyed.

Bill Meyer

Thor & Friends — Heathen Spirituals (Joyful Noise)

Thor Harris is perhaps best known for his contribution to the hard-touring and super-loud iteration of Swans that created albums such as To Be Kind (2014). During those tours, Harris could be found bashing all kinds of percussion on stage, often shirtless, his hair flailing and his muscles rippling. Harris’s new album is much gentler, despite the number of instrumentalists he’s mustered around him. There are over a dozen players on Heathen Spirituals, but they’re all playing in a restrained, minimal fashion on these three long pieces. “Anne Sexton’s Monocle” has a rapidly pulsing undercurrent of marimba and vibraphone, over which strings and woodwinds play slow, drawn-out phrases. The effect is akin to Philip Glass’s score for Koyaanisqatsi, soundtracking time-lapse footage of clouds scudding across the sky. “Heathen Spiritual” is slower and more mournful, with a less agitated pulse at its core. “Christmas Eve at the Wizard’s House” builds from a slow marimba line in 6/8, the other instruments dancing around it like tiny wooden characters. Pay close attention to this music as it dapples past and more rewards can be found, such as the occasional choral voices that emerge in the mix. It’s powerful in a gentle, insistent way.