Both of these artists have discographies that consistently combine the worlds of laptop based electronica and the purest, most natural possible human instrumentation into strong, cohesive works, and this collaboration is no exception. With Minamo's blending of folk and experimental electronics and English's penchant for dulcet tones and field recordings, the results are an even more perfect synthesis of the varying styles.
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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Consisting of their first released output since going on hiatus in 2003, this set is a lengthy collection compiling all four Peel Sessions the group performed, most of their b-sides, and their three out of print early EPs before signing with Mute. The result is a five year span of music that will satisfy both the fan who has all of the albums, and the newcomer who has yet to hear anything from the trio.
The fact that Aranos's latest album was recorded live at Prague's Archa theater earlier this year is pretty irrelevant, aside from the surprise that one man with a violin is able to conjure up such an unholy cacophony on a stage by himself. Instead, Archarcha is far more notable for being the formal debut of a particularly violent and difficult new long-form piece, the 30-minute "Concerto No. 42 for Violin and HD." Bizarrely, the album also works as a kind of a perversely effective career retrospective, despite the fact that only one of the four pieces has ever been released before.
Collecting two albums worth of in-studio performances, six live songs split between Jack Rose and Glenn Jones, a pair of duets, and one superb interview, The Things That We Used To Do is an exceptional and insightful document into the talents and personalities of both guitarists. Professionally filmed, recorded, and mastered, it's like the ultimate bootleg for fans and admirers, providing excellent sound and video of two masters at work, as well as copious amounts of information about their backgrounds, their experiences with legends like John Fahey and Robbie Basho, song-writing, and something Jack liked to call "pussy chords."
Over the course of his career, Jim Thirlwell has hugely expanded his repertoire with his Manorexia and Steroid Maximus projects as well as soundtrack work; a far cry and a lot more rewarding than my first exposure to him in my teens as a remixer of the likes of Nine Inch Nails. However, no matter what sideline work he does, when he comes back to Foetus it is a guarantee that the music will be brilliant. His role as a composer has fed progressively more into Foetus (fitting considering the seeds of Manorexia were sown and germinated in earlier Foetus albums) and Hide has a much wider scope than previously encountered.
Dying is an art, and like any other one can do it with grace or go down kicking, screaming, all the while leaving a big mess behind that future generations have to clean up. This album is supple and sexy as death itself. There is no fear in these pieces. They convey the final breaths of a human as being elegnant and peaceful. This music displaces the anxiety many people feel about death. Doing so is a service to the world.
Although specifically composed to soundtrack a documentary about Colony Collapse Disorder called "The Vanishing of the Bees," The Effective Disconnect is not a dramatic departure from the sort of thing Brian McBride has always done extremely well: subtle and serene music with an undercurrent of sadness. As such, it basically feels more like a scaled-back follow-up to 2005's excellent When Detail Lost Its Freedom than an unrelated side-project. It's probably much too subtle to accomplish much in the way of garnering of new fans, but it is certainly a pleasant diversion for those of us converts waiting around for something more substantial to surface from the Stars of the Lid camp (like that damn 
There are very real reasons why Cyclobe albums are so infrequent, as Ossian Brown and Stephen Thrower seem to deliberately eschew or expertly conceal most of the tools that similar artists rely upon (improvisation, chance/randomness, repetition, etc.) in favor of a constantly shifting and deliberate abstract narrative. There is a purposefulness and articulation to Cyclobe’s brand of psychotropic mindfuckery that is very much their own. Their best work (such as this album) feels like a twisted, meticulously composed infernal symphony or an ambitiously nightmarish film soundtrack for a film that no one could possibly make. Wounded Galaxies evokes something far too extreme and abstract to capture with words and images: a deep, timeless, all-consuming cosmic terror.
This trio's approach is similar at times to the musical cubism of the Magic Band but at others they go into overdrive to create a maelstrom of sound without ever completely abandoning melody and rhythm. The group's name evokes the devil, Freemasonry, and Doctor John R. Brinkley's testicular transplants.
Over the course of ten days twelve railway stations were visited and at each a thirty second sound recording and photograph were taken. During the train journeys, compositions were sketched onto scores and later recorded at one rehearsal evening with The City of Exeter Railway Brass Band. The twelve short tracks reflect those brief encounters, hint at the unrealized possibilities and fleeting nature of human life, and seek majesty in insignificant events. Less than eight minutes long and organized into two sections, a reissue of Twelve Stations is overdue.
