Noveller is guitarist and filmmaker Sarah Lipstate, and with this, her ninth studio album, I humbly bestow on her the title "Brian Eno on six strings." Recorded and mixed in her Moon Canyon studio with the rolling expanse of Los Angeles canyons as her vista, her latest marks a shift in mood and sound from her prior release, A Pink Sunset for No One, which was crafted amidst the bustling urban landscape of Brooklyn, New York. Her relocation from east to west coast and new environment have impacted her musical experiments. Pink offered majestic, shimmering, psychedelic landscapes coated in drone and dark synth-wave. Arrow commands an ethereal, awe-inspiring, and expansive terrain awash in swells of cinematic guitar effects that function as mini symphonies. The darkness of her prior work is still apparent, but more evenly blended throughout.

As a former electronics specialist aboard a naval submarine and currently an audio engineer at his own Laminal Audio studio, AF Jones is clearly well versed in the world of sound design and audio processing. This becomes abundantly clear on A Jurist For Nothing given its nuance and production. Various electronic sounds and heavily processed field recordings are of course no surprise given the genre, but the subtle way in which Jones blends in conventional instrumentation, culminating in a Townes Van Zandt cover, is what makes this record most unique.

Ellen Fullman's drones are as massive as the custom instruments that she creates this tremendous music on. She is known for her 70-foot Long String instrument, tuned in just intonation and played with rosin-coated fingers. At first listen, it's a monolithic block of sound, stretching out into seeming infinity. But on closer inspection, there are many subtleties of pitch, dynamics, and surround sound that captivate and maintain interest.

Fitted are Mike Watt (The Minutemen, fIREHOSE, many others), Graham Lewis and Matthew Simms of Wire, and Bob Lee (The Freeks, The Black Gang, Fearless Leader). The names Watt and Lewis should make most music aficionados run for their wallet, but the first album from this supergroup was released with little fanfare. Imagine tossing together the punk of The Minutemen and Wire’s experimentalism, alternately fronted by Lewis’ resigned, wavering vocals and Watt’s staccato uttering. The two legendary bassists provide an onslaught of heaviness, broken by the psychedelic guitar swirls of Simms and Lee’s bright drum beats, and then drive everything home founded on years of musicianship from four practiced musicians.

One aspect of Benjamin Finger's work that I have always appreciated is his drive to continually tweak and reinvent his sound with each new album. On this latest release, apparently his 14th solo full-length, he opts for a loose, stripped-down approach, focusing mostly on guitar sketches that often feel like the demo tapes for a solid shoegaze album. In some ways, it is quite remarkable how far Finger has moved away from the skewed, psych-damaged pop of early albums like Woods of Broccoli and Sombunall, but that trajectory makes perfect sense if his career is viewed like a disintegrating Basinski-esque tape loop: his pop sensibility has not disappeared so much as it has been ingeniously diffracted, distilled, and deconstructed into new forms with each fresh release. That said, Less One Knows has a stronger emphasis on hooks than a lot of other recent Finger albums and that is a welcome development. This album may not be quite as substantial as some of his other fare, but the comparative intimacy, melodicism, and fragility suit his aesthetic nicely.

Over the last several years, it has seemed like each new Seabuckthorn release marks yet another significant creative breakthrough for Andy Cartwright. This latest one, his first for France's IIKKI Books imprint, is intended as a multimedia "dialogue" with Australian photographer Sophie Gabrielle. Given the increasingly cinematic cast of this project, composing an accompaniment for a book of stark and striking photographs is hardly a stretch, but Cartwright's vision has nevertheless grown even more sophisticated since last year's Crossing. Much like its predecessor, Through A Vulnerable Occur showcases Cartwright's ingenious and endlessly evolving talent for rendering his guitar largely unrecognizable as such, yet his emphasis on details, textures, and small scale dynamics is even more pronounced and masterful this time around. Given that Vulnerable Occur crosses the blurry line between melodic "songs" and more abstract soundscapes a bit more than previous releases, it admittedly took me a few listens to fully warm to it. Once I was fully immersed its rich tapestry of layers and nuances, however, Vulnerable Occur revealed itself to be a slow-burning masterpiece of elegantly controlled tension.

