#tim daisy

Akolyth — Ecstatic Kingdom (Amor Fati)

Ecstatic black metal? Not so much. Akolyth creates a cavernous, aggressively lo-fi variety of black metal that sucks you in toward the void. There are long compositions, riff-driven structures, occasional departures into guitar soloing, but the emphasis on the filthy, submerged sonic quality effectively cancels any impulse toward showmanship or refined technique. The sound of Ecstatic Kingdom may not be quite as degraded as what you’ll hear on recent records by Black Cilice (see Esoteric Atavism) — but only “not quite.” And the textures are grainier, somehow more material in nature. It’s underground metal: you can just about feel the dirt and decaying matter of its unearthing. Very kvlt, and the facts of the music’s production (who is involved? where are they from?) are as obscure as the sounds. But there is significant venom distilled into the songs. They are bad for you. More, please.

Jonathan Shaw

Zoh Amba — Sun (Smalltown Supersound)

The two cuts that open free jazz saxophonist Zoh Amba’s latest recording could not be more different. Brief, lyrical “Gathering” hazards a long, breathy low note, some smacks on cymbals and as shaking sound as it gets going. A bit of melancholy “Tap” comes through in the melody, carried by sax. The song is a convocation or, if you like, a “Gathering” for four fractious players who seldom inhabit such serenity. “Interbeing” is frenetic by contrast, a spatter-painted rampage over piano and drums, stand-up bass thumping in quick time to give the tumult shape. Amba’s playing is full of grunts and blats and high screaming whistles, a fast-moving vortex of abrasive sounds. However different they are, both cuts showcase an intuitive synchrony between four able musicians—Amba herself, the revelatory pianist Lex Korton, wildly creative percussionist Miguel Marcel Russell and bassist Caroline Morton. Amba recorded these tracks solo before working them out with her ensemble and you can hear echoes of that lucid, solitary process in the just-under-two-minutes “Ma.” But the fun comes when they four of them kick into high gear together, hurtling headlong through chaos to find an active clarity.

Jennifer Kelly

Chris Brown / Ben Davis — Jongleurs (Artifact)

One way of looking at improvisational music practice is as an exploration of the relationship between fixed and unfixed elements. This Californian duo starts with certain knowns. Ben Davis is an adroit cellist with a command of jazz and classical vernaculars; Chris Brown straddles the electro-acoustic divide by playing acoustic piano as well as purchased and home-made and coded electronics. Turn ‘em loose in a nice studio, and what do you get? A dynamic flux of genre-specific and non-idiomatic gestures, all deployed with a concern that they complement one another from moment to moment. So, it matters less that classical-sounding forms coexist with digital sounds that flicker like the northern lights, but that they vibrate together in a complex but sensually pleasing field.

Bill Meyer

Comet Gain — Letters to Ordinary Outsiders (Tapete)

Letters to Ordinary Outsiders is wordy, riled up and engrossing. The music is powerful and emotive, ranging from the hearty jangle of “The Ballad of the Lives We Led” to an actual ballad, “Danbury Road,” and “Beat of the Veins”s roaring glam rock. Seven of the 12 songs begin with wry, nostalgic conversations that guide us through the album. There’s nothing mawkish, the nostalgia is tender and often invigorating. Take “the beat of the veins…that’s what keeps you alive” from “Beat…” or “the fifth rule [of rock and roll] is never stop” from “Ashtray Cult.” Letters To Ordinary Outsiders is an ode, most of all, to carrying on. Often carrying on despite. Over the up tempo strum of “Maybe One Day It’ll Really Happen” the lyrics draw on the past to bemoan the present, “it’s so different these days…they’re putting people in prison just for reading poems.” Still, this is a defiant collection, from scene-stealer Rachel Evans’ spoken piece on “The Ballad of…” – “Don’t call me Rach, it’s not my name/plant your flag and fuck off back home” – to the possibly satirical, certainly incensed rant from “Ashtray Cult,” “give me back my culture/that you stole from me.” But this record never wallows and the band seems at an uneasy peace with an uncertain future, even excited about the possibilities: “We’ve had our say…I know [new artists are] out there, breaking out of their cocoons.” After all, per “Danbury Road,” “nobody stays in the same place forever.” Even as David Christian and company look back, they look forward.

Alex Johnson

The Cords — The Cords (Slumberland)

From headlong opener “Fabulist,” The Cords jump straight to the point and rarely come off it. The point for Eva and Grace Tedeschi being tight melodies, clean, vigorously strummed electric guitar and barreling, no-frills-some-fills drumming. The formula is as old and irrepressible as rock and roll. To be more precise (and not quite as old as rock and roll), The Shop Assistants come immediately to mind, as do The Vaselines, fellow Scots with whom The Cords have shared a stage. The recording fidelity is more Sex with an X than “Dying for It,” but the half-heartbroken, half-grinning attitude isn’t far off the Kelly/McKee charm circa 1988. You can keep this record between the jangle pop beacons and get your Dolly Mixture kicks in the wistful, punchy “Vera” or dance in the splash and dazzle of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart on “Fabulist.” But songs like “Yes, It’s True” push the sonic boundaries further. There, sheets of distorted guitar catch something of Dinosaur Jr’s psychedelic wave machine — think a soupçon of “Little Fury Things” — or My Bloody Valentine’s roseate nightmares, if not at the same volume or intensity. In another direction (specifically to Sweden by way of the American south), "Weird Feeling" finds the Tedeschis swooping through high lonesome country harmonies akin to fellow sister act First Aid Kit. The trick is there is no trick. The Cords is bright, springy and capacious, a self-assured, mature performance that starts fresh and stays that way. You’re thrilled to hear it again.

Alex Johnson

Tim Daisy & Ken Vandermark — Fourth Atlas (Not Two)

Drummer Tim Daisy and saxophonist/clarinetist Ken Vandermark have been recurring partners for about a quarter century in a myriad of settings, including big bands, repertory projects, touring combos and as a freely improvising duo. Fourth Atlas represents the first time that they’ve written for each other. In January 2023, the two musicians reconvened for the first time since before COVID to lay some tunes on each other, take them on a brief Midwestern tour and make a record. The salient qualities of their partnership recur. Daisy’s great at creating rhythmic fields that support Vandermark’s forays into pensive melodicism and stormy expressionism, which means that their duos already hold together without compositional guidance. Fourth Atlas has all the sonic and emotional qualities that have made their work together so satisfying through the years. But the choice to write music for each other introduces a different logic, in which formal devices occur and recur, which means that the twists and turnarounds are as compelling as the vectors and vibes.

Bill Meyer

Flux Brothers — FLX (Self-Release)

Skanky no-wave blues vamps snake through nocturnal alleys and byways in a sound akin to Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Animal or a cybernetic Tom Waits. The two principals—John Maxwell Hobbs and David Azarch — met at the Limelight in NYC, presumably in the 1980s, and their grit-flecked, diesel stained reveries bear the unmistakable mark of that bygone era. “Tombstone Blues” is both primitive and extremely literate, a blistered riff purloined from Muddy Waters pulsing under dystopian poetry.  “Lament” is eerier, haunted with echo and jangling percussive sounds; you could play it on a singing saw, though it doesn’t seem they did. “Kokmo Joe’s Criminal Ballet” bangs and pounds and strikes lurid poses, the verses sketching an anti-hero at least, and maybe a villain, shaking tambourines, yelping hallelujah, wrestling with god. Full disclosure requires that I mention I went to high school with Hobbes, but he’s a long fucking way from Fort Wayne South Side, and more power to him.

Jennifer Kelly

Benjamin Fullwood — The Stars Are Very Far from All of This (Room40)

Benjamin Fullwood is a reedist and experimental musician who roughed out the basics of this five-track EP on a long, solitary night in Tokyo, then reworked the material with electronics some time later. His saxophone and clarinet take precedence in the opener, “Speedboat,” letting plangent, oscillating tones overlap and converse before blasting it all to smithereens with roiling, tumultuous drums from Serbian composer and percussionist Lav Kovacs. But elsewhere, as in the long, shimmering “Black Willow,” the sax comes through only in sporadic bleats against an undulating wash of indefinite sound. Textures fluctuate and bend, so that you glimpse things that might be strings or natural world sounds. But whether natural or electronic instruments prevail, the mix is luminous, nocturnal and mysterious.

Jennifer Kelly

S*Glass — Benign Neglect (Public Eyesore)

Seymour Glass usually works alongside collaborators in outfits such as Bren't Lewiis Ensemble and Glands of External Secretion, but on Benign Neglect the San Francisco sound artist is operating solo. Both alone and with friends, he weaves bizarre and entertaining collages constructed from tapes, electronics and miscellaneous objects. Here, he offers a trio of lengthy missives that unfold like the sound component of a surrealist synaesthetic happening. “Abandoned Information Kiosk” embodies a riot or the mass movement of citizenry, overseen by a barking dictator. Noise and static usher in “I Have a Prepared Statement,” with soloists and choruses blending in and out, presenting how it might sound if Kevin Drumm visited an opera while its vocalists were tuning up. On “The Exact Opposite of Surveillance,” malfunctioning electronic alarms force a continuously tumbling pile of damaged appliances to recite a monologue. Glass has been crafting acousmatic soundscapes for so long that he’s an expert at sussing out the narrative threads inherent in raw sound. The absurdist yarns he spins are incredibly compelling and loaded with his singularly bizarre sense of humor.

