Shivers is a new jazz trio (of sorts) featuring Machinefabriek's Rutger Zuydervelt, though "anti-jazz" might be a more accurate descriptor given their willfully plodding rhythms and murky anti-virtuosity.  What the trio have going for them instead, however, is a distinctive strain of creepy, broken-sounding sci-fi brooding, which makes a great deal of sense for a band named after an early David Cronenberg film.  Appropriately, my opinion of this debut closely mirrors my opinion of almost every Cronenberg film that I have ever seen: an inspired aesthetic and some cool ideas, but it seems like it probably could have been a bit better.
Three new episodes for your listening enjoyment. After two weeks off, we are back with three brand new episodes: three hours / 36 tunes. Episode 697 features music from Beak>, Brothertiger, Kate Carr, Gnod, Taylor Deupree, FIN, Church Andrews & Matt Davies, Ortrotasce, Bill MacKay, Celer, Kaboom Karavan, and Ida. Episode 698 boasts a lineup of tracks from Susanna, Nonpareils, KMRU, A Place To Bury Strangers, final, Coti K., Dalton Alexander, Akio Suzuki, The Shadow Ring, Filther, Aaron Dilloway, and Ghost Dubs. Episode 699 is bursting at the seams with jams from Crash Course In Science, Chrystabell and David Lynch, Machinedrum, Ekin Fil, Finlay Shakespeare, Actress, Mercury Rev, Dave Brown / Jason Kahn, øjeRum, d'Eon, Jeremy Gignoux, and Shellac. Mountain photo taken in Japan by Chris. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
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Flame is only Skodvin's second solo album under his own name (following 2010's Flare), but he has long been quite a prolific fellow in both his Svarte Greiner solo guise and as one-half of Deaf Center.  While I do not yet have a comprehensive command of Erik’s entire oeuvre, this latest effort seems like a significant detour from the bleakly heavy drones that I normally associate with him.  Flame is still dark, of course, but it is more of a gently smoldering darkness than a crushing, oppressive one.  More importantly, this is a wonderful album, as Skodvin's lighter touch, clarity, and increased use of space combine to bring his excellent ideas into sharp relief.
A collaboration between these two artists makes perfect sense, given how both have carved out their individual niches working with rhythmic sounds in non-traditionally rhythmic situations. Russell Haswell has worked overtly in both realms, and his recent work with power electronics legends Consumer Electronics has him going as far as conventional techno beats. Pain Jerk's Kohei Gomi, on the other hand, has worked mostly as a harsh noise artist, but one of the few that has shaped harsh noise outbursts into ersatz rhythms. Split into two discs (one edited by Haswell, the other by Gomi), this is a sprawling, brilliant mass of sound culled from solo recordings and live performances that stand out strongly amongst both their other work.
Last year's Collected Works Vol. I – The Moog Years was one of my favorite albums in recent memory, so I was very much looking forward to this suite of entirely new modular synth pieces from Gengras.  Naturally, my anticipation turned out to be justified, but the meditative, pastoral Ishi has a radically different feel than its moodier, more haunting predecessor.  While I happen to vastly prefer moodiness to serenity, Geddes' compositional talents and intuitive understanding of both space and pacing ensure that Ishi is still a characteristically enjoyable effort.
Over the span of a far-too-short 20 minutes, Ritual Howls manages to plow through a variety of styles that all rank amongst my favorites, with a lo-fi level of production that would make any "true kvlt" black metal band jealous. Even with all this ugliness, however, the material is more memorable than dissonant and at times leans into true song structures that are more memorable than what similar artists usually do.
After what almost seemed like a begrudging festival reunion to play Streetcleaner, it was exciting to see that the pieces were coming together for a true Godflesh reunion, and even more so when the likelihood of new material appearing got higher and higher. Unexpectedly announced as a precursor to the upcoming full-length album, Decline & Fall sounds as if it could have been recorded around 1993 through 1995, because it has such archetypical Godflesh sound, which is reassuring to say the least.
As elements of New Orleans Bounce music has been slowly drifting outside of its largely southern borders, Big Freedia, also known as Freddie Ross, has become the unofficial ambassador for the genre, making various high profile TV appearances and rather memorable live performances.  Just Be Free is his first true full-length album, and has the polish that could gain new fans, but never strays far from his roots and manages to stay undeniably fun.
This is the solo debut from Burch, who is probably best known for being the man behind The Spring Press label. Using a palette of consisting primarily of acoustic guitars and modular synths, Jeff offers up two very different long-form pieces.  While the lazily drifting ambience of "The Nine Points" definitely misses the mark for me, the jangling, mesmerizing psychedelia of the closing "La Perouse" is intermittently spectacular.
It has been five years since Benjamin Finger released his masterpiece, 2009's Woods of Broccoli, which makes it as good a time as any for him to release a thematically similar successor.  Though not quite a full reprise of Woods' lushly hallucinatory aesthetic, The Bet's warped piano-and-sound-collage miniatures make for yet another warmly beautiful trip down the rabbit hole.  Nobody does fractured dreaminess better than Benjamin Finger.
