I can think of few bands that are as cheerfully single-minded in their aesthetic vision as Esplendor Geométrico.  In fact, I suspect I could have written a remarkably accurate (if vague) review of Fluida Mekaniko without ever having heard it: lots of visceral and hypnotic percussion loops, no melodic hooks at all, plenty of low-level radio wave and static chaos, and some occasional tuneless and rambling vocals from Saverio Evangelista.  Done.  Predictably, Fluida Mekaniko DOES provide all of that, but I keep buying Esplendor Geométrico albums because they also tend to feature at least one or two absolutely mesmerizing pieces where everything comes together perfectly and Arturo Lanz seems like a goddamn genius. Fluida Mekaniko continues that tradition beautifully and even finds room to let in a bit more light and nuance than usual.  As a result, it is probably one of EG's strongest and most listenable albums yet.
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I never know what to expect when putting on a new Ralf Wehowsky album. He has never let me down, but what form of strange electronics and unconventional compositional techniques he employs is always a mystery. Flurry of Delusion is then, fittingly, another extremely abstract and unpredictable work from the legendary member of P16.D4 that is as much random improvisation as it is rigidly structured composition. Maybe. Or maybe not. The confusion is intentional, by the way.
After a lengthy dormancy, Andrea Chiaravalli reinstated his long standing harsh electronics project Iugula-Thor in 2012 and has been active ever since, releasing some of the strongest work of his career. This is the first full fledged release since then, with the prior ones being largely splits and singles, and also features Chiaravalli partnering with Paolo Bandera (Sshe Retina Stimulants, Sigillum S) to create a bleak, but multifaceted record of diverse electronics.
This is a long-awaited CD reissue of a largely unheard 45 RPM art edition LP from 2014. Although the idea of getting a small Steven Stapleton painting with an album was certainly appealing at the time, I was understandably a bit apprehensive about buying an expensive album that could easily turn out to just be a bunch of regurgitated studio scraps or live recordings.  I passed.  As it turns out, however, The Great Ecstasy was (and is) actually a surprisingly excellent and cohesive album.  More importantly, this reissue appends another great rarity to the original release in the form of Silver Bromide's "Circles of Confusion," which is one of my favorite NWW pieces in years.  Given that copies of Silver Bromide are currently going for $1500, this humble CD holds an awful lot of appeal.
Few current artists are as consistent and reliably absorbing as William Basinski, as he has carved a wonderful career out of conjuring work of hypnotic beauty from simple, well-chosen snippets from his backlog of decaying tapes.  It is not nearly as simple a formula as it sounds, but Basinski always manages to make it look effortless anyway.  Recently, however, he seems to have become a bit restless with that aesthetic, as he transformed the more traditionally Basinski-esque The Cascade into The Deluge with the aid of some feedback loops of varying lengths.  A Shadow in Time is an even more radical leap forward, as the title piece feels like a pile-up of blurred tape loops woven into a vibrantly shifting composition.  The other piece, Basinski's gorgeous tribute to David Bowie, is admittedly a bit less adventurous in structure, but is not devoid of unexpected twists either.
Rashad Becker’s 2013 debut album was a singular and radical work of art, resembling nothing less than field recordings from a sinister extra-dimensional jungle.  For this follow-up, however, he apparently opted not to try to blow my mind a second time and instead just deepened and expanded upon what he had already done previously.  Naturally, the second volume is every bit as deranged and wrong-sounding as the first, so my favorite hallucinatory and Lovecraftian aural nightmare essentially just became twice as long.  I am quite fine with that state of affairs.
Staalplaat's tireless trawl through Bryn Jones's endless archive yielded yet another fine pair of releases to close out 2016.  Jerusalaam, the stronger and more traditionally Muslimgauze-esque of the two,  is not so much a new find as it is a straight-up reissue of the fourth album from 1998's Tandoori Dog boxed set.  However, that absorbing and varied release is expanded with a couple of lengthy unused pieces recorded for the Return of Black September album.  The much stranger Mohammad Ali Jinnah album has an even more perplexing and convoluted provenance, as it is basically an alternate version of 2002's Sarin Israel Nes Ziona, with significant variations in sequence and song lengths.  Staalplaat rightly describes it as "a release unlike anything else in Jones' discography," as classic Muslimgauze fare rubs elbows with some rather spirited forays into frayed breakbeats, experiments in obsessive repetition, and four-on-the-floor house thump.
I think at some point in the near future Richard Chartier will be releasing new material under his own name again, but as of late his focus has been on his Pinkcourtesyphone project. There are similarities between the two monikers, but PCP tends to eschew the conceptual academics of his other work for the sake of tongue-in-cheek kitchiness, but still is an unabashed showcase for his subtle touch when it comes to performance and composition. Additionally, this new record shows him honing his craft even more, making for his most fully realized album to date.
For Eric Hardiman’s Rambutan project, 2016 was an uncharacteristically quiet year. This new tape from the Upstate New York multi-instrumental experimentalist did not appear until November, and as best as I can tell it was the only release of the year. Perhaps that singular focus on this album was a good thing, because Universal Impulses is another fascinating release, up there with Remember Me Now and Inverted Summer as a complex, beautiful and mysterious work.
Richard Skelton was atypically quiet in 2016, as he and Autumn Richardson seemed to be focusing primarily upon their publishing ventures, poetry, visual art, and Skelton's esoteric and multifarious research projects.  Fortunately, however, the duo managed to release this EP in December to accompany a series of collages they completed during a month-long residency in the Orkneys.  While it only clocks in at a lean 20 minutes, Earth by Means of the Currents is one of the more focused and powerful releases in the duo’s collaborative oeuvre, featuring both a solid foray into their warmly beautiful drone comfort zone and a buzzing, gnarled plunge into its negative image.
