There's a saying something to the effect of "You'll never be as good as your first album," and for Frank Tovey, his second Fad Gadget record doesn't make a good argument against that statement. In 1981, Tovey seems to have been trying to distance himself from the electro domination that prevailed throughout his first singles and much of Fireside Favourites. Depeche Mode were graduating from opening for Fad Gadget to headlining their own shows, and Mute was being recognized as a home to many synth-dominated acts. Tovey made choices that may have suited him right at the time but years later I don't think they hold up so well.

In theory, this doesn't seem like it should not be an especially noteworthy album, as Brad Rose is constantly collaborating with other musicians and has already amassed a vast, Merzbow-esque discography under many, many guises and I am fairly unfamiliar with his foil this time around (guitarist Pete Fosco).  Also, this is already the fourth Concessionaires release.  In reality, however, this duo conjures up one hell of a crushing, synth-heavy futuristic dystopia.

I've grown to expect unusual albums from Daniel Padden and this one did not disappoint me.  Much like Sublime Frequencies and Harappian Night Recordings, Ship Chop is the product of an omnivorous love of indigenous and exotic music from around the world: Padden took his favorite records and turned them into collage pieces that inventively combine previously unrelated cultures and sounds. Most remarkable about the album, however, is how exacting he was with his editing.  This easily could have been a murky and surreal miasma of overlapping recordings, but it isn't.  Instead, this album is surprisingly coherent, sharp, and hook-filled.  While there quite a few shorter pieces that are too brief to be satisfying, the handful of more extended songs are pretty unerringly excellent and it all forms a memorably warped whole.

Michal Jacaszek is one of the few contemporary composers around who is able to blend classical themes and instrumentation with digitized noise without sounding forced or unnatural.  It's a very distinctive aesthetic that he has been honing for a decade now and it seems to grow more refined with each new album.  Glimmer doesn't stylistically diverge at all from my expectations, but Jacaszek has made some definite improvements in building textural layers and balancing his characteristic gloom with some warmth and movement.  Those minor tweaks collectively make a big difference, as this might be his finest album yet.

When I first found Throbbing Gristle's live album, I expected it to be the ultimate TG time capsule--preserving TG's live sound for future generations—but the band had other plans.  Rather than a live recording made at a pubic gig, Heathen Earth was a contrived and controlled affair that captured the sound of Throbbing Gristle performing for an invited audience in their studio. Rather than a blistering assault, it played more like a subdued (albeit menacing) jam session. They never made it easy.

Ten years ago this week a heart attack ended Frank Tovey's life. To this day, Fad Gadget has still not achieved "household name" status but Tovey's music continues to have an influence both directly and indirectly on music across numerous genres and ages. This month Brainwashed is going to honor his work by tackling each Fad Gadget album.

In a move that can only be described as "classic Heemann," Plastic Palace People 2 exhumes and recombines recordings from a 20-year-old collaboration.  These aren't just unheard remnants from the vault though: a lengthy and very recognizable segment of Mimyriad is reprised.  In fact, this can easily be viewed as a third version of that album–while most members of Mimir are not represented, their absence is not especially noticeable (given the nature of the music) and the two albums follow a similarly drifting, abstract, and long-form structure.  I think this incarnation definitely improves on the previous ones in most ways, but the whole endeavor is still as puzzling as it is revelatory.

Taking a step away from his singer-songwriter dabblings and harsher noise outputs of Burning Star Core, Yeh's 1975 is a piece of sound art that occasionally flirts with musical elements, but prefers to stay in the realm of abstraction, with a healthy sense of humor to boot. While it might not feel like an album in the traditional sense, the pieces that make up this disc still come together strongly, making for a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Time of the metronomic kind gives shape to music. It defines the tempo of a song, fixes when sounds should and shouldn’t be played, and determines mood as surely as major and minor keys do. On 2 Seconds/B minor/Wave, Michael Pisaro and Taku Sugimoto reverse that relationship and employ sound to illuminate the physical shapes and vaulted spaces of time. The product of independent performances, this album comes together in an astonishingly cohesive way, meaning that besides being a perspective-bending and aleatoric success, it is also a beautiful 60 minutes of music. Listen closely or let it pass over you, either way it furnishes many rewards.

For his second solo effort, Deerhunter's Lockett Pundt abandons his experimental tendencies and throws himself wholeheartedly into making chiming, sun-dappled guitar pop.  On one hand, this album is much more focused, hook-filled, and filler-free than The Floodlight Collective.  On the other hand, he absolutely should not have done that, as he was much more compelling before.

Maximalism is in vogue for electronic musicians right now. With the rise of commercialized dubstep (aka "brostep"), this trend is unlikely to be reversed in 2012. Luckily, John Talabot is making fantastically balanced, listenable dance music a bit left of center; his debut album, ƒIN, downplays the genre's current above-ground trends in favor of his own nuanced production.

It has been a few years since Terry Riley has released an album with any meat to it. This double CD represents the first major recorded work Riley has done in a long time and it is a sprawling and intense journey. However, it is far from a return to form and a number of flaws get in the way of this being listed alongside his classic works.

This is the first of two collaborative albums between Jim O’Rourke and Christoph Heemann and represents some stunning spaced-out collage work by both artists. While it lacks the variance of Vol. 2, this particular work is a master class in using a very limited palette of sounds to create a massive emotional impact. The duo are almost painterly in their craft, shading and blending the different tones into each other rather than allowing any discrete patterns to emerge.

Jakob Olausson follows up his acclaimed album Moonlight Farm with another entrancing record. Its hypnotic quality comes partly from song structures which seem looser than they actually are, and from the stark contrast between emotionally raw lyrics, some sparkling guitar notes, and his doubled or heavily echoed voice.

This live recording from 2009 sees Steven Stapleton and Colin Potter team up with Fabrizio Palumbo, Paul Beauchamp and Julia Kent to perform one of, if not, the classic Nurse With Wound album Soliloquy for Lilith. I cannot pretend that they have succeeded in recreating that amazing work but they have made something equally engaging if aesthetically different to the original. Stapleton is still acting as an aerial or a receiver for the basic sound but the other players build on it to form an entirely novel and separate entity.

Despite a career spanning decades as both a performer and music theorist, Ustad Abdul Karim Khan rarely played in front of a microphone. This album is just an instance in his artistic life, recorded in Bombay only a handful of years before his death but it shows a singer in his prime. His command of his voice and reverence for his art comes through the fog of the 78 recordings with a vigor undiminished by time or culture.

As much as I enjoy all of the musicians involved, the recently reincarnated Fenn O'Berg has thus far failed to recapture the deranged magic of their early years for me.  They can still be quite good though (and occasionally surprising).  These recordings from their 2010 Japanese tour share some of the muted, brooding tone of 2010's In Stereo, but also demonstrate that this laptop trio has not entirely abandoned their more wild, spontaneous, and absurdist tendencies.  I'm not sure if that necessarily makes In Hell stronger than its predecessor, but it at least seems a bit more striking and memorable.

For the third installment of what has become a yearly tradition, three of contemporary music's foremost free improv players joined forces for a three-hour live show in Melbourne, Australia. The four tracks on Imikuzushi are excerpts culled from that blistering performance.