This is Vantzou's solo debut, but she should be familiar to many from her work as the visual half of Adam Wiltzie's The Dead Texan project.  That association was not a fluke, as Christina's musical aesthetic clearly shares a lot of quiet, slow-moving, and nuanced common ground with the Stars of the Lid milieu.  Such comparisons are pretty much inevitable in any discussion of No. 1, but Christina establishes her own voice by embracing impressionist classical music and a brighter, more pastoral mood.
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I was very curious about what The Drift's latest album was going to sound like, as so much has changed since 2008's well-regarded Memory Drawings: Danny Paul Grody fell in love with steel-string acoustic guitars, stellar double-bassist Safa Shokrai left the band, and–most significantly–founding member Jeff Jacobs succumbed to cancer.  The band opted not to replace Jacobs, which left them with the very difficult puzzle of continuing without their primary melodic instrument.  The resultant album understandably loses all traces of their jazzier, more dub-inflected recent work (Jacobs played trumpet), but returns fairly successfully to The Drift's more straightforward post-rock roots...sometimes.
The second outing on compact disc for the anonymous minimalist Eleh compiles three out of print, vinyl-only releases. The eight pieces that make up the Floating Frequencies/Intuitive Synthesis have been tarted up for a digital release and they sound unbelievably good. While there is no new material included, these discs make for essential listening either for Eleh die hards or for those without turntables who have been wondering what all the fuss was about.
I first met Othon Mataragas in Austria at Donaufestival '07 (curated by David Tibet) where he was performing with Current 93. Since then, he has been on the soundtrack to the Bruce LaBruce film Otto; or Up With Dead People and then part of a live accompaniment to the Derek Jarman film The Angelic Conversation, orchestrated by Peter Christopherson. I've seen Othon contribute his pianist skills to Ron Athey's automatic writing performance in London (Gifts of the Spirits), and he is currently working on an collaboration with artist Franko B (Because of Love). His debut album, Digital Angel, focused on childhood nightmares of corporations taking over our identities and features a lovely rendition of Coil's "The Dreamer is Still Asleep," sung by David Tibet. His second album, Impermanence, is provocative, filled with torment that is presented in a profound yet light-hearted way. Othon's arrangements are gorgeous and timeless.
As a collaboration between two artists who are almost impossible to pin down by genre conventions, A Throne Without A King is at times a difficult album, often not resembling anything from either artist, but a different beast entirely. It may be difficult, but its worth the effort to fully absorb what’s there to be heard.
Der Blutharsch's sudden transition from militaristic industrial project to perverse psychedelic rock band was jarring and abrupt, and always a bit baffling. The albums since Time is Thee Enemy! have moved more and more into that direction, but often laden with a sense of identity confusion: the pieces never seemed to come together quite right for me. In this collaboration with Aluk Todolo, however, both embrace their hallucinogenic tendencies in unison, resulting in a brilliantly cohesive album that is equal parts krautrock, psychedelia, and dark experimentalism.
Long-time musical partners Anna Domino and Michael Delory take ten songs from the public domain and recreate them in their own image: the cool detachment of Domino's voice and non-traditional arrangements contrasting with narratives of treachery and murder. As they previously did in 1999 with their much-heralded album Songs from My Funeral.
Matt Waldron has obviously had little to do lately judging by the landslide of irr. app. (ext.) releases that have recently come available. Ranging from very old archival material to more recent compositions (including collaborations with Nurse With Wound and Diana Rogerson), Waldron has unleashed a Pandora’s box of sonic delights on the world. Widely available as downloads from his own site and as limited edition CD-Rs elsewhere, these releases build on an already impressive but far too limited back catalogue.
Roughly ten years ago, BBC's Radio 4 sent Chris Watson to Mexico to record one of the final continuous cross-country trips for Mexico's passenger rail system.  The resultant album is a narrative collage that uses those recordings to aurally recreate that unique and memorable journey.  I'd definitely say he succeeded quite impressively at that specific technical objective, but that doesn't necessarily translate into a great album.
