#peter taber

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)

On Eton Alive, Sleaford Mods continue to animate this skeleton in creative ways. Lead single “Flipside” pummels like a less snide, more anxious McClusky. The BPM and production on “Kebab Spider” suggest Gang of Four absorbing LL Cool J rather than 1970s funk and dub. “Negative Script” could be a morose ZE Records cut. “Big Burt” grooves like Suicide, with an out-of-nowhere flute sample recalling the perky riff from “Fast Money Music.”  

Listeners craving the vitriol of English Tapas or 2018’s EPs may be disappointed. But dialing things back — slightly — casts Eton Alive’s most outraged moments in sharper relief, while leaving room for fear and desperation elsewhere. “Top it Up” is a squirm-inducingly taut meditation on drugs and death. The affecting character sketch “Big Burt” builds to an infuriated shout-chant, an album high point. Eton Alive drags on tracks where Williamson’s singing predominates, as the constraints on his vocals leave too much space. Even so, modulations in tension are keeping Sleaford Mods’ sound fresh. 

Topically, the album leans more toward music biz rants, while the political skewering that’s often garnered Sleaford Mods attention is less prominent. This is surely influenced by their split with label Rough Trade, but it’s noteworthy given the album’s release date less than a month before Brexit. Maybe they’re sick of talking about it. Maybe also, as the big day approaches, savagely ironic embodiments of the ugliness feel a bit like tossing fuel on the dumpster fire.  

Eaten alive. Sleaford Mods know that the system feeds on ressentiment, shitting ill-conceived geopolitical pullouts in some cases, calculatedly violent immigration policies in others. But they also know that if you’re not pissed off you’re not paying attention, or morally dead, or both. There’s no risk-free way to be. Razorwire-sharp and reflexive, Eton Alive sees Sleaford Mods knowingly take the existential dare once more, and mostly win.  

“These Blackened Graces” enters with an instrumental loop and stately piano phrase, gradually joined by a traditional stringed instrument and chirping synthesis. A nearfield bass rasps and flutters like a beetle where your eyes cross. On “Phoill Bhig” (Google Translate equivocates, but perhaps “Small Pool?”) an oscillating woodwind drone is overlaid with static and manipulated samples. The woodwinds subside, replaced by murmuring tones and a white noise shore. The piece’s two components join in its final minute. “Bank na Cise” (“Kish Bank”) couples a muted, mono field recording and detuned synthetic waves. Inharmonic tones, like a far-off angry modem, join an otherwise melodious swirl.  

The album makes use of contrasts along several axes to achieve subtle shifts in tension and focus. “The Divide” offers halting wistful piano phrases and harmonized synthetic pulses that gradually give over to layers of inharmonic drones. On “Peninsulas,” a mono plucked instrument warbles as if played back on a bad tape deck, encompassed by a full stereo chamber orchestra. Tacking between rhythmic and arrhythmic, conventionally scaled and inharmonic, synthetic and recorded, low and high fidelity — often in the space of a couple minutes — Nyquist’s work evinces surprising narrative variation. Cuan is gentle and pastoral, but too fluctuating to constitute wallpaper.  

This album, as well as the larger catalog of French label Eilean Records are concerned with place, the latter associating each of its planned 100 releases with locations in an imaginary geography. Often implicit in the concept of “place” is a sense of radical incommensurability between places, that they emerge out of unreplicable confluences of biophysical processes and cultural practices in interaction over historical time. The variability and detail of these pieces is entirely in keeping with a philosophical emphasis on distinctness. We may never amble through the nooks of the Dublin Bay region, but Cuan gives us nine sonic environments of analogously immersive specificity. To the extent that recorded and digitally transmitted sound can do justice to place, Nyquist has made a fitting tribute.  

Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. “Bouscule,” for example, clatters like a Pole track played with kitchen implements until nightmarish, bit-crushed vocal samples drop. Similarly, on “Banabila Dub,” a resolute cowbell is quickly joined by blown-out machine sounds that would fit in on a Container record if they were in time with each other. Elsewhere, rhythms and atmospheres unfold with less regard for musical norms. Opener “Annette Thollot” begins the album with lackadaisical musique concrete, a synth stabbing listlessly as repitched vocals spiral out of control before a cut to party conversation, then buzzing insects implying… the outdoors?  “Grand Pas” goes from metal percussion — yes, probably more cowbell — to out-of-tune (nothing so intentional as “detuned”) piano, resolving into a muted, bleating murk.  

Stateside, a release like Cheat Days wouldn’t be out of place on noise cassette labels that achieved critical nods in the 2000s, like Hanson Records or American Tapes. The album would stand out from much of that scene, though, by its low decibels and blasé attitude. Noise that aims for bombast or transcendence via sustained distortion has to sorta try, even in spite of itself. Whereas much aggressive American noise yells (somewhat disingenuously) “fuck everything,” Gapenne states plainly: “Meh. Here are some sounds.” The outcome is spare, oddly approachable – fun, even?  

Nothing to prove.  No one to impress.  Just one person, an afternoon (not much longer than that, one hopes), and a few quasi-working tools.  

CMD — Obscure Worlds (Several Reasons)

Obscure Worlds by CMD

On the face of it, CMD’s Obscure Worlds is a sci fi-themed techno album, which doesn’t do much to separate it from the broader genre. Scratch the surface, and you find an album of detailed techno vignettes that refuse to stand still. In less than three minutes, “Uneven Landing” layers crushed static onto knocking digital debris, with a rapid-fire kick added to the mix two minutes in. On “Obscure Manifestation” a foundation of pulsing static sets the stage for otherworldly peals of feedback. “Death of a Galaxy” reaches toward the undulating bass engineering of an Yves de Mey track. “Through the Wormhole” hints at industrial fuzz a la AnD while maintaining a bit more restraint, with a switch-up in the kick pattern four minutes in that isn’t exactly characteristic for techno. Given the density of musical ideas, many of the tracks could have been extended, but they last long enough to satisfy. If the album’s concept was intended to prompt a creative, concise set of techno variations, it did the trick. Obscure Worlds feels like getting a glimpse into a techno sound-design obsessive’s sketchbook, in the best possible way.

Peter Taber

 Julien Desprez / Luís Lopes—Boa Tarde (Shhpuma)

The title translates from Portuguese as Good Afternoon, and from the sound of this record it was. Both Julien Desprez and Luís Lopes are known for bringing the electricity to jazz ensembles, but when you put a couple of guitarists together it’s possible that they will connect around the instrument, not any particular genre. So it is here, but just what instrument are we talking about? The electric guitar? The amplifier? The pedals? Or all of the above? Let’s go with the latter, because this music is more about the interplay of timbres, textures, contours and sound waves than melodies, harmonies or beats. Imagine the jousting of train sounds issuing from converging valleys, the shudder of twin flexing suspension bridges or maybe just the shared sweet spots of a couple guys who probably wore out more than one CD player spinning Thurston Moore and Nels Cline’s Pillow Wand. Or don’t imagine at all, just listen to this artifact of one good afternoon in Lisbon.

Bill Meyer

  Carol Genetti / Gwyneth Zeleny Anderson — Chyme (Suppedeneum)

Carol Genetti’s vocals operate beyond the boundaries of language. On Chyme, which is named after that gurgling stuff that sloshes around in your stomach after you eat, she electronically manipulates and juxtaposes sounds that humans have been making since before they thought up the first words. You might get disoriented trying to make sense of her pre-lingual exhalations and utterances, so visual artist Gwyneth Zeleny Anderson has prepared a listening score for each of the CD’s four tracks. Each score is a vibrantly colored, circuitously shaped paper cutout, the handling of which will put you (back?) in touch with the experience of pre-GPS, map-based navigation. Anderson’s combination of vibrant colors and text cues prod you out of passive listening and into a vocal / visual interaction with the sounds, which are by turns eerily beautiful and absolutely hackle raising. You will not encounter another record like Chyme.

