One of the many things that still keeps me excited about Current 93 more than 30 years into their career is that each new incarnation has the potential to be a stunning or reinvigorating reinvention of David Tibet's vision.  This latest line-up offers up an especially divergent and unexpected aesthetic, primarily due to the contributions of Dutch classical pianist Reinier Van Houdt and saxophone titan John Zorn. Although large parts of Field definitely fall a bit short for me, they are happily balanced by some truly wonderful and boldly original moments as well.
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As a genre or style, neofolk has always been more miss than hit for me. I am a huge fan of the early through mid period Death in June, Sol Invictus, and a few others, but too often it comes across like low rent Leonard Cohen with a questionable sense of nationalism. The debut from Barren Harvest, featuring members of Worm Ouroboros and Atriarch, does not fall into this trap by any means. With balanced implementation male and female vocals and a tasteful use of keyboards with the acoustic instruments, the album is somewhere between Nada! era DIJ and the stronger moments of mid-period Swans, while still retaining its own identity.
About a year since the Norwegian trio released their first album with legendary saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, Ich Bin N!ntendo present Look. Without any guest artists (but once again recorded and mixed by Lasse Marhaug), the material does not differ significantly from its predecessor, and it still makes for a sprawling discordant mess in the most enjoyable way. Like a free jazz metal band playing punk covers out in a garage, there is a visceral, but fun sensibility to be had within all of this chaos.
Konstellaatio is yet another release in Mika Vainio's current prolific spate of recordings, and amazingly even here, alone in his solo √ò guise, there seems to be no reduction in quality. Half of this album channels the minimalist techno of Pan Sonic, while the other half hints at moody, sparse ambience that has characterized his other recent works. Like much of his discography, Konstellaatio manages to have an organic warmth amongst its machine generated noises that slowly reveals more of its character.
Kontakt der Jünglinge, the cross-generational collaborative project between Thomas Köner and Asmus Tietchens had a burst of activity in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but has since remained rather quiet. This album marks not only their return, but also their first true studio recording. The previous four albums were all live performances, and even the non-live disc Frühruin was actually two solo pieces composed in a similar style. In that regard, Makrophonie 1 accomplishes exactly what it should, capturing the duo’s stark, yet somehow inviting minimal electronics with a greater polish and tightened compositional sensibility that the studio setting brings.
This fourth full-length by the revered (yet somewhat chameleonic) David Lettelier takes his techno in a simpler and more spacious direction than its 2011 predecessor (OR) with varying degrees of success.  While I have seen this effort compared to early Autechre or referred to as "IDM" or "retro" several times, it does not feel much like a deliberate nostalgia trip at all to me.  Such reference points are not exactly off-base, but Solens Arc often seems much more like Lettelier has merely discovered that a throbbing, non-intrusive rhythmic backdrop is the perfect framework for presenting his more experimental leanings.
Despite constantly encountering his many guises in The Wire and elsewhere, I never actually got around to investigating the extremely prolific Nick Edwards until now.  As usual, however, my timing is almost supernaturally perfect, as his first effort for Planet Mu is being rather unanimously hailed as his creative zenith.  I cannot vouch for that myself, but Unfidelity is certainly a very cool album, sounding like an especially hallucinatory strand of dub techno mingled with a deep appreciation for kitsch and absurdist fun.
Face Without Face, to me, is the musical equipment of a genre film. It pairs a respected master (Negru Voda) with a relatively new artist (Knös) in a split release of harsh European electronics that offers no surprises nor earth shattering developments, but accomplishes what it intends to. Muffled, bleak and rhythmic, this split is a great throwback to the Tesco/Cold Meat Industry scene from the late 1990s.
2013 was an uncharacteristically quiet year for Horseback. While leader Jenks Miller released a solo record and the band put out a three disc compilation of limited and unreleased material, that was about it. The result of that hiatus is Piedmont Apocrypha, an album that hits many of the touchstones Horseback has worked with before, but as an evolved, more nuanced album that is polished and more complex than what preceded it.
In his 29 year career, Francisco López’s work could never be described as accessible. His treatment and processes of both organic and synthetic sound sources have ranged from pensive to painful, and everything in between those extremes. This, however, may be his most daunting work to date: a data DVD of uncompressed wave files and a total of seven hours. The 17 "quiet" pieces are challenging, yet captivate when experienced in the right context.