Bryon Hayes

Keefe Jackson / Jakob Heinemann / Adam Shead — Stinger (Irritable Mystic)

This mostly Chicagoan trio (tenor sax and bass clarinet player Keefe Jackson and drummer Adam Shead live there, bassist Jakob Heinmann used to before he went to school out west) takes its cues from the time when free jazz’s lessons were folded back into the music. One tune by Bobby Bradford and another by John Tchicai affirm their commitment to a loosely exploratory but unfailingly swinging cohesion, and originals by Heinemann and Jackson show how fertile that ground remains. The title tune, whose textures are dictated by the composer’s muscular tenor, continually morphs, growing more unbound as it evolves. But Jackson’s bass clarinet is the anchor on Heinemann’s “12345,” allowing the rhythms to rumble and pause. The exquisitely nimble realization of Bradford’s “She” likewise transforms from free flight to somber blues, unfolding with unforced but emotionally compelling logic.

Bill Meyer

Jinzo — Here’s The Meat EP (Sad Cactus)

Jinzo’s Here’s The Meat is an agitated mash of disaffected post-punk, nervy jazz and bar band bravado. Opener “Sharktank” sets a skronk-y tone with vocalist Jordan Germ spitting out scenes and sensations, deadpan but rushed. The frantic repetition of “bugs in the kitchen sink/bugs in the kitchen sink/bugs in the kitchen sink” is reflected by the scurrying percussion and noodle-y Minutemen funk. Funnily, a track later, “8 Big Ugly Legs,” actually told from a spider’s perspective, features a slinking, almost lounge-act groove. Suave and otherwise, this is physical, immediate music that keeps your ears perked. Even on the slower and starker “Take an Inch,” whose echoing advance sounds like a small-scale version of Lifter Puller’s “Nassau Coliseum," you can feel the agonizing claw forward, increment by eponymous increment. While there’s a complementary strain to the vocals here, there’s also something tempering and wistful like (stay with me) Zooey Deschanel a capella in Elf. Not so on the longest and final track, “Factory Smell.” Careful, circular guitar and drums step deliberately alongside the mumbled, noirish narrative. It’s sinister and enveloping, part Slint, part Lou Reed’s “The Gun,” until the instruments break stride, rev up loud and ragged, and roil the record to a characteristically lurching close.

Alex Johnson

Egil Kalman & Hans Hulbækmo — Unit of Time (Motvind)

When you hear the words “drums” and “bass,” what comes to mind? Machinery emitting three-figure bpms? William Parker and Hamid Drake making hollow wooden instruments fill the surrounding space with spirit-summoning rhythm? It’s fair to surmise that Egil Kalman and Hans Hulbækmo know a bit about both, and have taken that knowledge with them as they chart a third course. The duo are the rhythm section that propels Marthe Lea’s excellent folk-jazz ensemble, and their separate adventures have taken in modular synthesis, alternate tunings and choosily omnivorous jazz. Their aim in this pairing is to explore the ways that subdividing time neutralizes its passage. Kalman plays double bass and synth, Hulbækmo kit and hand drums and they both bust out a jaw harp. Their rhythms throb and scatter, summoning meditational vibration from the elasticity of their chosen sounds.

Bill Meyer

Living Hour — Internal Drone Infinity (Beloved)

In my Dusted review of Living Hour’s last album I wrote, “Despite its uneven presentation, Someday Is Today is a beautiful, evocative record, whose charms invite and reward repeat listens. It’ll be interesting to hear where Living Hour head next.” On the evidence of Internal Drone Infinity, the answer is that the band is venturing into fuzzier, more pop-leaning realms, with increasingly emotional vocals from Sam Sarty. Someday Is Today’s finest song, “Feelings Meeting,” was produced by Jay Som, who takes up the production mantle for the whole of this new release. While previous reference points included Beach House, here there are just as many moments that recall the gnarly, countrified grunge of Dinosaur Jr, or early Smashing Pumpkins. Guitarist Adam Soloway gets a vocal turn on the mid-album highlight, “Firetrap,” and the album is peppered with chaotic elements, such as the screwball electro introduction to opening song, “Stainless Steel Dream.” It feels like Living Hour are stepping into their own, perhaps a little unsure on their feet, but with plenty of energy and personality.

Tim Clarke

Lugubrious Garment — Demo MMXXV (Nuclear Winter)

Even in a space that’s notable for nutso band names, Lugubrious Garment is a singularly nutso name. That’s not exactly uncharted territory for Italian musician Gabriele Gramaglia, who has also blessed us with projects named Vertebra Atlantis, Turris Eburnea and Cosmic Putrefaction. That last band has issued some truly, nastily psychedelic death metal, and Lugubrious Garment does the project one better by doubling down on the nasty. The churn and swirl are all here, but the textures and truculence feel more like black/death. The relatively more direct attack is very effective; check out “Eternal Scars and Imperative Backfires,” which hurls itself spiraling through various layers of drywall and brick, simultaneously managing to shove a bootheel into your lower abdomen. Pretty good trick, but nothing lugubrious about it that this reviewer can detect.

Jonathan Shaw

Natural Information Society — Perseverance Flow (Eremite)

Listening to the single piece of music that comprises Natural Information Society’s Perseverance Flow is like taking a brisk, 37-minute walk through terrain that gradually becomes more dense and challenging. Mikel Patrick Avery’s varied percussive palette sets the pace, over which Joshua Abrams’s guimbri (essentially a resonant three-string bass), Lisa Alvarado’s harmonium and Jason Stein’s bass clarinet doggedly maintain simple, loping, repetitive figures, which evolve in stages. Avery periodically interjects triplet fills, as though the rhythm is briefly stumbling over itself, then just as quickly recovers. Abrams’s basslines hold the center, but there are occasional metallic-sounding overdubs, where a couple of notes will jump out of the mix like an angry frog. Alvarado’s harmonium melody unfolds progressively, becoming longer and more sinuous as it goes. Stein’s clarinet calls out high, ghostly, keening notes over the top. During the first 20 minutes the four players introduce enough variation and subtle shifts in emphasis to keep things moving fluidly, then during the final 15 minutes or so Avery skillfully works in a pulsing double-time cymbal and kick-drum pattern that amps up the urgency. In the closing minutes the layers simplify and coalesce, bringing the piece to a satisfying and well-earned conclusion.

Tim Clarke

Pulse Emitter — Tide Pools (Hausu Mountain)

Darryl Groetsch’s latest album as Pulse Emitter seems forever on the verge of becoming. Lost in imaginary stylistic time travel, the surface of Tide Pools slowly reveals microscopic life forms hidden in subaquatic crags and fissures. There assemble the photons, bugs and critters of the track titles busy in their unselfconscious rituals. Groetsch produces a hybrid of Bach and synthesizer music full of baroque flourishes, shifting time signatures and ambient wash which ironically seems totally in tune with the rhythms of the natural world his work describes. The creatures of the pool creating underwater eddies which mirror the birds and scattered clouds which deepen shadows as they pass. With an elegance of form and function and emphasis on movement above destination Pulse Emitter’s Tide Pools is well worth exploring.

Andrew Forell

Nastia Reigel — Identity (Infrastructure)

Identity by Nastia Reigel

Berlin producer Nastia Reigel starts hard and fast on her debut Identity. After the thumping rush of “Do It Now”, she barely lets up. A pedal to metal storm of percussion and disjointed vocal snippets, thankfully unadorned with synth pads, arpeggiated keyboards or any other woo-woo flourishes, Riegel concerns herself only with bruising gut punch rhythm and bass sounds. Reigel’s drums are dry but deep, the kicks and toms influenced by industrial rhythms, stripped to their relentless essence, the hi-hats crisp and tempo efficient to the point of exhaustion. Extremely effective when excessively loud, Reigel also zones in on the sort of anxious alienation that haunted much of the cold war post-punk of the Neue Deutsche Welle. When she chants “Identity” over the pummeling title track it sounds more like a plea than a declaration. Cathartic stuff.

Andrew Forell

Repetition Repetition— Fit for Consequences: Original Recordings, 1984-1987 (Freedom to Spend)

Fit for Consequences: Original Recordings, 1984–1987 by Repetition Repetition

With the Freedom to Spend imprint, Pete Swanson and Jed Bindeman mine the buried gems of yesteryear with their Freedom to Spend imprint. They’ve struck gold with Fit for Consequences, which pulls from the corpus of LA duo Ruben Garcia and Steve Caton. This is a suite of minimalist soundscapes that the pair self-released in the mid-1980s under the name Repetition Repetition. Garcia was a follower of the Steve Reich and Philip Glass school, which favored long repetitive passages sewn from short phrases. These tracks hew to that trajectory: brief shimmering keyboard lines become hypnotic mantras, emboldened by subtle percussion and simultaneously resting on soft pillows of drone. Caton was a rocker, collaborating with Tori Amos, and he lends his rock’n’roll attitude to the songs. He unfurls 1980s electric guitar flourishes that lend the music a movie soundtrack vibe. Fit for Consequences shows off the pair’s ability to conjure sounds that fascinate and enchant but also surprise and delight. There are times where the guitar strays a bit too far into 1980s glitz (see “The Men are Fighting”), but for the most part Garcia and Caton keep the atmosphere calm and copacetic.  