Bill Meyer  

 Golden Daze—Simpatico (Autumn Tone)

Simpatico by Golden Daze

Hold up, you don’t need musical difficulty all of the time. No, there are hours and days and (occasionally) weeks when you don’t want propulsion or tension or contradictory impulses in your tunes. Life itself is full of that shit. You want something easy. You want something like Golden Daze’s Simpatico, an edgeless, frictionless, limpid pool of baroque pop, with soft whispery vocals and sumptuous clouds of guitar flurries and bright bars of electronic keyboards, unending prettiness, unconflicted lemon-y wistfulness.  “Blue Bell,” the single, is like the Clientele with the bones picked out, an enveloping haze of pastel colored sound. There’s a bit of drumming in a song called “Drift,” but it only seems to heightened the disembodied floating-ness of the song’s breathy sway. “Simpatico,” at the end, emerges out of haze and fog, with warm, brushes of guitar and soft, dreaming verses, then slips out of sight. Golden Daze indeed.

Jennifer Kelly

 Golia, Kaiser, Moses, Smith, Walter — Astral Plane Crash (Balance Point Acoustics)

BPA 18 Astral Plane Crash by Golia / Kaiser / Moses / Smith / Walter

p>Henry Kaiser, Damon Smith and Weasel Walter are Plane Crash, a guitar-bass-drums trio tough enough that it doesn’t have to act tough. The musicians’ common bonds are an appreciation for the atomized activity of vintage English free improvisation and a shared determination to communicate intensity through intent and focus, not bluster. Things get cosmic when you bring in West coast woodwind veteran Vinny Golia and drummer Ra Kalam Bob Moses, who played with Rahsaan Roland Kirk at an age when most kids are first trying to cadge their parents’ car keys. Moses and Golia had never played together, but they roomed in the 1960s, and their presence complicates Astral Plane Crash’s prevailing MO of quick micro-interaction in interesting ways. The flutes and saxophones run thick and slow under APC’s dust devil swirl. And Moses and Walter sound like their having a blast making like converging storm clouds, each pelting hail stones from a different direction so there’s no way you won’t get a chill down your neck. At two tracks and a hair under 80 minutes, this is all-in stuff, but when the changes come as quick and compelling as they do here that’s a feature, not a bug.

Bill Meyer

Matt Hannafin / John Cage—Four Realizations For Solo Percussion (Notice Recordings)

Four Realizations for Solo Percussion by John Cage & Matt Hannafin

In a life of ideas that spans 79 years, a guy might change his mind. John Cage famously expressed disregard for jazz, the most notable American manifestation of musical improvisation in the 20th century. But his problem was more with corrosive expressions of the self and human prejudice than it was with improvisation per se, thus his preference for chance operations. You can’t impose your personal bullshit when you submit to the random. Near the end of his life he dropped his opposition enough to write compositions that invited improvisation, which was distinct from chance operations. If that sounds like a convoluted process, consider the name of this tape’s first piece. “c Ȼomposed Improvisation for One-Sided Drums with or without Jangles” reads like a koan, which makes some sense given Cage’s engagement with Buddhist teachings. That’s just one of the four pieces that Oregonian percussionist Matt Hannafin recorded for this tape (or download, which is probably a more Buddhist format than a tape). In his hands, Cage’s music becomes a vehicle for feeling both the presence of a healthy blow and the unoccupied presence of the variably proportioned spaces where Hannafin isn’t hitting anything.

Bill Meyer

 Gerrit Hatcher — Parables for the Tenor (Astral Spirits)

Parables For The Tenor by Gerrit Hatcher

One listener’s marvelously wigged-out sound is another’s torture. An audience member’s transformative listening experience might be in response to a sound producer’s moment of hollow display. You might hate a person’s most sincere expression or be deeply moved by something they do with their fingers and lungs while they try to remember where they left their bottle opener. Chicago-based tenor saxophonist Gerrit Hatcher had these existential quandaries in mind as he recorded the six solo tracks on this tape, and who’s to say if that’s why this music has such bite? Maybe it’s better to note that he makes sounds that feel linked to the work of certain Sun Ra associates and Archie Shepp into statements that don’t sound irrelevant at the tail end of the second decade of the 21st century. Hang with him while he blows and you might be changed, either because he’s ripping transformative shapes in the air or because that’s already where you’re taking yourself. Either way, what do you have to lose?

