I have long been a great admirer of Tom Ellard's prickly, erratic, and singular genius, but I completely slept on this deluxe reissue from Medical Records for much of the year, as I did not recall 1985's Stretcher EP as being particularly crucial or something that I would ever need to own on vinyl.  In that regard, I was mostly correct, but I was unaware that Stretcher had surfaced in so many different variations or that consolidating them all would yield an excellent double album.  Therein lays the genius of this reissue, as such an absolute avalanche of classic material from this era packs a lot of cumulative power.  In fact, this is probably the best single documentation of Severed Heads' golden age available: the brief window in the mid-'80s where Ellard’s deranged and perverse experimentalism started to take shape into eccentric and hook-filled pop structures.

As much as I love Throbbing Gristle, I've long viewed them as a Marcel Duchamp-like entity: bold, brilliant, and hugely influential, but dramatically less potent outside of their original context and in the wake of everyone who later built upon their vision. After a deep re-immersion in their work, however, I can honestly say that several pieces still sound remarkably vital even today and that this album remains a condensed and inspiring blueprint for being awesome (albeit an imperfect one).

This is a simple, yet effective deconstruction of electronic dance music. With Senni's love of house and techno music clearly on display, he strips the clichés of the genre down to their barest essentials, showcasing an intentionally repetitive series of almost fragmented tracks. While at times the repetition can become a bit too tedious, overall the results are quite unique.

On these two live performances, this duo (that previously performed together as Overhang Party) serves up two slow, drifting pieces that hover into minimalist and dissonant spaces, but never stopping or becoming stagnant, weaving together strings and electronics into a mixture that is surprisingly complex and rich for live recordings.

Releasing an entire album consisting of only percussion is never an easy task, but Krakowiak proves that he can stand toe to toe with any of the more established artists in the field, mangling his drums into sounds that more often than not only have a ghost of a resemblance to what I had expected. At times pensive, other times aggressive, there is not a dull moment to be heard on Moulins.

While I still have some minor misgivings about its execution, Nadja have certainly found a way to make their latest release a noteworthy and meaningful event: they have made a rock album (at least, as much of a rock album as could be expected from them).  That is something of a quixotic move, as songwriting and singing are not exactly the duo's greatest talents, but the inspired addition of Jesus Lizard drummer Mac McNeilly definitely makes Nadja's signature doomgaze aesthetic a lot more punchy and immediately gratifying.  It is a marriage that will probably yield some truly wonderful results somewhere further down the line, but Dagdrøm is more of a promising, oft-successful experiment than a revelation or total creative rebirth.

This latest release captures the ever-prolific Shiflet in one his more "ambient" moods, offering a more conventionally musical and slightly less-scary window into his work than his recent, more epic Sufferers/Merciless diptych on Type.  Naturally, some of Mike's noisier and weirder impulses still make their (welcome) appearances, but these nine relatively short pieces balance his harsher textural themes with an unexpectedly varied palette of sublime shimmers, woozy guitars, and some very wrong-sounding violin.  This definitely ranks as one of Mike's most inspired release to date (and possibly his best).

Jeff Carey makes cathartic, head clearing bursts of noise, bereft of any kind of real context. This is the latest in a number of releases from the electronic composer, who employs re-purposed game pads and other devices to create a mixture of arresting high pitched catalytic noise and digitally manipulated drones.

Cankun's music is an exercise in stretching pop hooks to their logical extreme. They push back against standard compositional forms by forcing a rigid, dutiful recurrence on their melodies, layering them with more and more complex loops in the style of electronic music until they reach a kind of psychedelic apex.

Although this is a split release, and the two artists inhabiting each side of the vinyl (or tape) are sonically quite different from each other, the fact that they both inhabit that nebulous void between metal, industrial and noise makes them a good pairing. While it is always clear what side of the release is playing, the two compliment each other quite well.

Following three albums worth of long-form drone pieces, Michael Page (Fire in the Head) has instead returned with a suite of more song-like compositions, with a slew of collaborators, including Jarboe and Danny Hyde. The final product is a diverse, yet cohesive set of tracks that function exactly how an album should.