Bryon Hayes

Soga — Corrosión (Iron Lung)

Corrosión (LUNGS-303) by SOGA

A fearless, ferocious punk band from Mexico City, Soga addresses femicide, cartel violence, government cynicism and all manner of other discontents. This is a sharper, harder record than the demo Soga released back in 2019. The sound summons the Avengers at their most desperate, or Crucifix at their most deranged, or the textures of first-wave hardcore you can hear at various points on Not So Quiet on the Western Front (1982) — check out the tunes by Social Unrest, MAD, Los Olvidados, heck, just listen to the whole thing. Then put Corrosión back on the turntable. Punk lives, and these Mexican women invest it with the all the energy and fury generated by the current conjuncture. “El Himno Desentonado de Una Nación Moribunda” pretty much says it all, but your reviewer really likes “Fuego, Ataque.” It’s pissed and relentless.

Jonathan Shaw

Status: Expunged — Skull Crusher (Self released)

Skull Crusher by Status: Expunged

Breakcore, as a genre, is not so much polarizing as it is defiantly, happily, and probably permanently unpalatable to most people. As with every other form where “everything sounds the same,” though, if you dig into it a little there are nuances. Yes, even in breakcore, where half the fun is feeling like you’re being energetically clubbed over the head. A really excellent recent example comes from Red Deer, Alberta’s Status: Expunged, whose Skull Crusher does indeed do what it says on the tin. And yet over these 31 minutes things never get tiresome or repetitive, never wears out its welcome and stays consistently involving. Give or take a Venetian Snares album or two that have broken genre containment, the result is both an excellent example of the form and one that the curious would be well served to use as an introduction.

Ian Mathers

Three-Layer Cake — Sounds the Color of Grounds (Otherly Love)

Sounds The Color Of Grounds by Three-Layer Cake

Mike Watt may have compared himself to a tugboat, but his bass is more like an icebreaker; it can plow through obstacles that would sink or stop most other vessels. In Three-Layer Cake, his postal collaboration with drummer Mike Pride and guitarist Brandon Seabrook, that quality gives the other players license to splash all manner of commotion at his grooves. Bursts of stun guitar, bowed banjo textures, speed-demon note flurries, sideways drum perambulations and triple-speed, forward-backward beat assaults — none of it’s going to sink the good ship Watt. However, Watt’s got a curve of his own to throw. His spiels this time were rendered in sonnet form, although you might find it hard to tell, since Watt’s voice is as unflappably consistent as his bass.

Bill Meyer

Tiberius — Troubadour (Audio Antihero)

Troubadour by Tiberius

Brendan Wright calls Tiberius “farm emo,” a raucous mixture of hearts-on-sleeves feeling, churning guitars and pounding rhythms. “Sag,” an early single, warbles with sincerity, but roars with sudden, hurricane-like gales of guitar sound, a singer-songwriter confessional radicalized by amplification. “Moab” twitches and sprawls and moans, its palm-muted punk tensions soothed by pedal steel. Consider what might happen if Centro-Matic and Built to Spill had a red-haired bastard child, running twangy self-revelation through a triumphant wall of sound.

Adult Jazz — So Sorry So Slow (Spare Thought)

Hard to believe it’s been 10 years since Adult Jazz’s stunning debut album, Gist Is. Perhaps the title of the Leeds band’s second full-length can be interpreted as an apology to those who have been eagerly awaiting a follow-up. So Sorry So Slow has not only been a long time coming, but also unfolds in fits and starts, as if unsure of the best way forward. It’s convulsive art-pop in the vein of Dirty Projectors or Bjork, with shades of hyper-pop in the digital sharpness of some of its edges, and chamber pop in the prominent employment of strings and horns. The album is most successful when the songs are straightforwardly beautiful, as in “Suffer One,” with its Owen Pallett string arrangement, and closer “Windfarm,” which has a pure, aching, almost New Age glow to it. Elsewhere, the overall lack of focus proves frustrating, and ultimately rather exhausting, across the album’s hour-long runtime. There’s plenty of beauty to be found, you just have to be patient.

Tim Clarke

Jeb Bishop / Tim Daisy / Mark Feldman — Begin, Again (Relay)

Begin, Again welcomes a couple of revenant Chicagoan musicians. Trombonist Jeb Bishop came back to the city after roughly ten years away, and violinist Mark Feldman after about 40. Drummer and vibraphonist  Tim Daisy invited them both to workshop some material in his home studio, and this session resulted. While both Bishop and Daisy wrote pieces, there’s an authentic ensemble feel; this music is very differently balanced than Daisy’s other chamber trio, Vox Arcana. Quick changes in direction and two-on-one dynamics abound, and it’s all enacted with a lightness that gives this music a feeling of floating even when the players are bearing down with serious intent.   

Bill Meyer

Cadence Weapon — Rollercoaster (MNRK)

The first thing you hear on Rollercoaster is a warm strum of acoustic guitar and the mellifluous voice of Bartees Strange. Then Canadian rapper/activist Rollie Pemberton AKA Cadence Weapon takes aim at technological saturation on his new LP Rollercoaster. The hectic production (there are 11 producer credits) mirrors the overwhelming chaos of social media flooded with bots, trolls, ads and misinformation overseen by the bloodless founder of Facebook and X’s fatuous head jester. Hip Hop, electro, RnB and manic hyperpop provide the backdrop to Pemberton’s diatribes which, although they occasionally have an odor of fish-filled barrels, say what needs saying with a maximum of snark and wit. Strange reappears periodically to offer a more organic musical and lyrical counterpoint to the hyperactivity. Pemberton has the awareness to embrace the paradox of working within the system he excoriates which adds an edge to his lyrics. If no-one is innocent and everyone’s throwing stones, Cadence Weapon is at least slinging the sharpest slates.

Andrew Forell  

The Children… — A Sudden Craving (Erototox Decodings)

Michael Wiener describes the music of The Children…, his long-running collaboration with Jim Coleman, Phil Puleo and others, as “gothic blues ambient.” At the height of my concern for tidy iTunes taxonomies, I would’ve been thrilled to think of that. And I’m not being glib: it is apt. One might be tempted to flip the last two words to get the more genre-y “Gothic Ambient Blues,” but Wiener, a Dusted contributor, has the order right. Their latest release, A Sudden Craving, may lead with a loose-hinged “gothic blues,” complete with eerie electronics, possessed voices, disturbed drums and alternately ghostly and shearing guitar chords, but it’s the way the band plays in the looming ambience, the engagement with the persistent presence of space – traced, occupied and ruptured – that ties together the album’s unsettling visions. In its haunted volatility, this can be a viscerally entertaining record and easy to get into, just make sure to carve out enough headroom.

Alex Johnson

Ciro Vitiello — The Island of Bouncy Memories (Haunter x Hundebliss)

Italian producer Ciro Vitiello’s work plays out like a reverie in the liminal space between dream and memory. Ethereal vocals and impressionist lyrics from Russian born singer Zimmy and Italian musician CRÆBABE float on warm wisps of synth and closely miked acoustic guitars. The instrumental tracks have a fractal, dislocated feel as Vitiello layers keyboards and sound effects of water, birds, child’s play and the odd menacing sounds one images hearing in the beast filled fairytale forests of childhood. The mood darkens further on “Sell Change of Heart for a Crocodile” or “Living in a Bouncy Castle” as scratchy disruptions like misfiring synapses interrupt the former as the keyboards swell crepuscular in the background. On the latter, titular castle seems to be deflating slowly, closing in on the occupants in slow motion, the air escaping in big wet bubbles. CRÆBABE closes the album steeped in a lonely haze of romantic and erotic nostalgia. Altogether as lovely and disquieting as the misty maze of memory can be.        

Andrew Forell

Coral Morphologic & Nick León — Projections of a Coral City (Balmat)

Miami duo Coral Morphologic (marine scientist Colin Foord and musician JD McKay) have worked together since 2007 producing projects that raise awareness of threats to marine biodiversity. Their new collaboration with producer Nick León soundtracks a multimedia installation which imagines the rising ocean reclaiming their city and enabling its colonization by resurgent coral reefs. The trio imbues this five-track suite with the tenacity and generative power of coral. An aqueous flow of somber tones dominates, but within them minute lifeforms take shape, coalesce, and spread with a quiet majesty that evokes the fragility of the reefs and inexorable process of survival and regrowth. Projections of a Coral City feels like a requiem, as much for Miami as the damage it has wrought on its environment. Poignant and hopeful it is a fitting tribute to the worlds we are in danger of losing for ever.    