Bill Meyer

  Hübsch Martel Zoubek — Otherwise (Insub)

Otherwise by Hübsch, Martel, Zoubek

There’s a world of improvised music that never crosses that precious Yankee border, and this is group is part of that world. Take one German tuba player, one Canadian viola da gamba player and another German on piano, throw in some pitch pipes and a synthesizer and what do you have? You have the raw material for a session of highly refined interaction. On the spectrum from process-oriented to outcome-oriented improvisation, these musicians tend more to the latter pole. The piano has been prepared to render gamelan-in-a-box sonorities, the tuba’s tones consistently gravitate towards ground-liquifying depths and the strings buzz in splintered contrast. The music unfolds patiently, never lapsing into clutter or confusion, and yet it never telegraphs the next move.   

Bill Meyer

  Jäh Division—Dub Will Tear Us Apart…Again (Ernest Jenning)

Dub Will Tear Us Apart...Again by Jäh Division

A jokey side hustle with an aughts all-star psychedelic pedigree, Jäh Division grooved hard, if obscurely, joining a love of dub, a reverence for Joy Division and a clutch of old keyboard gear. The line-up well exceeded solid with Brad Truax on booming, reverb drenched dub bass, Barry London manning a garage sales’ worth of vintage electronics (Roland RS-09, Realistic Concertmate MG-1, a Moog) and Kid Millions busting up organic and synthetic drums. This disc collects songs from a 2004 12-inch, plus bonus material including covers of Desmond Dekker’s “Fu Manchu” and Jackie Mittoo’s “Champion of the Arena.” These two are trippily wonderful, but the heart of this goofy fever dream is a nodding, pulsing, synth wreathed version of “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” It’s a jam that could go on for days or last only a second (technically it goes ong a bit over four minutes), as it distills post-punk and reggae and experimental art rock into an unending now.

Jennifer Kelly

 Miscarriage — Imminent Horror (Sentient Ruin Laboratories)

Imminent Horror by Miscarriage

Much alike Stormy Daniels’ description of the Chief Executive’s fungoid phallic member, the world didn’t really need this tape from international doom metal crew Miscarriage (who hail from Sweden and the United States) — but now that Imminent Horror is here, it’s sort of hard to ignore. And once you’ve heard it, you’ll have a hard time removing it from your memory, much as you might like to. Lots of metal bands like to talk about how “disgusting” and “putrid” their music is. Miscarriage do more than talk. The noises they make sound and feel like a huge bubble of noxious gas painfully working its way through a diseased intestinal track. It’s slow. It’s gross. It doesn’t create any sort of pleasure. It’s only minimally more coherent than listening to the aforementioned Chief Executive attempt to speak in complete sentences. In all those ways, Miscarriage have made music for our times. Good luck to us all.  

Jonathan Shaw  

 Shady Bug—Lemon Lime (Exploding in Sound)

Lemon Lime by Shady Bug

Shady Bug, out of St. Louis, makes a mathy pop so stretchy and bendable that you expect a bo-oi-oi-ing when its wandering melodies snap back into place. Under the guidance of classically trained Hannah Rainey, the band sets up intricate, jerry-rigged machinations that work by their own logic. Yet though complicated, these tunes have a vulnerable sweetness to them, mainly due to Raines’ hiccupy sincere delivery, which tips and lists as the wind blows. “Make It Up,” the single floods the sonic plane with power-washing blasts of amplified guitar, then cuts to a jittery next-to-nothing of angling, cross-cutting guitar lines. It’ll remind you of Pavement and, more recently, Speedy Ortiz, except in a fetching, kid-sibling-ish way that tugs at your sleeve and your heart.