When I think of Justin Wright's Expo 70 project, I instantly think of two things: "improv" and "guitar."  That is something I probably need to cure myself of: while Beguiled Entropy certainly contains both of those elements, it so thoroughly transcends them in places that I completely forgot about Wright's chosen methods and tools.  This is an album of vision and focus that is far more evocative of nocturnal, neon-lit emptiness and menace than of a guy hunched over a battery of effects pedals.  In fact, this would have been the perfect soundtrack to Drive had Nicholas Winding Refn eschewed retro kitsch for stylized bleakness, paranoia, and retro-futurism.

When Jim Haynes, head of the always fascinating Helen Scarsdale Agency, told me he would be releasing an almost pop record on the label, I was a bit surprised. Here is a label that, over the past 15 years, has perfected the sound of rusting, rotting audio. But with recent Ekin Fil releases hinting at a growing interest in musicality, the idea began to seem less bizarre. The first proper vinyl album from Nicole Carr (also known as Bloom Offering) fits perfectly in this niche. More conventional sounding than usual, but still experimental and challenging in its own way, it is a brilliant record that stands out among the best albums this year.

The latest work from New England's legendary tape manipulator (presented on CD, in a bit of irony) is another work in a series of releases that reflects his more meditative, contemplative side. Like the somewhat recent Dawn Songs tape, Across the Blazer features Stelzer using his array of tape machines to construct vast expanses of sound, less about bent motors or mangled tape, but more the enveloping warmth of analog imperfection. The end product is surprisingly inviting and relaxing, words that are rarely apt descriptors of something generally labeled as "noise".

Newly reissued, this 1982 debut from Adrian Sherwood’s eclectic dub project is an ambitious and occasionally perplexing affair. The album’s subtitle, "Ambiance in Dub," goes a long way towards explaining the unusual and embryonic aesthetic, as does the fact that it was recorded by a revolving cast of guest musicians during a fortuitous window at a well-equipped studio: these are very simple and stripped-down bass-driven songs that leave plenty of room for each individual element to breathe. That is ideal for Sherwood’s experiments with reverb and mic placement, which seem to be The Pounding System's raison d’être: this is very much a playground for Sherwood’s production and recording wizardry. I suppose that could be said of all dub, but it feels like Sherwood is animating skeletons rather than deconstructing complete, fully formed songs. To my ears, Dub Syndicate's later, more layered work holds up much better than the semi-traditional dub reggae found here, but The Pounding System is a pleasant (if uneven) teaser for the more substantial work on the horizon.

Hampson released the exceptional Répercussions earlier this year, his first full length since 2008's Vectors. Now he has followed that up with two more albums, released simultaneously but presented separately. Even though he has become suddenly prolific, both albums are of the utmost quality, and have a distinctly different approach to sound between them.  And yes, fans of Loop and Main, there are guitars.

As the ambitious (and essential) reissue program by Die Stadt approaches conclusion, Tietchens' final release for Esplendor Geometrico's label, and last release of the 1980s, gets the expanded treatment. Heavily steeped in rhythmic loops and metallic reverb, it clearly shows the mark of his industrial period, but also of the abstract direction to come.

This EP is a taste of what to expect on their new album devoted to the theme of telepathy and psychic phenomena. I do not know whether Matmos actually buys the parapsychological theories that inspire the music but, like any of their conceptual experiments, they use the source material to think about their music in new ways. Some of it sounds undeniably like Matmos, but, as usual, they push themselves into novel situations with a long, complex vocal work which lines up with the peculiar subject matter perfectly.

As far as Natural Snow Buildings-related albums go, this sprawling reissue ranks as a pretty monumental and eagerly anticipated event.  Originally released in a crazily limited edition of only 22, this 2008 triple-album is one of the band's most ambitious, yet rarely heard, statements.  Given Mehdi and Solange's tireless evolution over the years, Night Coercion understandably lacks the sophistication and song-craft of their current work, but mostly compensates for those shortcomings with a potent mixture of primal power and sheer massiveness.

Keith Rowe and Christian Wolff have been playing together since 1968, when Wolff first performed with AMM in the UK. Their history together goes back further, a part of the turbulent musical and political eddies set in motion by the New York School and Cornelius Cardew in the late 1950s and early ‘60s. But this performance, recorded live at NYC’s The Stone as part of Jon Abbey’s AMPLIFY 2011 festival, marks their first recorded appearance as a duo. It’s an inspired pairing. Together they produce quiet, sharp, and surprisingly gorgeous music that exemplifies the still radical ideas they started exploring over 40 years ago.