Andrew Forell

Critical Defiance — The Search Won’t Fall (Unspeakable Axe)

Chilean thrash specialists Critical Defiance have delivered the metal record equivalent to a day at a theme park — absent all the waiting around in long lines. There are some long-ish tunes on The Search Won’t Fall (the title track runs close to eight minutes, and album closer “Critical Defiance” clocks in over nine and a half), but you never have to wait, for the next shift in rhythm, usually from fast to really, really fast; the next solo; the next crunching, athletically paced riff. Rollercoaster-scaled ascents and descents? Yep. Tilt-a-Whirl passages of dizzying axe-craft? Check. And the whole thing has the sort of so-bad-for-you-it’s-good sensibility of that extra-large bucket of French fries that came out of a huge bag of frozen shards of spuds, or the funnel cake you watched some tatted-up kid squeeze into a viscid pool of boiling oil of indeterminate age. It’s all hugely entertaining. This reviewer loves it when the songs get short; check out the sequence of “All the Powers” (44 seconds) to “Full Paranoia” (85 seconds) to “Margarita,” in which the record suddenly bottoms out into power-ballad mode. The move is delightfully goofy, a stolen kiss in the Tunnel of Love. It’s an open question if listening to The Search Won’t Fall has any sort of enduring significance, but when the ride is this much fun, who really cares?

Jonathan Shaw

Hässlig — Apex Predator (Sentient Ruin Laboratories)

Hässlig makes an unhealthily ugly sort of noise that the metal underground has insisted on calling “blackened punk” — a strangely provoking phrase that we seem to be stuck with. This specific iteration of the sound renders the relative kinship to punk neutral (wouldn’t “raw black metal” suffice here?), or perhaps a bit more worrisome. We should note that sole member DB also makes an especially bleak variety of depressive, sometimes doomy black metal under the name Negativa, the band logo of which does an irritating nod-and-wink in the direction of the swastika. So: A Spanish dude who records under a German-sounding band name and makes a record titled Apex Predator? Do we have to do some digging on the internet’s expanding communities of fash-hunting metal listeners? Likely we can take some consolation from Hässlig’s relationship with Sentient Ruin, a label that doesn’t fuck with NSBM nonsense. Unhappy song titles like “Psychopathic Triumph” and “Raping the Exoskeleton of Life” are likely meant to communicate equal-opportunity misanthropy: DB hates everybody. But “Slaves” and “Watch Them Hang” are a more unsavory combo, and it doesn’t help that DB claims Bone Awl and Ildjarn as influences. One wonders if associating the project with punk is a sort of semiotic gambit, hoping to temper some of the more troubling language DB uses (and maybe gets an edge-lord charge out of). It’s all becoming a bit tiresome. This reviewer really enjoys the music on Apex Predator, but by saying so, what is he validating?

Jonathan Shaw

Hour — Ease the Work (Dear Life)

Michael Cormier-O’Leary leads an ensemble of 10 through pensive instrumental reveries in this third full-length as Hour. You might know Cormier-O’Leary from the bands 2nd Grade or Friendship, or from running Dear Life Records. Others playing here have done time in various ambient, folk or mildly experimental outfits, Jason Calhoun, the synth player, in Paper Armies, Elizabeth Fuschia, a violinist in Footings and on the last Bonnie Prince Billy album, Peter Gill from 2nd Grade and drummer Peter McLaughlin from Dead Gowns among others. But the players meld in a very seamless, ego-less way, supporting brief, lovely bits of melody in guitar, strings, percussion, keyboards and, occasionally, electronic samples. The title track ambles nonchalantly, a skittery beat pacing tremulous washes of strings . “Dying of Laughter,” shades a little darker, pitched somewhere between conventional Americana and David Grubbs’ languid improvisations. None of these tracks last very long or stick very well in the limbic system, but Ease the Work is, regardless, a very pleasant way to spend three quarters of an hour.

Jennifer Kelly

Paul Lydon — Umvafin Loforð​un (Píanó)

Paul Lydon is an American who has lived in Iceland since the late 1980s. Throughout that time he’s kept up persistent but low-key recording under the names Blek Ink, Sanndreymi, Paul & Laura and most recently his own name. Over time, the music has changed from brittle, miniature songs to deliberately paced piano instrumentals. As befits a guy who lives his life within cultures, the music on Umvafin Loforð​un (translation: Wrapped Up In Promises) doesn’t slot easily into any genre. While spare, it lacks minimalism’s interest in repetition, and in its quiet way it remains to assertive to be ambient; and while his articulation brings to mind Mulatu Astatke and Alice Coltrane, there’s really no jazz or Ethiopian influence, just a similar respect for the qualities of individual notes. It does give the impression of reflection, as though he’s conversing with himself when he plays, but each piece has a lucidity which suggests that any spontaneous processes are tempered by some compositional pruning. It’s companionable stuff, at the service of those who could use some quiet company.

Bill Meyer

Mandy — Lawn Girl (Exploding in Sound)

Sugar pop melodies nestle into blistering onslaughts of fuzz guitar in this first solo outing from Melkbelly’s Miranda Winters, and maybe what’s interesting here is how a mature artist uses the basic rock and roll tools of her youth.For instance, though a new mom and well past the acne years, Winters casts a jaundiced eye on teenage love in “High School Boyfriend.”The song ends in a drum churning, guitar-busting, cheerleader shouting finale that kicks the whole experience to the curb.Sludgy “Forsythia,” by contrast, acknowledges the distance that Winters has travelled, the experiences she’s had, though that knowledge comes couched in muscular guitar blare.The one cover, of Jimmy Webb’s “I Am a Woman Now,” is acoustic and soft enough that you can hear Winters taking a sniffly breath, but also searing.“Now that I’m a woman, everything has changed,” she murmurs.The sentiment, maybe, but not so much the sound.

Jennifer Kelly

Orgöne — Chimera (3 Palms)

A chimera is a monster constructed of various parts—body of a lion, wings of an eagle, tail like a snake, etc.—and while by no means a monster, this latest LP from the West Coast soul collective Orgöne melds disparate threads into a slinky, funky groove. You can hear, for instance, futuristic fusion jazz, polyrhythmic Latin percussion, Afro-beat, way out soul positivity and psychedelic rock in these cuts, some instrumental, some with chanted vocals. An organ trembles with flickery vibrato, a bass slaps the off beats, a drum cadence saunters shambolically; it’s hot and cold at the same time. Blues-funky “Parasols,” blurts low-end and oozes chill, like Booker T & the MGs, but looser and more discursive. The groove rears up and you expect an old-style soul chorus—Charles Bradley maybe—but the work is done by the instruments, a nattering guitar and a flaring soaring keyboard. “Basilisk” twitches with wah wah and shudders with blasts of bass, not so far off from what the Budos Band does, but “Tula Muisi (Dance with Them)” adds torrid, Afro-beat style vocals. This stuff is fine on the home speakers, but likely much better in the room.

Jennifer Kelly

Polar Inertia — Environment Control (Northern Electronics)

There’s a lot of obscurity surrounding taciturn Parisian techno… artist? project? collective? Polar Inertia, but after a self-described “eight years of silence” they’ve reappeared with a full-length LP (a full hour, even) after previously only releasing EPs and live recordings. As with those EPs, there’s one track with a grim, foreboding spoken word accompaniment and if it puts one in mind of Annihilation at the South Pole, well, following it up with the brain-frying fuzz and throb of “Smothering Dreams” cashes that check immediately. The rest of the album ranges from beatless, dense noise (“Modeless Singularity”) to darkly insistent techno (“Arctic Singularity”) but all with enough of a shared vocabulary and similarly overwhelming, totalizing effect that it all lives up to the end of that opening monologue: “You will soon conceive what polar inertia is. What we do, at our scale, is environment control.”

Ian Mathers

Tomeka Reid / Isadora Edwards / Elisabeth Coudoux — Reid / Edwards / Coudoux (Relative Pitch)

This hour-long, completely improvised performance was captured in August 2021. The trio had played together a few days previously at the third iteration DARA Festival, a gathering of female string players organized by Biliana Voutchkova, so this was not a first encounter, but the trio’s interactions express a still a freshness that could come from players newly falling into a sympathetic union, or simply from the good vibes that tended to suffuse gatherings that post-vaccination, pre-Delta variant surge summer. Tomeka Reid (USA), Isadora Edwards (Chile/UK), and Elisabeth Coudoux (Germany) all play cello, and there’s sufficient consonance within the collective’s approach that time spent trying to figure out who’s who would be wasted. Rather, appreciate the spontaneous counterpoint, astute support, and uncluttered clarity of these four improvisations, which flow easily from rustling quietude to bright, bold cross-hatchings.

Bill Meyer

Sam Rubin — Bullet (Pleasure Tapes/Michi Tapes)

Two bullets, labeled “Bullet” and “Bullet 2” rip through the air on scuzzed-out guitar tone, like shoegaze but dirtier, as a rapturous chaos of drumming erupts and a noxious fog of noise envelopes high wistful vocals.You can taste the grit and sulfur in the air. Sam Rubin raises a lo-fi racket out of Kent, Ohio, letting factory effluents run through fragile melodies, corroding them, poisoning them and coaxing a poisoned beauty from the wreck. From the heart of Red America, Rubin launches “Trump,” a slow-motion, gut-shock of lumbering chords and feedback, but the best songs are about firearms.“Sniper Rifle” closes things out with Swans-ish clangor, guitar, drums, bass, all jumping on the downbeat, repeatedly, like a metal stamper gone amok in a post-apocalyptic heartland. Good stuff.