It has been three years since Natalie Chami’s last solo album (2017’s dreamlike and seductive Love Sick) and quite a lot has changed in her life since then. Given that this project is essentially a very intimate and abstractly diaristic one, that passing of time has unsurprisingly led to significant (if subtle) transformations in the tone of Chami's vision. Thankfully, her genius for soulful, sensuous, and blearily hallucinatory pop-like improvisations remains wonderfully intact, but Acquiesce feels more like a series of languorous, meditative reveries than it does an emotionally smoldering R&B-inspired break-up album. Admittedly, the collision of that latter aesthetic with Chami's artier, more experimental side was a large part of what made Love Sick such a great and unique album, but her emotional directness, natural fluidity, and strong melodic intuition are every bit as evident and effective as they were 2017. While Acquiesce does not quite rise to the same level as its predecessor as a whole, its handful of highlights are easily as gorgeous as any of Chami's previous work.

Racine uses billowing, amorphous sound as a backdrop for melodic improvisations of various instruments, both acoustic and digitally manipulated. Their creations are pop song length instrumentals that meander, peak, and decay in a highly dynamic, tightly packed box. Surprises abound for those who listen patiently, and moments of the sublime cut through like a glade in a forest.

In late 2019, multi-instrumentalists Clay Parton, Canaan Dove Amber, and Jason Albertini, AKA Duster, quietly announced their first release in 19 years would be available in December. The band have never been a household name—despite being a long-standing influence on indie bands across an array of genres such as slowcore, space-rock, lo-fi, or post-rock—but with this release it is a great time to get acquainted. The same core formula of keeping it simple is still here: as stated by Parton, they try to strip out as much as possible while conveying the same underlying sentiment. However, the 2019 formula leaves Duster changed. If the band were slotted into the slowcore genre before, then this release takes the genre to new breaking points. This is a great thing, because like a rubber band stretched to maximum tension, the backlash from letting go is going to be powerful, but sting on contact. The experience is worth it.

As both an experimentalist and a songwriter, Jim O’Rourke has been responsible for a number of beloved and highly influential albums over the course of his storied career, but he is a bit of a prolific wild card as well: it is damn near impossible to guess which albums will capture him in an especially inspired mood and which will not. That said, his previous collaboration with Kassel Jaeger (2017's Wakes on Cerulean) had some very promising passages that transcended typical drone/sound art fare, so I was quite curious to see if this follow-up would flesh out their shared vision into something truly great. As it turns out, In Cobalt Aura Sleeps is a hell of a lot like its predecessor: fitfully wonderful, but not without some lulls. Nevertheless, it does feel like a significant evolution, as it is both darker and more tightly focused than Cerulean, erring more on the side of "understated" and "curiously constructed" rather than "too improvisatory." Fortunately, those hurdles can be mostly overcome with the aid of some headphones and suitable volume, revealing a satisfyingly strong album that is richly textured, absorbing, and mysterious.

I am an enormous fan of this latest endeavor from Ulan Bator founder Amaury Cambuzat, as AmOrtH was easily one of my favorite albums of 2019. Notably, this latest release marks the project's vinyl debut, which makes it the first album in which Cambuzat's real-time layering has had to contend with actual time constraints. I was not sure how well that would work, as the core Cathedral aesthetic has always been to allow pieces to unhurriedly and organically unfold until they complete their "natural" progression (and the project's crowning achievement thus far is a piece that stretched out for 40 glorious minutes). As it turns out, however, Cambuzat handled that challenge quite well. Given the greatness of the opening "Indignation," it is entirely possible that he simply had a killer 20-minute piece in the vault just waiting for this opportunity to arise, but it is equally possible that he mathematically converted that duration into a fixed number of heartbeats and simply worked from that. While the B-side is admittedly a more minor pleasure, I remain continually amazed by the depth and breadth of what Cambuzat can achieve with just a guitar and some pedals. This is yet another excellent release.

With A New Form of Crime coming out last fall, and a new double LP on the horizon, Matt Weston has been prolific as of late. One thing that sets Tell Us About Your Stupor apart from these other albums, however, is that it is a live recording, although that of an installation project rather than a traditional concert setting. That is an important distinction to make because, having seen Weston perform on multiple occasions, the live experience is a significantly different animal, and that is clearly captured here. As an installation, it would seem that this is more of a live performance augmented by other instruments or recordings rather than a purely live, solo recording, but it has an exceptional balance between live Weston and studio Weston.

