There's something about the music of Thighpaulsandra that is quintessentially British sounding, but this compositional four-track spurt from the Welsh Valleys doesn't rely on stirringly pompous anthems or traditional folk instrumentation to do it.
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There’s smoke in the air and beer by the laptops as Guessmencombine heavy stamping of the feet, cheap digital damage overload andmuch growling.
The first new full-length in five years from these drifters could not have been christened any more appropriately. Over three quarters of an hour Windy and Carl build dreams. Isolating all the emptiness and distance sometimes found in the mind and soul, they soothe everything away in a blur of tones that would make the local cathedral sound positively heavenly.
This limited run of rather expensive 7" singles by Steven Stapleton and Andrew Liles are a bit of a mixed bag. It is not Nurse With Wound’s finest hour but it will keep die-hard fans going until the guys get around to another full album. However, for the casual fan this is probably best avoided as the high price and variable quality of the music will most likely leave a sour taste in the mouth.
On their fourth full-length record, Arbouretum turn their churning rhythms and buzzing guitars inward to explore the uncanny spaces of the collective unconscious. Inspired in part by Carl Jung, Dave Heumann's lyrics are featured more prominently on The Gathering, which might explain why the band sounds looser and less aggressive this time around. The change accentuates Arbouretum's strengths and shows off Heumann's stupendous songwriting ability.
Late last year, Southern Lord released a collection of Earth's earliest recordings, several of which originally appeared on their first EP, 1991's Extra-Capsular Extraction. That may prove a red herring for those wanting the band to revisit its pioneering brand of drone-doom metal. Earth's latest magnum opus continues in the opposite direction, building on the gorgeous gothic Americana debuted on 2005's Hex; or Printing in the Infernal Method. Fortunately, Earth have not only recorded a capable new album—they have made subtle stylistic adjustments that pay off handsomely.
The late Curro Fuentes was quite a fascinating guy.  The youngest brother of the Fuentes musical dynasty that dominated Colombian music for four decades, he stayed behind on the coast and started his own studio when Discos Fuentes relocated to the city of Medellin (he found highland food to be "insipid"anyway).  Combining some of Colombia's biggest jazzmen with the most exciting young musicians culled from Cartegena's many red-light district casinos, brothels, and strip clubs, he produced a slew of scorching, sexed-up big band records in the '60s.  Cartagena! assembles many of them, but the high level of quality here makes me think that the vault is far from empty.  I sincerely hope there will be a sequel.
With each project providing a side of the album (or half of a CD), the whole is a series of dark compositions that are as complex as they are intimidating. The best part, however, is how these nuanced pieces sound like no one else.