Jennifer Kelly

SAICOBAB — NRTYA (Thrill Jockey)

NRTYA by SAICOBAB

Japanese quartet SAICOBAB douses Indian raga in accelerant and showers it with sparks, creating an amorphous and fiery mix of traditional and contemporary sounds. Vocalist YoshimiO (Boredoms, OOIOO) both leads and chases the melodies proffered by sitarist Yoshida Daikiti. The two are engaged in a whirling quickstep (NRTYA is Sanskrit for “dance”) over the polyrhythmic pulsations of Motoyuki Hamamoto and Yojiro Tatekawa (Boredoms). The four musicians apply a hyperkinetic avant-rock slant to the traditionally placid raga format, emphasizing both rhythmic and melodic movement. YoshimiO’s extremely broad vocal range helps the music leap into the fourth dimension, and subtle electronic flourishes offer a glimpse into SAICOBAB’s futuristic worldview. With NRTYA, SAICOBAB challenges tradition, as the group’s infectious energy fractures the boundaries of both time and space.

Bryon Hayes

Alena Spanger — Fire Escape (Ruination)

Fire Escape by Alena Spanger

Alena Spanger’s voice is small, soft and very brave, as she ventures out of the shelter of prettiness into the wider world of dissonance and experiment. The singer made her first mark in Tiny Hazard, a Brooklyn art-music ensemble that similarly tested the boundaries of pop. Here in her debut solo album, she coos and hums and trills against a shifting background of baroque experiment; she lets us in, engagingly, into strange and wonderful places. “All that I Wanted,” for instance, pits a wild splatter-beat of tonal percussion, against a wispy pop anthem. “All I wanted is to dance with you,” she declares, in true diva pop style, against surging synths—but wait for it, the tune disintegrates into a soup of off-kilter fragments and spasmic beats. Spanger has some of Joanna Newsom’s wiry fragility, a way of infusing melody with intelligence and conflict, and she surrounds herself with Brooklyn avant-garde-ists, like Kalia Vandever on trombone in “My Feel,” Kitba’s Rebecca El-Saleh and harp and the critic Winston Cook-Wilson on keys and percussion. Ryan Weiner, who was also in Tiny Hazard, plays, engineers and mixes. But in the end, it comes down to one Alena Spanger, with the girlish voice and the voracious appetite for innovation. She can make a Satie reference sound like a sweet confessional ditty and a fire escape stand in for the soft, comforting edge of experiment.

Jennifer Kelly

Sunburned Hand of the Man — Nimbus (Three Lobed)

Nimbus by Sunburned Hand of the Man

Nimbus is Sunburned Hand of the Man at peak fidelity.Imagine Ken Kesey’s Furthur bus tuned up, cleaned up and given a fresh coat of DayGlo.The album also spans multiple iterations of the ever-mutating Sunburned line-up.Original member Phil Franklin returns after a multi-year hiatus, bringing his Franklin’s Mint songcraft with him; long-time associate Matt Krefting appears, offering a sinister spoken word monologue as the band writhes beneath.Poet and new Sunburned member Peter Gizzi unravels his verses over a pair of synth-heavy tunes: both the loping title track and the intense “Consider the Wound” benefit from his wry deadpan.The rest of the tracks are fare for those yearning for the Sunburned of yore, full of lysergic introspection and hedonistic grooves.Even at their cleanest, Sunburned Hand of the Man are weird and wild to the very core.     

Two pieces are on the first CD. “Everything Happens to You” is a half-hour long piece that presents an interesting reversal. It begins with trills and shrieks, out of which, after considerable free improv, a tune emerges. This setup is the opposite of traditional jazz performances, where the tune begins the proceedings to be followed by solos. The drummers create a welter of polyrhythms, rather than interlocking, complementing and responding to each other. Listening again, one can find scraps of the melody that eventually appears: Crafty construction and passionate execution.

Trumpeter Jean-Luc Cappozzo guests on “The Exuberant Aubergine,” playing high, breathy, glissandos while Rempis once again plays fleet trills. It is a slow tempo piece that is also a slow burner. The percussionists, for the most part, keep their powder and the dynamic level low. Cappozzo unfurls a wide-ranging solo and Rempis responds with bent notes and high glissandos of his own. Håker Flaten contextualizes the harmony with scalar passages and chromatic passagework. Cappozzo and Rempis trade riffs, sometimes imitating one another and at others doing their own thing. Duet becomes a trio with bass notes double-timing, moving through all the registers of the instrument. Solos are exchanged in the next section, with the percussionists pressing the action with muscular playing. Midway through, the surface calms, bass notes repeated instead of the previous scalar movement, misterioso melodies from trumpet and saxophone, and a general slowing down. Pops, clicks and slurps from the winds are responded to by accentuations in the percussion. A gradual accelerando and the return of Rempis’ trills signal a return to the demeanor of the opening volleys. The intensity ratchets up, with the drummers becoming more prominent than the winds, despite their altissimo held notes. Once again, riffs are traded, with a call and response between Rempis and Cappozzo responded to by intense playing from the rhythm section. The conclusion sees the drums move back to a simmer, the bass playing repeated notes against a decrescendo by the winds. Exuberant indeed.

CD 2 chronicles the second set. “Spooky Action” begins with a drum duet that introduces a syncopated rhythmic pattern. Rempis is buoyed by the drumming to soaring solos. Håker Flaten adds yet another layer of metric ambiguity. The rhythm section maintains its energetic performance, Rempis exploring and melding various melodic cells of material, creating flurries of ostinatos. Once again, a soulful melody is saved for late in the piece. At the last, the drums drop out, the bass plays repeated pitches, and Rempis builds the repeating patterns into a caterwauling climax, with the percussionists only then edging back in. Rempis concludes with a bluesy cadenza, punctuated by aphoristic gestures from the other players.

“Little Fascists” begins with Cagean percussion improv. Rempis enters similarly, with disjunct riffs and rasping, sustained pitches. He then builds overtones with perfectly tuned harmonics. Håker Flaten contributes a long high register arco trill, adding to the sense of experimentation. Rempis adds keening wails at the end of the piece. While the free jazz blowing on other tunes is exciting, “Little Fascists” has a distinctive sound world that is fascinating.

The final tune, “Fat Lip” opens with a bass solo in which harmonics are juxtaposed against a pizzicato solo that ranges the whole instrument. Håker Flaten has been a keen collaborator throughout the concert, and his solo brings this style to the fore. Rempis joins him with an undulating melody that begins brawny and slow and proceeds to mercurial runs. The drummers alternate between pulsation and freely constructed fills. Rempis returns to his mid-register melody, embellished with quick scales. The saxophonist savors an intervallic sequence, tweaking it here and there with half step variations. His solo quickens and takes up a stentorian tone. The rest of the group recognizes his intentions, pressing forward and creating a sweltering density. With raucous howls and undulating lines, Rempis fragments “Fat Lip’s” melodic contours. He eventually settles on two short riffs, that he repeats as the drummers add still more fills and Håker Flaten plays a modal ostinato. The conclusion is a decrescendo with a sizzle of cymbal at the end.

One hopes that more of the France tour might be committed to disc. This is Aerophonic’s tenth anniversary, and there are few better ways to celebrate than more of Rempis’s Percussion Quartet.

Feldman ended a decades-long sojourn in New York during the pandemic to move back to Chicago, the city of his birth. Naming a few of the strong connections he left behind — John Zorn, Sylvie Courvoisier, Michael Brecker — gives only a partial accounting of the breadth of his experience as an improviser and sideman in both creative and commercial contexts. With that sort of a cv, he did not come to this encounter as a complete unknown quantity. Additionally, he and Daisy have already made one duo recording. But he brought the qualities of being new to the duo, as well as having a strong musical personality of his own, when he began playing with them in 2022. This combination made him an ideal agent of challenge for Daisy and Rempis. 

The CD is split into two parts, both taken their third concert together, which took place in October, 2022. The location, Elastic Arts, is home turf for Rempis and Daisy, but from the first seconds, Feldman is an equal partner in setting the tone. He and Rempis twist long, microtonal ribbons of sound around each other’s lines while Daisy contributes spare, subdued accents. The drummer and saxophonist are typically quite good at winding each other up, but Feldman seems to steer them towards a more restrained, quizzical mode of interaction. They’re no less agile or engaged than in other contexts, but more light and space gets into the music. It delivers a different charge, but it’s sufficiently electrifying to bring new life and fresh ideas to a venerable partnership. 

The two men’s association originated when Bruckmann, who plays oboe and English horn, started the band Wrack in 2002. This was right around the time that he left Chicago, where he had been the city’s first-call double reeds improviser for half a dozen years, for San Francisco, where he still resides. That might seem like a weird time to start a band, but Bruckmann wasn’t leaving because of problems with Chicago’s music scene. Quite the contrary, he had some unfinished business, including a determination to write and perform music that combined classical forms with new jazz, and he knew a circle of Chicago-based musicians whose skills and aptitudes made them perfect for the project. One of them was Daisy, who at the time was best known as the drummer in a variety of projects led by Ken Vandermark and Dave Rempis, but who was also striking out on his own as a leader. He brought propulsion, swing, formidable improvisational chops, and a cornucopia of ornamental sounds to the combo’s distinctive chamber music-meets-muscular jazz sound. 

