With the exception of his 2001 collaboration with Noto and a 12" in 2003, the otherwise prolific Mika Vainio has kept his most respected moniker all but dormant for roughly eight years. Yet 2005 served as a year of resurrection for Ø, with a vinyl reissue of the classic Metri and this curious collection of material recorded during the interim.
Two new shows just for you. We have squeezed out two extended release episodes for this weekend to get you through this week. They contain mostly new songs but there's also new issues from the vaults. The first show features music from Rider/Horse, Mint Field, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Anastasia Coope, ISAN, Stone Music, La Securite, Bark Psychosis, Jon Rose, Master Wilburn Burchette, Umberto, Wand, Tim Koh, Sun An, and Memory Drawings. The second episode has music by Laibach, Melt-Banana, Chuck Johnson, X, K. Yoshimatsu, Dorothy Carter, Pavel Milyakov, Violence Gratuite, Mark Templeton, Dummy, Endon, body / negative, Midwife, Alberto Boccardi, Divine. Cow in Maui from Veronika in Vienna. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
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NormallyI'd be suspicious of something like the Lady Sovereign phenomenon—thehype machine, the registered trademark, the inevitable references tothe name that's on everyone's lips (M.I.A.)—it all feels like a setup, and it probably is. But something about "the white midget" justmakes me want to get stupid and bounce, and I think that's clearly thepoint.
Noise is an acquired taste requiring an open mind and maybe a little background information. I've never known anyone to hear one noise group and instantly fall in love with the genre. Phil Blankenship's noise project is out to make that fact doubly true. Night of the Bloody Tapes is noise for noise extremists. Its fuzzed out, unrelenting, damaged presentation is confrontational and angry. The attack simply never stops on this record.
This will either sound like attractively sweet pop or derivative reminiscence depending on who is listening. I tend to think 90% of the material is total crap and, at times, I can sing the songs Ariel Pink is copying from because his material is so obviously dependent on its influences. It'd be easier to outright hate this record if the songs weren't catchy at times.
A rerelease and reworking of long out-of-print album, this two-CD set was worth the wait. The second CD, Sideways, a remix of the first CD, 1998's Underarms. Underarms itself is a reworking of The Hope Blister's ...Smile's OKalbum. Trying to describe this album is like looking into two mirrorsfacing each other: the music echoes and comes back to itself, rather likemirrors reflecting the same image into each other for eternity. 
Some drones have a spark—a life between the waves of sound that act as a portal to another dimension—others are merely lazy ways of making an album, flat and dull slabs of sound. This reissue of Ambience belongs to the former group of drones: it glitters and shines like the lightning that graces the artwork.
Theartwork and title might be all cute nonsense and adolescent fun, butthe music that comes with it could only be born from a demented mind.Todd Drootin's music has been called "beatpunk," whatever that means,and his live shows are said to be fairly insane. In truth, he makessome pretty crazy melodic electronic music layered with snapping beatsand dreams of three headed monsters. It can be catchy as hell, but attimes it also sounds a little too familiar.
This introductory four track CD-R is the first not-so rotten fruitfrom the newly minted side project from one half of Newcastle uponTyne’s Tears of Abraham. Mein Kinder might freely embrace the tag of‘dark ambient soundscapes’ but the music here is far darker, deeper andbetter than the limitations of that genre suggest.
Thrones is better known as the work of Joe Preston, the man of a thousand bands (Earth, The Melvins, Sunn O))), High on Fire, etc) and of limited edition releases. This is a (thankfully unlimited) collection of various singles, rarities and unreleased material from about the last ten years on one handy disc. It is one oddball collection to say the least.
As I write this it has been seven years to the day since the passing ofBryn Jones. Several labels diligently continue to release andpreserve his music but in recent years Soleilmoon is at the forefrontof packaging presentation. From the metal tin of Arrabbox tothe oversized folder of Alms for Iraq to the fur covering of Re-mixsVolume 1 & 2 to the silk pouch of Syrinjia. And now this. 
