Over the last several years, Hallow Ground’s eclectic curatorial instincts have hit the mark so frequently that I am now deeply curious about anything they release from any artist completely unknown to me. While I do quite not love everything they release, they have unearthed quite a few lost post-industrial gems and are often far ahead of the curve with promising new artists or projects. This project from Daniel Alexander Hignell very much falls into the latter category, wielding the conceptual complexity of a less mischievously arch Hafler Trio to craft a seismic drone opus that falls in roughly the same league as greats like Eliane Radigue and Phill Niblock. The album's second half is admittedly a bit less revelatory, but it does not matter because the opening piece is such an absolute monster.
Ten years ago, Analog Africa released the landmark African Scream Contest, an album that instantly established the fledgling label as one of the most intriguing and distinctive imprints in the global crate-digging milieu. It was not exactly a perfect album, but it was certainly a perfect and resounding statement of intent, plunging deep into an eclectic vein of forgotten African funk outside the celebrated regions documented by Soundway, Strut, and Ethiopiques. To celebrate that auspicious anniversary, Samy Ben Redjeb has released one hell of a sequel. Sadly, it will not make quite the same impact as its predecessor, as a new label can only burst onto the scene once, but African Scream Contest 2 is actually the superior album in many ways. Admittedly, some people will be disappointed that a bit of the weirdness and rough edges have been sanded away, which is a category that I would normally expect myself to fall into. Redjeb has gotten significantly better at his job over the last decade though and that definitely shows here, as this latest installment is pared down to a wall-to-wall feast of tight grooves and great hooks that never overstays its welcome.
This first studio album from the formidable duo of Peter Brötzmann and Heather Leigh took me an unexpectedly long time to warm to, as it was not at all what I was expecting (skwonking and rapturous free-form flame-throwing). Instead, Sparrow Nights is something considerably more stark, novel, and challenging, unfolding as a uniquely surreal fantasia of alternately gnarled and lyrical saxophone passages over a disorientingly woozy and shifting bed of blurred pedal steel. That said, there are a few comparatively volcanic eruptions of catharsis to found as well, yet the true genius of this album lies primarily in its sprawling and immersive strangeness. As a cumulative and complete work, Sparrow Nights achieves the transcendent indulgence of prime My Cat is an Alien, leaving me feeling weirdly drugged, disoriented, and transformed by the time the last notes fade. That is not a particularly lucrative or instantly gratifying niche, obviously, but Sparrow Nights is more of a legitimate event than it is a mere album.
Phill Niblock is an artist that, despite his penchant of expansive, subtle and nuanced recordings, always seems to make every release an epic one. His fifth album for the label (hence the title) is yet again another double disc one that holds only five compositions. Although it takes a conceptually similar approach to those albums, namely Niblock's use of layered instrument drones with microtonal adjustments to pitch, it still has a different feel when placed alongside his other releases.
Vitiello and Berg have collaborated before on 2009's The Gorilla Variations. Like that work, the two improvise together, Vitiello primarily on guitar and Berg on clarinet and vocals. However, due to heavy amounts of processing and editing, only a ghost of untreated instruments shine through, resulting in an album rife with sadness and longing, but never in an overly bleak or depressing way.
The Stranger’s second album sounds very different from his 2008 release Bleaklow. Whereas that debut was doused with a sense of trekking over ancient stones and moors of Northern England, this record feels much more interior, claustrophobic and urban. The rhythms boom and snake through a threatening, shattered, dystopia like rats crawling through pipes beneath a recently evacuated building.
An entire album's worth of field recordings can be a daunting proposition. As an added instrument, they often are mixed into other albums all the time to great effect, but the idea of a full album of nothing else can be intimidating, unless it involves Chris Watson.  However, this five artist/one track performance works splendidly, emphasizing the varying elements of the genre and staying compelling throughout its nearly 18 minute duration.
A six year absence means nothing to Melt-Banana. Fetch is a minor refinement of past efforts in the band's 20 year career, unraveling over a bevy of short, aggressive songs to reveal itself as either an irreverently noisy pop album, or an intermittently poppy noise rock album, depending on your point of view. They have a knack for straddling the fence between kitsch and the vaguely obscene, and that grey area has never seemed so lived-in and comfortable as on their newest work.