Wrack finished strong in 2014 with the record …Awaits Silent Tristero’s Empire, but Bruckmann and Daisy kept renewing their connection every few years.  Semaphore flips the Wrack script by having Daisy head out to Bruckmann’s turf to play with some Bay Area improvisers, bassist Lisa Mezzacappa and tenor saxophonist Philip Greenlief, and adds chapters to it by having the two men split the writing. Both leaders like to fit a lot of action into a composition. Bruckmann’s “No Mean Feat,” which opens the album, features Daisy sizzling on cymbals while Mezzacappa manages the momentum by alternating ascending phrases with sudden rests. The composer and Greenlief strike a balance of muscularity and astringence that brings to mind Prince Lasha and Sonny Simmons without sounding much like them. After building tension, the group expends it with a surging groove and sequential horn solos. Then comes another rest, followed by an intricate pas de deux between oboe and bass, and then the piece resolves with a sauntering ensemble passage reminiscent of the Vandermark 5 c. Acoustic Machine. 

Next up is Daisy’s “Big Horse Lounge,” which opens with a splendidly grouchy-sounding synth line played by Bruckmann, and then eases into a sequence of time-free, muted exchanges by continuously shifting subgroups of the quartet. That dissolves into a charge led by Greenlief’s rippling, high-register attack and fueled by the combustible Mezzacappa-Daisy team. Players drop in and out, and velocity subsides, before the whole ensemble reconstitutes for a voltage-illuminated finale that imagines Brown Rice-era Don Cherry dabbling in gamelan sounds. 

Each of the five pieces that follows explores, with varying degrees of expansiveness and pith, a variety of musical territories. This music is packed with event and transformation, as though its makers knew that they had to get a lot said before parting ways again. But the music never feels gratuitously crammed; in fact, its fluid transitions between sections is part if its appeal. With Semaphore, Daisy and Bruckmann have forged a distinct new group identity by exploring new instrumental and personnel combinations while reaffirming the interest in intricate composition that they have shared since the first Wrack CD.

Bondi-D’Incise / Blutwurst Ensemble — Zgodność (Insub)

Zgodność by BONDI-D'INCISE - BLUTWURST ENSEMBLE

If you want to see evidence of Europe’s connectedness, look no further than this recording. A Swiss duo composed the music and devised the background tape for a piece with a Polish name, and an Italian ensemble with a German name realized it. The name, which translates as Compatibility, corresponds to the instrumental parts and the way they interact. Strings, bellows-driven reeds, and a pair of horns weave long, curving lines together in a constantly evolving but ever continuous flow of dark, textured sound. Eerie and absorbing, it’s music to get lost in as it travels at glacial-melt velocity.

Bill Meyer

 Basia Bulat — The Garden (Secret City)

The Garden (The Garden Version) by Basia Bulat

During the pandemic, singer-songwriter Basia Bulat began to reconsider songs from her previous five albums. Oddly drawing inspiration from both Merle Haggard and Béla Bartók, Bulat brought in a handful of composers to write string quartet arrangements for her songs, reworking them into new versions collected on The Garden. Such an endeavor could lead to something ostentatious or pretentious, but the arrangements suit Bulat's writing well. Her folk-pop might get some extra class, but the strings never detract from her vocals or melodic sensibilities. “The Shore” receives more of a new instrumentation than arrangement, but the playing on this performance heighten the dynamics. “Are You in Love?” leaves plenty of space in the song, highlight the song's 3/4 pulse while steadily building the ballroom drama. Fans of Bulat's work should appreciate the new textures here, but nothing about the release requires previous familiarity. The album coheres around these performances, not their novelty, and the individual tracks play to Bulat's strengths without the need of referents. At times peaceful and at times stirring, The Garden makes for either a good entry or a good summation, depending on your perspective.

Justin Cober-Lake

 Stefan Christensen — Ruby (ever/never)

Ruby by Stefan Christensen

Every element of Ruby, from the choice of format (double 7-inch) to the artwork (Xeroxed and hand-assembled) to the broken junk shop instrumentation, is an homage to Carl Robert Talbot. A stalwart of the New Haven, Connecticut noise and DIY arts scene, Talbot died while in custody at the New Haven Correctional Center. Grief-stricken, Christensen took up cheap and broken instruments and began improvising, piecing together these eight songs that are intensely intimate and drenched in sadness. The song cycle plays out like a series of photographs, each piece reflecting its subject uniquely. A lonely junkyard banjo plucks out the skeletal and too brief title track. “Exact Formation” resembles Gate with its dirge-like flow and bleary-eyed vocals. The echoes of Michael Morley become less pronounced with “Stark Blue,” and “See Things,” the latter featuring a busted chord organ and the din of a barely audible spoken word recording. “Pardon Time” has a hopeful air to it, while “Time Elapse” evokes Two Dollar Guitar’s darker moments. The latter piece fades into a chorus of crickets that disappears as “Goffe Porch” enters with its layers of guitar melody played both forward and backward. Ruby concludes with “Luxury is God,” an out-and-out rocker that enters with Christensen announcing an impending revolution and ends with him dejectedly announcing “the stars are falling now.” The system is broken, particularly for those who suffer from mental illness. Rather than hope for a miracle, Christensen is resigned to the fact that unless something changes, many more bright lights will be snuffed out.

Bryon Hayes   

 Chris Crack — No Sample Snitching (self-released)

No Sample Snitching (Nigga Nation Radio edition) by Chris Crack

Chris Crack’s music has always been on a chill tip. No Sample Snitching may be even more relaxed than his previous albums, yet the foundation remains the same. Its slow beats are interlayered with Crack’s (wise)cracks and hilarious song titles (like “Adderall on a Empty Stomach” and “Palace of Patriarchy”). Crack remains firmly on his own turf (hardly anybody can copy him) and doesn’t go out of his way to prove that he’s a gangsta or even somebody who’s trying very hard to play a gangsta. It’s all down to earth: freaky girls, new Cadillacs, condoms at Target and trying “to get a better shit.” While No Sample Snitching doesn’t break any new ground for Chris Crack it’s still enjoyable addition to his œuvre.

Ray Garraty

 Tim Daisy — Opaque (Relay)

Tim Daisy :: Opaque (relay digital 019// rcr #1)) by Tim Daisy

On this brief cassette (and slightly less brief download), percussionist Tim Daisy takes the methods introduced by his recent, remote collaborative work with Ikue Mori and Vasco Trilla into his own hands by remixing some recent recordings. Drum beats become distant knocks, vibes and glass percussion become quasi-electronic throbs, and tracks get overlaid to vertiginous effect. If you’ve been waiting for Daisy to go psychedelic, your wait is over; “Assembly A,” which takes up the tape’s first side, could easily be retitled “Electric Daisyland” on the strength of its mind-befogging spaciness. “Assembly B” occupies a different environment, in which nimbly articulated patterns and flickering tonalities jostle for space under the watchful eye of some monks whose chanting was committed to record long ago. The choice to begin releasing titles on cassette is a roots move for Daisy, who went to high school during the years that it was America’s top-selling format; keep your eyes peeled for more of them.

Bill Meyer

Madi Diaz — Same History, New Feelings (Anti-)

Same History, New Feelings by Madi Diaz

Madi Diaz has been slugging it out in the songwriting trenches for more than a decade, finally getting some traction with last year’s History of a Feeling, which Mojo called “Gorgeous and achingly candidate” and Uncut hailed as “a potent work of cherished folk beauty and open-hearted songwriting.” But she remains a songwriter’s songwriter, someone who will mostly likely find success in the craft of linking melody and narrative, rather than in performing before vast audiences. And so, with this EP, Diaz enlists three leading female artists and one fellow songwriter to re-interpret her songs. Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield leads things off with a warm, subtly harmonized version of “Resentment,” alternating country rock verses with Diaz against a minimal background of guitar, drums and bass. Country up-and-comer Courtney Marie Andrews lends her water, pure, lightly vibrato’d voice to “New Person, Old Place,” steering it ever so slightly away from indie rock into a more traditional country sound. Natalie Hemby is best known for writing songs for other singers, notably LeeAnn Womack, Kasey Musgraves and Miranda Lambert, but here she crosses to the other side. Her version of “History of a Feeling” elicits drama from throbbing waves of electronics and emotional depth from her spare, closely harmonized delivery. And finally, Angel Olsen finds both fragility and anchored strength in Diaz’s song “Forever,” with a piano and some fluttering synths to back her up. The new versions sound great, and if they send you back to Diaz’s originals, well, that was sort of the point, wasn’t it?

Jennifer Kelly

 Tashi Dorji — Dead Cities Lie Buried / Lift Comrades, Life Comrades! (Feeding Tube)

dead cities lie buried / lift comrades, lift comrades! by Tashi Dorji

When Tashi Dorji hits the road, he brings his electric guitar, and as soon as he starts playing, everyone around knows it. At home, he often plays acoustically, but as this recording (a tape if you can find one, or a download if you can’t) attests, that’s no hindrance to heaviosity. He concentrates on percussive techniques throughout Dead Cities Lie Buried / Lift Comrades, Life Comrades! The title piece is a double-time forced march, left foot chiming harmonics, right foot string-buzzing pummel. Whether the resonant toll of “Mount The Skies I” comes from an alternate tuning or physical preparation, the result is that Dorji’s strums yield a resonant shudder. And on “Fear of Wolves… Drift Onwards,” he fairly lashes the strings. The resulting music is not for all occasions, but in a time when grimness abounds, you’d be wise to keep such sounds in reserve.

