Nazoranai's second album is a curious tabula rasa that makes any kind of quasi-objective opinion nearly impossible, as the baggage and expectations of the individual listeners are far more important than the actual sounds that this trio conjures up.  Though both Stephen O'Malley and Oren Ambarchi are physically present, their distinctive aesthetics are most definitely not: this is Keiji Haino's show and it is an entirely improvised one.  Charitably viewed, that means spontaneous, volcanic, and wildly unpredictable free-rock heaven from one of the genre's most singular icons.  Viewed by me, The Most Painful Time is an indulgent, flawed, quixotic, and intermittently compelling attempt to recapture the wide-eyed freedom and possibility of psych rock's formative years.
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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In the past few years, Mike Griffin has been perfecting his own personal blend of musique concrete and harsh noise in his suburban basement studio. His output has appeared mostly in the form of limited tapes and CDRs, but Pilot's Salt is his first fully-fledged LP release. Pared with the recently released Tovarich tape, both releases make for excellent introduction to his ever-growing discography.
Aidan Baker is so prolific that his quality control might be open to question, except any criticism is disarmed by the near-impossibility of keeping pace with his myriad collaborations and solo projects. FortunatelyTriptychs
This may be the first album from partners in music (and life) Faith Coloccia and Aaron Turner since 2011, but the two have been anything but stagnant in those past few years. Collaborations with other artists as Mamiffer and side projects abound between these two restless artists, and the duo are even hesitant to consider this the proper third album. Regardless of how it officially stands in their overall canon, Statu Nascendi is a powerful work that strips the Mamiffer sound down to its organic core.
Culled from two 2012 performances in Japan, the two pieces that make up this album are built from the most simple of arrangements. The way this improvisational trio put these basic instruments together, however, is what makes this album excel. Not a simple or easy listen, it succeeds in that difficult abstraction.
This month, Germany marks two anniversaries of note. The 100th anniversary of the start of the first World War represents one of the darker moments of their history whereas the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall represents a beacon of hope. Einstürzende Neubauten were there for the latter and channel the energy that ran through the divided city of Berlin even still. Through this new project, they connect the dots between the conflicts of today and those of the past while marking the passing of all those who have fallen under the relentless combat and struggle that has plagued mankind since its beginning.
Every once in a while, a record comes along in which the title perfectly encapsulates the music contained within. As a bass/guitar/drum trio, this Norweigian group approaches their instruments with the intensity that noise artists do with their massive batteries of guitar pedals. While I can actually hear the instruments these guys are using, it is assembled so roughly that it might as well be a noise record, and a glorious one at that.
As the final full length release to be released by Clay Ruby under his Burial Hex moniker, The Hierophant is an appropriately dramatic tombstone for the enigmatic project. Esoteric shades of noise and blackened metal color the middle portions of the record, bookended by two gloriously perverse, almost pop songs that standout as both baffling and utterly compelling.
I was completely floored by last year's blackened drone/doom metal epic You've Always Meant So Much To Me, so I was very eager to hear how J.R. Robinson could possibly follow such an out-of-nowhere tour de force. As it turns out, he chose to follow it by essentially doing much the same thing…again. I was initially a bit disappointed by that, as Then It All Came Down is not as immediately striking as its predecessor, nor did it ambush me with any real unexpected twists. Once I listened to it enough for everything to fully sink in, however, it gradually dawned on me that this latest effort is just as spectacular in its own right: Robinson may have revisited his previous formula, but he also found several new and crushingly heavy ways to improve upon it.
Locust's latest album is a definite anomaly, as Mark van Hoen and Louis Sherman depart from van Hoen's usual distinctive and production-heavy strain of hallucinatory electro-pop to ostensibly pay homage to '70s electronic music (sort of).  The result is an array of atypically loose and sketch-like soundscapes that retain Mark's love of processed female vocals, but veer away from the (imaginary) dancefloor and into more abstract and cinematic territory. It is certainly a pleasant listen, recalling at times Piano Magic, an alternate soundtrack to Donnie Darko, and some of Vangelis & Jean Michel Jarre's better work, but it is ultimately a bit less substantial and satisfying than some of Mark's other recent efforts.
