The latest work by Thanasis Kaproulias, like 2016's Sirens, is the audio component of a larger, more multimedia focused piece of art. The other half, a film by Isaac Niemand, is not included this time around, however. These two distinct audio pieces are unified and based on field recordings in two very different locations, the first being the natural climate of Iceland, and the second from New York City. Even with the different sources, both pieces fit together wonderfully, with a harsher first half and a more pensive second.
Hotter than July. This week's episode has plenty of fresh new music by Marie Davidson, Kim Gordon, Mabe Fratti, Guided By Voices, Holy Tongue meets Shackleton, Softcult, Terence Fixmer, Alan Licht, pigbaby, and Eiko Ishibashi, plus some vault goodies from Bombay S Jayashri and Pete Namlook & Richie Hawtin. Solstice moon in West Midlands, UK photo by James. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
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Mark Van Hoen's latest album is the result of a series of live performances with other Touch luminaries, such as Simon Scott and Philip Jeck, that he participated in all throughout 2016. This experience manifests itself in a somewhat different than expected way on Invisible Threads, because this final result is purely a solo work. However, it was these previous collaborations and performances that lead to Van Hoen approaching the record from different perspectives and with a variety of instrumentation, resulting in a diverse, yet overall uniform sounding album.
It was quite an unexpected and delightful surprise to get a new Abul Mogard full-length, as the unprolific Serbian composer seems to only record one or two new pieces each year (ones that get released, anyway). Apparently, Above All Dreams took three years to make though, so I guess that fits with Mogard's extremely considered approach and rigorous quality control. Characteristically, Dreams is yet another absolutely wonderful release, but it is a bit of a departure from what I expected in some ways and it took me several listens to fully warm to it: Dreams feels more like an immersive, slow-burning epic than a batch of instantly gratifying individual highlights. As such, this release is probably not the ideal entry point to Mogard's vision for newcomers, but devotees will find a lot to love about these transcendent reveries, as this album packs a lot of quiet intensity once its depths are fully revealed.
Marisa Anderson has quietly been one of the most reliably excellent solo guitarists around for years, slowly amassing a fine discography of limited releases that occasionally get a well-deserved reissue. The handful that I have heard, however, do not quite capture the full extent of Anderson's powers, as it has historically been very easy to lump her in with the overcrowded post-Fahey milieu. On Cloud Corner, her Thrill Jockey debut and most high-profile release to date, she simultaneously celebrates and transcends her folk/blues origins, drawing in Spanish and Taureg influences and fleshing out her sound with a host of effects, added instrumentation, and overdubs. It is remarkable how much difference making full use of a studio can make: Anderson's virtuosity and gift for strong melodies remain as delightful as ever, but her work has never sounded quite this vibrant, varied, and evocative. Cloud Corner is definitely Anderson's finest release to date (and occasionally also the best album that Six Organs of Admittance never recorded).
Carsten Nicolai and Ryuichi Sakamoto have a fairly lengthy history of collaborations, but this is an especially fascinating (if brief) one: an improvised performance in Philip Johnson’s legendary Glass House that coincided with the opening of a Yayoi Kusama installation. A lot of the appeal unsurprisingly lies in the duo's process, as they used the house itself as an instrument, contact mic’ing the walls and rubbing them with rubber mallets. However, Glass is also quite beautiful as a pure listening experience, striking an absorbing balance between ghostly ambiance and a crystalline and glittering rain of slow-motion glass fragments.
Unsurprisingly, Long Trax 2 sounds like a direct continuation of the first album Will Long (Celer) issued in 2016. Self-described as a "house" album, Long’s interpretation of the classic genre takes some liberties with expectations as far as the style goes.  Sure, the rhythms are there and the primary focus, but Long filters the standard facets of the style through his minimalist approach to sound he established in the ambient space of Celer, resulting in a meditative album that is far more calm than club friendly.
Ester Kärkkäinen’s 2016 debut as Himukalt, Conditions of Acrimony was an extremely impressive release that featured some excellently dark moments within ambiguous noise compositions. For her first vinyl album, Knife Through the Spine, she has fully embraced the early 1990s power electronic scene, creating a dark, disturbing, and at times extremely aggressive record that has a tighter, more specific focus in its sound. However, her unique take on the style, as well as her nuanced approach to creating music results in a fresh, unique release that sounds like no one else.
I still optimistically cling to the hope that Marc Richter will someday release another masterpiece in the vein 2009's Alphabet 1968 or 2014's Black to Comm, but his Jemh Circs project seems to be sticking around for the long haul and is proving to be quite an intriguing diversion in the meantime. Much like the first Jemh Circs album, (untitled) Kingdom is a deranged and fractured rabbit hole of cannibalized and re-purposed YouTube clips, though it feels like Richter has gone a bit deeper down that uniquely post-modern path this time around: this is very much a disorienting and lysergic playground of gleeful experimentation and deconstruction from start to finish. As such, much of (untitled) Kingdoms' appeal lies in its sheer otherworldly mindfuckery. However, the album's second half occasionally allows some unexpected vistas of alien beauty to break through Richter's stuttering and kaleidoscopic fever dream.
Shumoto & The Byrde, the duo of guitarists Austin Hatch and Jefferson Pitcher have collaborated before, but their shared connection with Pauline Oliveros, with Hatch being been a fan of her work, and Pitcher studied under her at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute helped to motivate this collaboration. With eight pieces spread across two records, all improvised live with a small amount of overdubbing when necessary, the duo have created a beautiful and fitting tribute to one of experimental music’s luminaries.
I have made a few sincere attempts to appreciate this shifting German collective over the years, but Datashock have proven to be a very hard act to wrap my head around. At times, they have seemed like an indulgent, improv-heavy pastiche of various seminal krautrock artists, yet they also have moments where it feels like they are actually the rightful heirs to the throne vacated by folks like Amon Düül II and Can. In fact, I suspect the latter would especially appreciate the perverse post-modern genius of Datashock being an ethnographic forgery of their own cultural heritage. I know I certainly do. In any case, this is the first Datashock release that has truly clicked for me. It is still uneven and exasperating at times, but such missteps are a rare exception and the second half of the album catches fire beautifully. While Datashock remain deeply and unapologetically in the thrall of the past, the best moments on Kräuter are inventive and inspired enough to transcend and surpass most of the bands they are hell-bent on channeling.