Bill Meyer  

 Eels — Extreme Witchcraft (E Works/PIAS)

It’s been a quarter century since Mark Oliver Everett’s Beautiful Freak, one of the bleakest, most beautiful pop albums ever, a record which was once so important to me that I hesitated to pick up with Eels again after all this time. (There were other good albums in between, Electro-Shock Blues in 1998 and Souljacker in 2001, but still…) And while Extreme Witchcraft is by no means as searing and personally significant as that debut, it’s actually a pretty good record. Everett’s voice is as interestingly textured as ever, his melodies as sweet and his lyrics as twisted. The single, “Good Night on Earth,” moves like a man trying to catch the last train before morning, its half sung, half chanted verse chugging through desolate pop landscapes of blistered guitar and manic drum machines. “Better Living Through Desperation” adds a saw-toothed lick and maracas to the mix, stirring up an ambient angst and making it strut. E has always known how to stare down the vortex and get it to boogie, and god knows, there’s plenty of vortex out there these days.

Jennifer Kelly

 Fruit Bats — Sometimes a Cloud Is Just a Cloud: Slow Growers, Sleeper Hits and Lost Songs (2001–2021) (Merge)

Sometimes a Cloud Is Just a Cloud: Slow Growers, Sleeper Hits and Lost Songs (2001–2021) by Fruit Bats

A deep dive into the life work of Eric D. Johnson, Sometimes a Cloud collects album tracks and rarities from two decades of Fruit Bats releases. Disc one revisits territory that will be familiar to long-time fans, cherry-picking Johnson’s favorite cuts from his band’s eight albums to date. This first disc runs backwards through time, starting with the brand new “Rip It Up,” in full psychedelic sprawl and ending with the mandolin-strumming, countrified “Glass in Your Feet” from 2001’s Echolocation. Along the way, there’s a glorious live version of “Born in the 1970s,” from 2005’s Spelled in Bones, recorded in Portland and lit from within by country-soul piano and mournful pedal steel. It’s the second disc, though, that will satisfy the heads, littered as it is by demos, unreleased tracks and a swaggering cover of Steve Miller’s “The Joker.” “Feather Bed,” from 2009’s The Ruminant Band, is, if anything, even more affecting in this pared back demo, and “WACS,” recorded alongside 2011’s Tripper (and released previously as a bonus track) makes the case for the Fruit Bats as a rock band; this version includes a searing solo by Dinosaur Jr.’s J. Mascis. If you’ve been meaning, post-Bonny Light Horseman, to take another look at Eric Johnson’s main gig, here’s your chance.

Jennifer Kelly

 Billy Gomberg — Wilderness and Luxury (Dasa Tapes)

Wilderness and Luxury by Billy Gomberg

For Wilderness and Luxury, Billy Gomberg oriented his musical practice to new surroundings. The disc was assembled in 2020, not long after he relocated across the United States to San Francisco with his young family. Like the Gombergs, this suite of modular synth explorations and field recordings moves with a determined gait. It is unhurried yet not lackadaisical. Melodies establish themselves and then decide to waft off course ever so slightly. Glitch attempts to invade, seeping in at the edges of the sound field, but Gomberg isolates it and wipes it away. There is a clever balance between percussive pings and lengthier, bent tones. It’s as if Gomberg is taking a few steps on a journey and then stopping to take in the view. This imagery is heightened by the subtle use of field recordings, which give minute glimpses into the cityscape around him. Gomberg is acting as flaneur and is beckoning for us to join the stroll. Why put one foot in front of the other and enjoy the adventure?

Bryon Hayes

 Hersker — Befængt (Caligari Records)

Befængt by HERSKER

Putting black metal and Joy-Division-inspired post-punk into a musical blender and pressing “frappe” may sound musically hairbrained — and maybe it is. But Dutch band Hersker have followed that simple (if sort of bananas) recipe and produced four strong songs on this new EP. “Stilstand” might be the best example of what’s interesting about the band’s approach: it has the goth-adjacent drama of the best songs on An Ideal for Living, when the Manchester band was at its most rough and ready. Hersker’s tremolo riffing feels effectively brittle and frigid, sounds from a second-shift midnight in industry’s indifferent production line. When the blackened aesthetic moves more aggressively to the fore (as on “Døtøje”) the buzz and distortion can get a little too thick. Hersker can’t seem to figure out if there should be more amp hum and electrical scree in the mix, or less. This reviewer would like them to pare it back a bit, to hear what an even leaner, meaner approach would do for the songs’ compelling skeletal structures. Cleanse those bones of flesh and let the ghosts run the factory for a while. In any case, this is a promising EP, an angry, alienated sound for alienating times.

Jonathan Shaw 

 Hexerei — Ancient Evil Spirits (Sentient Ruin Laboratories)

Ancient Evil Spirits by Hexerei

Hexerei plays an astringent form of black metal, singularly focused on making music that dances on the dizzy threshold of disorder and noisy collapse. The Finnish band’s affect boils over, the riffs roil and then attenuate, tempos crest and subside and crumble into chaos. Check out the 15 plus minute “Unholy Ceremonial Invocation”: like the rest of this LP, the song exudes a brittle, tinny atmosphere full of dust and malign detritus. It’s somewhat akin to forcing your way into a dark, unheated crawlspace in the dead of winter. The deeper you penetrate, the more the dust collects into choking pitch, and the dark keeps closing in. If that sounds like a good time to you, seek help — but first give this record a spin. All four of tracks on Ancient Evil Spirits construct haunted, vertiginously chaotic aural spaces. For all their instability, the songs develop impressive momentum and feral force. They congeal, and then dissipate, and then they congeal again. Still stuck in that crawlspace? Better play the record again, louder this time.

Jonathan Shaw

  René Lussier / Érick D’Orion / Robbie Kuster / Martin Tétreault — Printemps 2021 (Victo)

Ah, springtime 2021. That brief moment when we thought that shots might set us free. In May of that year, the 37th International Festival of Musique Actuelle convened in Victoriaville, Canada braved the pandemic and convened for an all-Canadian edition. Printemps 2021 documents an iteration one of the festival’s mainstays — a convergence of players with varying degrees of acquaintance with one another for an improvised set. René Lussier (guitar, daxophone), Érick D’Orion (electronics), Robbie Kuster (drums), and Martin Tétreault (turntables) come from sufficiently different backgrounds that cohesion was by no means assured, but a combination of assertiveness and care resulted in a performance that never went off the rails, and a diverting listen that makes one wonder, “who mixed some instant This Heat in the musicians’ Ovaltine?” Kuster’s jazz-rock drumming creates a structural overlay, and when Lussier gets heroic, they lock into grooves that bring to mind “Horizontal Hold.” Tétrault and D’Orion do their part by avoiding anything overtly disruptive, preferring to swoop in and out of the action like hawks that happen to trail sound effects in their slipstreams.

Bill Meyer

luxury elite — blue eyeshadow (Doom Trip)

blue eyeshadow by luxury elite

The first four tracks on blue eyeshadow may give you an idea that this is another background music release which deserves to be turned off immediately (unless you‘re in the mood for background music). Things dramatically improve on the fifth song “turn around” and only continue to improve. The whole tape is a kind of total recall of something you never remembered. There is nothing, actually, elite or luxury about it. It works on the surface and deceives you into thinking you heard it before. Somewhere. Sometime. “turn around” is a danceable music when you’re not in the mood for dancing. “carnival lights” is a retro cut for when you’re stuck in the present. “route 66” is a soundtrack for an old computer game when computer games are the last thing on your mind. If this sounds like one big 55 minutes long pastiche, then it is. But this kind of pastiche we may use now.

Ray Garraty

 Duncan Marquiss — Wires Turned Sideways In Time (Basin Rock)

Wires Turned Sideways In Time by Duncan Marquiss

This solo debut from Phantom Band guitarist Duncan Marquiss is a majestic blend of meticulous guitar layering, kosmische textures and a strident melodic sensibility that brings to mind fellow Scottish instrumentalists Remember Remember. Though many of these tracks spool out across six, eight or close to ten minutes in length, there’s a sense they could continue rolling on for much longer, accumulating layers of mallet percussion and curlicues of melody, like the greats of minimalism such as Steve Reich. Opener “Drivenhalle” is the most krautrock-influenced piece, climaxing in ecstatic waves of eBowed guitar. “C Sweeps” and “Fixed Action Patterns” segue into one another, together amounting to nearly 15 minutes of sun-dappled harmonics, hand percussion, and alternately fuzzy and chiming guitar melodies. The second side kicks off with “Tracks,” a bluesy acoustic guitar number, proving that Marquiss could just have easily have turned in a Fahey-esque full-length. The rhythmic delayed pulse of “Murmer Double” is accompanied by swirling synths and modulated bass, then makes a return in the title track, which builds up quite a head of steam thanks to some lovely hammered dulcimer, despite being the shortest piece here at just under three minutes. “Minor History” brings this fine record to a muted close, as cosmic synths ripple out over rootsy guitar picking.

