another new objective

Here’s something that has to be seen to be believed; fortunately, we have the video evidence.  Those who are in Munich this Wednesday will also have the rare opportunity to experience Sharper Than a Needle in person at the album release event. The instruments used by ensemble Dressed in Sound include spindles and spools, zippers and needles, knitting and sewing machines, a spinning wheel, even…

When one is asked to summarize one’s travels, for Verónica Cerrotta a month in the city of Valparaíso and a pair of festival appearances, one may respond in varying fashions.  On Álbum de Viaje, Cerrotta offers a pair of side-long soundscapes; one travels through time and space, while the other condenses time. Together, they offer complementary ways of preserving experience through sound. The…

28 years after the wintry North, BJ Nilsen has released a surprise companion piece as Hazard.  That’s a long time, but as one looks back, one gains perspective on earlier works.  Winter is approaching in the Southern Hemisphere, which makes the release date fitting for these regions ~ even if these sounds of snow, ice and wind come from the Arctic north. The title, Pre-Lapsarian, refers to the…

Firas Shehadeh’s Depth Map transforms noise music into an act of forensic listening. Where 2025’s The Heaviest Shrouds Are The Smallest Ones unfolded like splinters of raw grief and collapse, Depth Map feels colder, more systematic: an attempt to trace what Shehadeh calls “the infrastructure of technologically advanced barbarism.” Built from live improvisations in noise, loops, and field…

When considering the title, one might imagine the answer as “sound,” as the post-rock collective Hanry, as the album, or all three.  Defined as a “meditation on emergence,” What Came From Silence is a celebration of music and a coming-out party for the French band, who has released a series of EPs and singles leading up to this full-length debut. The core trio becomes a quintet for this release,…

Brussels’ Unfathomless label returns with a pair of complementary releases, each a single album-length work.  Tossapol imagines two museums, one real and one imaginary, while Ludovic Medery walks through the Colonster Woods, gathering sonic impressions.  These are the 94th and 95th releases on the imprint as they approach their celebratory centennial. When Tossapol was a child, a new science…

A Requiem is the gift that keeps on giving.  First came the exquisite parent album, followed on Halloween by the companion piece Æternum, and now a reworked version that in many cases completely transforms the original versions, making OPVS NOVUM: A Requiem Reworked sound like an entirely new project. Even before the reworks, Penelope Trappes has established herself as a sonic chameleon.…

Kyiv’s ummsbiaus is simultaneously developing two complementary musical careers.  The first is the path of FAVNA and FLORA, vocal releases that honor and celebrate feminine power through nature and myth. The second is a slate of suites: Enerhomor Suite, Metro Suite, Hydroelectric Suite and Intervals Suite, mostly instrumental works that incorporate field recordings and reflect on the current…

Are you ready to embark on a sonic adventure? Travelogue [Thailand] is the third in an ongoing series from the Touch imprint, in which two artists meet in a designated location and record an audio diary of their experience: first Nepal, then Bali and now Thailand. Over the course of nine days, CM von Hausswolff & Chandra Shukla visited multiple locations in Chaing Mai, from hotels to museums to…

After debuting in January with Evening, window, a lovely loop-based work on Dragon’s Eye Recordings, Helsinki’s miska lamberg has returned with stillness in their isolation on Sawyer Editions, part of the Batch 7 Bundle that also includes works from Annie Dodson, Dylan Kerr, Michael Pisaro-Liu and Manja Ristić.  The two recordings display a trajectory in which field recordings rise from the…

ACL readers may remember Bambi OFS (Cédric Dambrain) from the hyperkinetic EP Yakka.  Since then, the Brussels artist has released the EP Kwon-9, whose remixes fleshed it out to the length of an LP, and now Minke.  Should one wish, one might view these releases as a trilogy. The covers suggest a different interpretation.  The extroversion of Judith Becker’s photo of a Bebuten ceremony in Bali…

Humor, play, fun.  These words are bandied about in the press release for The Endless Dance, a sky blue LP that sparkles like spring.  The vibrant template of the cover suggests an array of flowers bursting from the earth, the artists cleverly disguised in the collage. Head straight to track two to jump into the fun.  This is where Beibei Wang starts reciting a Chinese tongue twister, turning it…

Imagine living in the “best town,” a rural community of friendly neighbors surrounded by natural beauty, and then being forcibly displaced so the government could make nuclear bombs.  This is what happened to the shellshocked citizens of Ellenton, South Carolina in 1951.  A research project at the nearby Savannah River, testing birds to see if they were still radioactive (they were) prompted the…

What would happen if one were to mix LSD with fundamentalist Christianity?  Hammock‘s Marc Byrd learned the answer when watching the moonrise and mistaking it for the apocalypse.  Looking back, Byrd writes of “letting go of toxic shame and bad religion, while holding onto what is good, beautiful and true.” Rather than lamenting the delayed rapture, he writes, “Seeing and experiencing a moonrise…