Important Records has issued many great albums over the years, but it just occurred to me today that they have quietly become one of the best-curated reissue labels around.  Case in point: this visionary 1974 suite of hermetic, hallucinatory solo guitar compositions.  Originally self-released, Samtvogel was later reissued twice by the legendary Krautrock label Brain, which is something of a deceptive pairing. Although he worked as Klaus Schulze's roadie and assistant and had an active presence in Germany's free-jazz and space music scenes in his own right, this surprisingly dark and obsessive early effort bears little resemblance to anything else in the Krautrock canon, aside from perhaps Manuel Göttsching's landmark Inventions for Electric Guitar (which was not released until the following year).
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Survival is the latest project from Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, along with long time collaborators Greg Smith and Jeff Bobula. It's an aggressive, boastful debut record that blends hard rock and metal tropes and elements of folk. Shedding the blast beat acrobatics that made Liturgy's black metal such a prominent force has done nothing to deter Hendrix's songwriting capabilities, or make the music he plays any less exhilarating. In fact, Survival argues to name Hendrix and crew as some of the most talented metal polyglots around today.
It is not surprising that Tom Smith and Rat Bastard's TLASILA project would release such a baffling work as this. Three discs, four-plus hours (more if the bonus downloadable material is included) and more than 60 artists reworking their material. However, Smith took it upon himself to mix the contributions into long form DJ sets, making it an odd and difficult release to listen to at times. However, with the slew of diverse artists represented, both well known and not so well known, the challenge and effort is worth the listen.
I definitely have a soft spot for industrial music that is so goddamn industrial that it is literally just the sound of machines, so I am the target demographic for this suite of compositions built upon recordings from two French printing facilities.  It is very hard to say how much conventional "composition" was involved though, as Offset often feels like pure audio vérité that has just been cleaned up and EQed for maximum impact.  That is fine by me: regardless of how much or how little studio tweaking, manipulation, and multi-tracking actually took place, Meursault's inspired selection and sequencing yields a very coherent, weirdly hypnotic, and intermittently dazzling whole.
This, Zoviet France's first major release in over a decade, originally surfaced last fall as a characteristically cryptic and incredibly limited box set containing rubbings of neolithic Northumbrian stone and a vial of hawthorn berries.  Unfortunately, it completely sold-out world-wide on the day it was released, so most of us never got to hear it.  Until now, anyway, as alt.vinyl has now issued a second (and more affordable) version.  Hawthorn berry enthusiasts will no doubt be a bit dismayed by the hyper-minimal new format (three black vinyl records in three entirely black sleeves), but it certainly fits the music, as 7.10.12 offers up roughly an hour of minimal/quasi-ambient loopscapes.  While they certainly offer many subtle nods to ZF's weirder, more abrasive past, these records feel more like the beginning of a curious new phase than a triumphant return to form.
While it often feels like the sun has probably set on the golden age of noise, no one seems to have told Lee Howard, as this effort sounds like the culminating masterpiece of a man who has been single-mindedly hellbent on perfecting power electronics for years.  It was time well-spent, as the album's better pieces remind me exactly why I became excited about noise in the first place, as there are few things quite as bracing as a masterfully crafted blast of gnarled brutality.  Thankfully, however, Howard does not rely solely upon force alone, wisely balancing his remarkably articulate ferocity with subtle musicality, clarity, and a highly developed understanding of space, traits which elevate this album far above just about every other recent noise release that I have encountered.
Menche was the first American noise artist that I was able to embrace, as his approach to art was not only unique (the first work I heard was him processing the sound of salt rubbed between contact mics), but it also was cliché and pretense free. It was simply the work of a man who loved experimenting with different sounds and ways of generating them. While he has stepped back from his more prolific past, the works that he has been releasing are more fully fleshed out and rich, and these two albums are no exception. With Vilké building upon drums, guitar, and wolf howls, and Marriage of Metals focusing exclusively gamelan, the two are vastly different in approach, but the same in quality and structure.
Having had a few years elapse since hearing my last Masami Akita record, this seemed like a good time to step back in. The best thing about following this schedule with his work is that the variation and evolution he has shown in his overall sound keep things consistently fresh. Takahe Collage covers both his harsh noise past and his flirtations with rhythm in a way that meshes together perfectly.
As only their second performance together, the first consisting of a collaborative live show, the duo of Leslie Low (The Observatory) and Lasse Marhaug (Norway's undisputed king of noise), this improvised performance combines two distinctly different approaches to music and sound, but the combination makes perfect sense and pairs together powerfully.
The fundamental elements of singing and vocalizing are easy to miss in most music. All singers, even the very worst, unconsciously coordinate the various processes required to sing musically, so that respiration, phonation, resonation, and articulation collapse into sung phrases or wordless melodies. Phil Minton and Audrey Chen work to undo that coordination. They break their voices down, emphasizing the dental clicks, nasal hums, and various fleshy noises typically masked by melodies and lyrics. Many of the sounds they produce as part of this quintet—which features two basses, percussion, and cello—are the kind most singers would try to play down. By giving them the spotlight, Phil and Audrey are forced to express themselves in the same way instruments do.
