An extensive double disc collection documenting the output of six French tutees of Erik Satie and Jean Cocteau, this album is a near necessity in any cohesive understanding of France's musical environment in the interim between World Wars. Comprised of Georges Auric, Louis Durey, Arthur Honegger, Germaine Tailleferre, Darius Milhaud and Francis Poulenc, "Les Six" forged an approach generally marked by spare concision, a response to the flowery output of the Romantic and Impressionist tendencies of composers such as Wagner and Debussy.
Two new shows just for you. We have squeezed out two extended release episodes for this weekend to get you through this week. They contain mostly new songs but there's also new issues from the vaults. The first show features music from Rider/Horse, Mint Field, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Anastasia Coope, ISAN, Stone Music, La Securite, Bark Psychosis, Jon Rose, Master Wilburn Burchette, Umberto, Wand, Tim Koh, Sun An, and Memory Drawings. The second episode has music by Laibach, Melt-Banana, Chuck Johnson, X, K. Yoshimatsu, Dorothy Carter, Pavel Milyakov, Violence Gratuite, Mark Templeton, Dummy, Endon, body / negative, Midwife, Alberto Boccardi, Divine. Cow in Maui from Veronika in Vienna. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
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Chicago's Cave have returned with their distinct blend of momentum rock and it is, fittingly, their most fully realized disc yet. Tighter, funkier, spacier and more driving than anything they've done, this is the group at their best, concocting neo-Krautrock grooves that perfectly soundtrack the continued and colorful descent deeper into the new millennium.
Pimmon's Paul Gough has made a career out of constructing dense and complex ambient soundscapes. On this, his first full-length in five years, he shows no signs of rust and delivers a headphone album of striking depth and vibrancy.
Expanded to a duo, Boy In Static abandons its pleasantly derivative dream-pop, choosing something closer to the saccharine sweetness of Peter Bjorn and John—with uneven results.
Area C’s newest release borrows its theme from a passage in Claudius Aelian’s On The Characteristics of Animals (written around 200 AD); specifically one that states that doves can protect themselves from wizard attacks by using bay-tree shoots for their nests. From the same book, I also learned that beavers often elude predators by chewing off their own testicles. I suppose I‘m digressing though. I should probably mention that this is an excellent album at some point. I will find another forum for my ramblings about our delightful and industrious mammalian friends.
Across the 16 tracks on this disc, the duo of Mark Fell and Mat Steel have taken a clinical, sterile study of the most simplistic and rudimentary of classic techno and electro rhythms that, through their deliberate sense of repetition, forces one to hear all of the subltities that are missed when presented in a more danceable context.
Despite having been recorded more than a decade ago with somewhat fledgling technology, Jim's 2001 laptop masterpiece still sounds fresh and vibrant today. That is no small accomplishment, given the avalanche of laptop-based improv works that followed in its wake. 
Conceptually being the audio equivalent of a cross-country drive through North America, this Danish artist combines the somewhat contradictory sonic elements of guitar amplifier hum and feedback with purely digital synthesized tones and rhythms to unique effect, creating a contrast that is not as stark as one would expect.
For many writers (myself included), describing a band as being like "early Swans" is a very easy crutch to use. For those who have at least the most passing familiarity with this era, it calls to mind slow, dissonant guitar riffs, a rhythm section that, at loud enough volumes, feels like getting kicked in the groin repeatedly. And above all, Michael Gira’s growed, hate filled vocals that have been attempted, but never surpassed, by other bands. Quite simply, without this material, it is doubtful that "sludge" or "drone" as we know it would exist. Justin Broadrick may have stuck around in Napalm Death to continue grindcore into stagnancy, Sunn O)))’s members would be in faceless black metal bands, and so forth. Unlike some other works with this sort of legendary status, the LPs and EPs that make up this collection sound just as vital and genre defining as they did some 25 years ago. With word that Gira may be reviving the project, and the consistent influence shown in modern bands, it is a perfect time to revisit this unabashed classic.
Wolves' third album is a solid monolith of blistering brutality that will likely make black metal fans very happy. Unfortunately, the more melodically adventurous Malevolent Grain EP hinted they were capable of being much more than merely brutal. Black Cascade is not the album that I was eagerly hoping for at all, but I suppose Nathan Weaver must follow his dark muse to whatever sinister place it takes him. Maybe next time.
