This 3-CD compilation of singles, non-album tracks, and unreleased material by Amp stays true to their mantra of honoring composition and accident equally. The resulting harmony is by turns uplifting, somnambulant, frustrating, lush, raw, glorious, and imprecise while a hollowness seems to lurk beneath the distorted beauty.
We made it to 700 episodes. While it's not a special episode per se—commemorating this milestone—you can pretty much assume that every episode is special. This one features Mark Spybey & Graham Lewis, Brian Gibson, Sote, Scanner and Neil Leonard, Susumu Yokota, Eleven Pond, Frédéric D. Oberland / Grégory Dargent / Tony Elieh / Wassim Halal, Yellow Swans, Dental waste in Saigon photo by Krisztian. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
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Porn Sword Tobacco's delicate new album reminds me of flexi-discs that once came stuck on the front of music papers, containing excerpts from a band's forthcoming album. Similarly, it succeeds in creating an intrigue disproportionate to its miserly length.
The material that makes up Her Name was recorded across the world over 2006 and features vocal contributions from local musicians that treats the voice not as much as a means of communication, but as a unique instrument unto itself.
While looking at the instrumentation one would expect a jazz album (saxophones, guitar, percussion, electronics), the result is more of a jazz damaged electro-acoustic improvisations that manages to be both extremely minimal, yet surprisingly complex. 
The electronic improviser's first solo release (after collaborations with the likes of Kevin Drumm and Zbigniew Karkowski) is a succinct yet powerful burst of harsh analog noise that is reminiscent of the old titans of Japanese noise, yet still allows for some rhythmic elements that are consistent with the current scene.
It's an odd proposition for a compilation: have the participants, most who are well known luminaries in the modern electronic avant garde world, submit tracks for a compilation that are idiosyncratic by nature, or essentially a very specific piece unlike their 'normal' work. The product of which is a surprisingly diverse mix with little in the way of 'low' spots, and also makes for a great genre introduction. 
On this sprawling double disc compilation (one all new material, the other reworkings of the aforementioned material), there is a combination of an artist trying out new things, but presenting them in the framework of a DJ mix album. It's a difficult proposition, but one that works. 
Earth might well be pioneers, but Hibernaculam feels like its treading water and diluting what made Dylan Carlson's project so great. Cleaned up and thinned out, these three re-versions of Earth tracks and a b-side feel like empty filler. Celebrating repetition over creating atmospheres, this is Earth hollowed from the inside out, the shell of the tracks brittle and insubstantial. By attempting to recontextualize Earth's music within classic American music forms means that it has lost what made it great; the fact they didn't fit in.