Tim Clarke  

 Iván Muela — Monologues (Rusted Tone)

Monologues by Iván Muela

Like a lot of us, London-based ambient composer Iván Muela spent considerable time by himself over the last couple of years, communing at home with moody drones and ecstatic bursts of electronic sound, as he tried to soundtrack the shifting atmospheres inside his head. Monologues presents five of those interior landscapes, from the quietly luminous altered piano tones of opener “Whisper,” to the long, slow-building, church cathedral grandeur of “Yell.” Despite the titles, none of these tracks are especially loud, not even “Howl,” which shivers with a subtle dread, its pure, clear tones brass-like against a velvet background of silence. “Hum” wanders pensively through wood-wind-y timbres, picking its way through a lovely solitary space, while “Say” lofts up long, gradually shifting notes in wordless, shape-less meditation. Pandemic lockdown made everyone a little crazy, a little too enamored of the movies that ran inside our own minds, but Muela has found something beautiful in that forced looking inward. Tune in to his frequency.

Jennifer Kelly

 Nail Club — Mise en Abyme (Hot Releases)

Not to take anything away from the mythos of the electric guitar, but if you listen to the right records it can certainly sound like synthesizers are (despite a rich history of evoking gleaming, Apollonian futurism) uniquely positioned to generate sounds so scuzzy they make the racket a good gutterpunk band can thrash out sound classically refined in comparison. Nail Club’s Sara Storm makes a bracingly muddy variety of synthpop that leans into that latter quality, with stiff, blocky rhythms, dense screes of squarewave fuzz and vocals distorted and layered somewhere in the middle of the mix until you’re less hearing words and more just the impression of someone in distress or maybe reproachment. Mise en Abyme literally means “placed into abyss” (more figuratively the quality you get when you look at yourself between two mirrors, or the Droste effect), and the 30 densely disorienting minutes of music here certainly live up to that billing, especially on “Opening Night” and “Mirror”. So come on in, the abyss is fine.

Ian Mathers  

 Night Gestalt — Thousand Year Waves (self released)

Thousand Year Waves by Night Gestalt

Night Gestalt is the work of Swedish musician Olof Cornéer, who creates slow, sad ambient music using pump organ, synths and samples. At its best, such as on opener “As & Em” and “Rogue Echoes,” Thousand Year Waves has the kind of thickly textured and immersive tones familiar to fans of artists such as Abul Mogard, Loscil and even some of Thom Yorke’s solo work. Plus, on “Midair Drops,” the deep, down-tuned voices and hissing background textures evoke the chilly urban atmosphere of Burial. However, when the vocal samples move upfront in the mix, as in “Primal Reasons,” the listener is wrenched out of a reverie and confronted by what sounds like politicians addressing the harsh reality of socio-economic deprivation. A worthy topic, of course, but not something you want to be forced to think about during an otherwise hypnotic ambient album.

Tim Clarke 

 Pastor Champion — I Just Want to be a Good Man (Luaka Bop)

“Talk to God,” urges Pastor Champion, an itinerant preacher who traveled America’s byways with a guitar on his back and the spirit in his music. Later, in “I Know You’ve Been Wounded,” he acknowledges the shortcomings of many churches (“I know you’ve been church hurt”), but nonetheless celebrates a direct connection to the holy. You get the sense that Pastor Champion didn’t have a lot of time for hierarchies. He delivers his message in a fine, soul-stirring tenor, serrated with rough edges but strong and true. He sounds a bit like Charles Bradley, though I think the late Bradley would have had no problem characterizing himself as an entertainer, whereas Champion would not. In fact, he refused to participate in this release or any secular exploitation of his music. The album was delayed until he passed away in 2021. But if we all missed the hand-clapped, guitar-strumming power of Champion’s live ministry, we’ve got the rough and moving record of him. In the lead up to “To Be Used by You,” he helpfully names the guitar chords that make up his song, ever the teacher, so that future gospel singers can follow behind.

Jennifer Kelly  

 Ploy — The Edits (Deaf Test)

The Edits by Ploy

Want the best remix of Khia’s “My Neck, My Back” you’ve ever heard? Then step right up to Londoner Ploy’s latest release out on his own Deaf Test imprint, the second such 12” after November’s Rayhana EP. Made “last summer, in the dizzy heights of post-lockdown mania,” the man born Sam Smith has featured on such esteemed labels as Hemlock, Hessle Audio and Timedance, but this 200-copy white label is less about his usual gravity-defying rhythmic wizardry and more about simply turning up the heat. On the A is the aforementioned Khia remix here known as “Lick It,” a real rinse with an effectively light two-step affectation; on the flip is “Breathe,” which speeds up and airs out Blu Cantrell’s 2003 single with Sean Paul, and “Move Your Body,” which takes Nina Sky’s (remember them?) “Move Ya Body” and makes it an air raid siren. If you’ve forgotten why you missed going out during the pandemic, these three edits ought to invoke a proper pining. Good luck getting a copy, obviously.

Patrick Masterson

 Pylar — Abysmos (Humo Internacional)

Abysmos by PYLAR

Doom-drone meets hermetic monks? Hard to say precisely what’s going on when you press play on this new release from Spanish freak collective Pylar, but things surely get weird in a hurry. Vibrations, rumbles, keening squeaks and melodic moans gather, intone, wrap into one another and build. It’s all pretty dire and doom-struck, a soundtrack for a tough afternoon with way too much mescaline. Perversely, it’s also sort of fun, especially “Crepitación Solar,” which descends into some dizzyingly grim declivities and jerks and shimmies with a spazzy, jazzy sensibility, until it doesn’t, and the bum-out begins in earnest. Pylar’s characteristic mode is low and slow, with an abundance of foreboding squelching and cultic chanting floating and fading atop the thrums. Other folks do this sort of thing—see Neptunian Maximalism, or Sunn 0))) at their strangest. But Pylar does it with a spirited whackiness that feels downright possessed.

Jonathan Shaw

 Sharif Sehnaoui — Recoil / Recant (Al Maslakh)

Recoil/Relent by Sharif Sehnaoui

Sharif Sehnaoui is a guitarist based in Beirut, Lebanon, where he has been one of the of the forces driving the development of an experimental music community for twenty-odd years. In his organizational capacity, he is a co-organizer of the Irtijal Festival, which brings like-minded performers to Beirut, and the proprietor of the Al Maslakh label. As a musician, he has recorded on his own, as a member of Karkhana and the A Trio. The pandemic determined both the content and form of Recoil / Recant. Given the country’s disastrous economic condition, hard copies just aren’t in the budget. And because Sehnaoui was stuck in his house on lockdown, certain ways of performing weren’t available to him. So, he pursued the concept if “unprepared guitar,” which essentially means that he foreswore effects, electricity and unconventional implements in favor of fingers and an acoustic instrument. The album’s two pieces each clock in at just short of half an hour, and each deals more directly than Sehnaoui has in the past with familiar guitar vernacular. The music often feels like a distanced, abstracted response to flamenco music, whose gestures have been unmoored from their cultural context to wander through the back of Sehnaoui’s mind and out through his nimble fingers.

Bill Meyer

 Terrine — Les Problèmes Urbains (Bruit Direct)

Terrine - Les Problèmes Urbains by bruit direct disques

A terrine is a mixed, gelatinous dish that is cooled, sliced and served quivering on a plate. Terrine is the recording project of one Claire Gapenne, who seems to do similar things to sounds. A random stroll through her Bandcamp page suggests that she has roots in old-school industrial music (ie, pre-disco Cabaret Voltaire distorto-clank, not 1990s pop metal made by junkies for adolescents set on annoying their parents). Gapenne dices simple electronic licks, samples of what might be some household free improv jams and wine-sodden sing-alongs and other sounds that were probably lifted from records, mixes them up with a bit of dub-inspired echo and serves them on a black vinyl platter; it’s up to the listener to supply the quivering. Since the beats jump around a bit, that’s the only way you’ll dance to this stuff. But when no one’s watching, Mr. Jello-shoes, that’s just what you’ll be doing.

Bill Meyer

 Yard Act — The Overload (Zen F.C.)

Yard Act’s James Smith may have one of the most common names in England, but as far as vocalists go, he possesses a rare spark. Given Smith’s thick northern brogue, the most obvious comparison is probably the late, great Mark E. Smith, but contemporaries such as Sleaford Mods’ Jason Williamson and Dry Cleaning’s Florence Shaw also spring to mind. Smith’s words tumble out effortlessly in a colloquial, observational stream, with plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, such as these lines from “Dead Horse”: “Are you seriously still trying to kid me / That our culture will be just finе / When all that's left is knobheads / Morris dancing to Sham 69.” The standout song is “Rich,” which pairs a two-note bassline with some of Smith’s most inspired vocal delivery and a wonderfully executed video. Musically, The Overload struggles a little to match Smith’s fizzing inventiveness, and occasionally the vibe strays too close to 1990s baggy for comfort. Nevertheless, this is a fun and promising debut.