Enigmatic Afro-Transcendentalist figure Laraaji has a long, fascinating history with music and is still very active at the age of 76. He is known for being "discovered" by Brian Eno, and working with such underground darlings as Sun Araw, Dallas Acid, and Blues Control. He studied piano composition in college, and then found himself with Eastern mysticism and began improvising with zithers and mbira. This album finds him returning to his roots with an all instrumental piano meditation.

Plone's album Puzzlewood continues in their very specific oeuvre of midtempo music with a playful, childlike hue to it. It's all soft edges and singable tunes in a digital mishmash that includes electronics, synths, trumpet, piano, guitar, strings, and exotic percussion. This happy orchestration yields bite sized songs full of lift and happiness. The album is a comeback after a twenty year absence, and although the genre they helped pioneer has fallen out of favor, their self-consciously retro sound makes their music a timeless affair.

On Microphone Permission, Jasmine Guffond has created some truly rapturous detours and alleyways in sound. The ever shifting musical landscape is like an aural house of mirrors, though there is nothing circus-like about this project. It contains inward, reflective compositions—at times somber and at other times buzzing about—but always interesting and beautiful.

Los Angeles' Flatworms kicked off their career creating psychedelic-tinged and feedback-driven guitar riffs embedded in a foundation of high-octane garage punk, with lyrical content to match. The latest direction finds the trio of vocalist and guitarist Will Ivy, drummer Justin Sullivan and bassist Tim Hellman (Ty Segall, Oh Sees) painting on a less fuzzy canvas, with a more refined sound and finer songwriting precision, with both Steve Albini and Ty Segall in the engineering booth. Segall's '60s psychedelic influence can be felt here, as well as Albini's commitment to high fidelity, but some of the musical experimentation heard on their prior work has been traded in for a more well-oiled machine, albeit a well-oiled machine with punk sizzle.

The debut from Montreal’s Bodywash is an album that sounds lovely for casual listening, but after focused listening reveals deeper pockets of brilliance. In the past couple of decades the MP3 audio format, much in the same way as CDs and cassettes, has allowed for a viable "listen and run" approach. Digital music has offered tremendous convenience but has also encouraged less immersive music listening. With the emergence of many lockdowns and stay-at-home orders, now is the perfect time to settle in and get deeply immersed into a full-length piece of music. Comforter is a work full of familiar and, yes, comforting sounds, and it is a great place to practice immersive listening.

I can think of few other projects that have elicited such a wide and continually shifting range of opinions from me as Portland's Golden Retriever, as Jonathan Sielaff and Matt Carlson sometimes seem like immensely talented and idiosyncratic visionaries and sometimes seem like dedicated revivalists of my least favorite strains of kosmische musik. This new collaboration with Oakland-based pedal steel master Chuck Johnson, however, is unambiguously a marriage made in heaven, as Johnson's warm and soulful ambient shimmer provides the perfect context for Sielaff and Carlson to work their magic. At its best, Rain Shadow feels a bit like a long-lost Brian Eno/Daniel Lanois collaboration, but one that has been updated with sharper edges and a more sophisticated approach to harmony (and, of course, a heavily processed clarinet). This is very likely the strongest album that either Johnson or Golden Retriever have ever recorded.

Ren Schofield might be living in a new country (England) and releasing music on a new label (Alter), but no one need worry about those differing circumstances having any impact at all on the single-minded and relentless brutality of his work as Container. That said, Scramblers is (rightly) billed as a more "high-octane" incarnation of Schofield's punishing aesthetic, as it evolved directly out of his aggressive live performances. To some degree, such a statement is largely academic, as just about every Container album has felt like the techno equivalent of a runaway train, but it is true that this particular album offers virtually no breaks at all in the intensity of Container's splattering and pummeling rhythmic assaults. That is just fine by me, as Schofield's primal violence is consistently executed with surgical precision and visceral power, but more casual fans may find themselves wishing that Container would someday evolve further beyond the mercilessly one-dimensional onslaught of previous albums.

It is a safe assumption to say that most folks who buy a ticket to a concert expect to hear a few songs from their favorite band's latest album; after all, this is how bands showcase their latest music, but also provide fans the chance to hear their earlier work. Anyone seeing Wire since the '00s can assume no such thing; entire tours have included nothing but their newest work, barely acknowledging the fact that they've been around since the '70s. Wire does what Wire wants. Thankfully, they're great at it. It's a testament that Wire can still sound like Wire, maintaining that certain "Wire" sound, and yet continuously reinvent themselves, creating memorable - and fresh — music after 40 years.