Sonically, the album often mines a contrast between intimate percussion and icy atonal droning ambience. Needle-like pricks and swabs of textural bass lend a proximal, often tactile sense to percussion elements. At the same time, the spaces around these patterned bits range from glistening sandstorm beds to yawning, foggy chasms of drone. The net effect is sometimes akin to what one might get scrambling the rhythms from Jan Jelinek’s Farben project and placing them amidst ambiences intended for harder, banging techno tracks.  

While the atmospheres may be cold or ominous, this shouldn’t obscure the fact that at its core Söder Mälarstrand is centered on restless rhythmic play. Kyoka and Eomac’s roving production pulls sounds into percussive conversation, rearranges, scatters and reconnects them. Small structures coalesce and are wiped away, replaced instantly by new ones that seemingly lurk just behind them. “Con un cuchillo” sees dubbed out vocal squawks laid over seething digital textures and insistently stuttered, woody percussion hits. The rolling kick pattern and rips of distortion evoking architectural collapse on “Das Tier” result in head-nodding low-BPM techno, occasionally upended and softened by a clipped vocal sample. On “BAZU / バズ,”growling bass stabs underlie a panning insectoid rasp that gradually integrates itself with the beat, alternately pensive and pounding. Then, on occasion, the two producers seem content to let things simply drift. Found sounds and a small synth phrase on the sketch-like “Mieko loop” tiptoe up to the edge of a groove without crossing the line. “Profit over people” takes its time to move from a pairing of listless atonal drone and kick to something more propulsive.  

The balance between playful beat experimentation and austere atmosphere combined with a kitchen-sink approach to sampling give Söder Mälarstrand a highly distinctive feel relative to its home label Raster and others in a similar niche. Likewise, the producers’ shared orientation toward working loosely with patterns — congruent and divergent, found and made — allows the music here to have an unruly organic quality more akin to electroacoustic improvisation than beat-oriented electronica. Kyoka and Eomac’s transitory alternations of groove and ornately glitching collage present an innovative, ever-evolving feast for the beat-hungry.  

“Plasma Sunrise” opens the album with bolts of overdriven bass as rides and snares gather on the horizon, indicating this daybreak is going to pour over us like a bucketful of nails. When the storm arrives, drilled percussion stabs blend into the bass as surprisingly warm pads rise in the background. “Integer” maintains the chopped jungle theme, a manipulated voice counting from one to 10 over a splatter of breaks punctuated by tuneless funk horn stabs. The result is face-stomping breakcore delivered with a just-fucking-with-you attitude reminiscent of Kid 606 tracks of yore.   

From there, the album abandons its jungle/breakcore references and moves into less genre-referential, more deliberate territory.  The polymetric interplay of woody stick hits and shuddering kicks that opens title track “Rusted Silicon” calls to mind Nkisi’s recent 7 Directions; but the pacing here is more downtempo than techno, and rather than focusing on percussion the track revolves around Han’s genuinely pretty, alternately-tuned melody as it builds to an affecting swell. A field recording of actual geese begins “Along the Synthetic River I” before tense percussive gestures intrude.  Pads overtake the drum storm around the three-minute mark, transforming the track from clattering rave music to a pulsing, Vangelic cloud.  Glassy synthetic keys and bells lend IDM playfulness to closing track “Lab White,” juxtaposed once again with speaker-tearing kicks. Alongside remixes by Samuel Kerridge and Nahash, Iranian luminary Zabte Sote melts “Lab White” down into sparkling granular sheets of sound that fittingly expand upon the textures peeking around the corners of Gooooose’s beats elsewhere. Throughout, the low end is sufficiently augmented that even Rusted Silicon’s drifting or quizzical moments have punchy immediacy, and the mix rattles and pops with distortion.  

The theme here is corrosion or decay in the digital domain, though the album avoids the dark, dire atmospheres (or pure noise) this might suggest, mostly opting for inviting but unexpected melodies above radically processed percussion. Thanks to careful pacing, many of Rusted Silicon’s tracks feel like the gradual unveiling of an unfamiliar scene, or burgeoning awareness of transformation. Gooooose seems to suggest that as the digital world begins to show its cracks and tarnish, we’re bound to find ourselves somewhere deeply strange.