I haven't been paying too much attention to Acid Mothers Temple for quite some time, as their formula of tripped-out, burbling maximalism started to yield rapidly diminishing returns for me after a few albums.  Still, I often find Kawabata's periodic departures from his core sound to be pretty enjoyable and this is one such case: a pair of hypnotically repetitive and largely acoustic solo pieces.  It is always enticing to hear what Makoto can do when he is not rocking out beneath an electronic maelstrom of bloops and whooshes.
Give us an hour, we'll give you music to remember. This week we bring you an episode with brand new music from Softcult, Jim Rafferty, karen vogt, Ex-Easter Island Head, Jon Collin, James Devane, Garth Erasmus, Gary Wilson, and K. Freund, plus some music from the archives from Goldblum, Rachel Goswell, Roy Montgomery. Rubber ducks and a live duck photo from Matthew in the UK. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
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This unique husband-and-wife duo only existed for a few short years, but during that tragically brief window, they managed to record and release such a staggering avalanche of material that even Masami Akita might raise an eyebrow at their tireless pace.  As such, navigating their sprawling discography of mostly limited edition releases is a daunting and complicated task, particularly since the difference between great minimal drone and not-so-great minimal drone is very blurry and difficult to articulate.  Thankfully, this (one of their rare few vinyl releases) provides an excellent starting point.
Former Slowdive drummer Simon Scott has been building up to releasing his debut solo album for quite some time and his meticulousness and deliberation were decidedly not in vain. Despite Scott's percussionist roots, Navigare is a glacial and often beatless dose of soft-focus sonic heroin that seamlessly integrates his shoegazer past with recent inspiration from ambient experimentalists like Fennesz and Tim Hecker.
Liam Singer’s second album overflows with beautiful piano playing and the album’s tone is frequently gorgeous, but he doesn’t do much new with his classical style and his efforts have little overall effect. The album works best as dinner music, albeit the type that’s forgotten as soon as the meal is digested.
This improvisatory freakout featuring Nels Cline and Zach Hill was recorded in one day in Chicago. The four long tracks comprising this album consist of drums, electronics, and guitar in fairly equal doses. As cathartic as it may have been to perform, some of its intent gets lost in the recording.
This set of superficially disassembled songs has its roots solidly planted in structured rock genres, but the production lifts it into a gorgeous leftfield. The fake brown paper bag artwork and the abandoned camper van on the cover give the album a discarded look, which is partially true. This lost 2005 debut from San Francisco's Sic Alps (in their trio incarnation) has been thankfully pulled from limbo and abandoned in plain view for the world’s listening pleasure.
Completed shortly before his untimely passing earlier this year, Nikki Sudden's last album is also one of his strongest. While his songwriting and lyrics are as tight as ever, the backing musicians play as if the songs are their own and lend them a distinctive urgency. Sudden will be sorely missed and this album, with its bittersweet mix of melancholy and exuberance, proves why.
A gaggle of faceless musicians toting horns, keys, and a secondhanddrum kit shuffle into a practice space and start tuning up. Over thenoise, a disembodied voice intones, "This... is supreme understanding."A sitar player accompanied by an army of other Hindustani classicalinstrumentalists show up. Without a word, the collected players beginto play, with the mysterious spiritual presence guiding the session.Gurus in the background occasionally drop nuggets of knowledge andteases of enlightenment in between sets.
Most of Edward Ka-Spel's mid-'80s China Doll albums have beenunavailable for many years. The songs themselves have appeared onvarious compilations, but sometimes in a modified form, rarely with theoriginal track listings, and never with the original artwork. Anal-retentive fans have been drumming their fingers patiently,waiting, waiting...
In 1986, Duane Warr retreated to his trailer home with an 8-track recorder to make an album which turns out to be a bit more than a doom-laden, cartoonish amalgam of the antics of everyone who has played air guitar in just their underwear during a dark night of the soul.
