For almost a quarter-century, Boredoms defined eclectic. Little said about them would hold up a few albums later. The band dashed expectations in a way that made even failed experiments seem exciting. Whatever they did, they did it weird; their genuine oddness was the thread that ran through their entire carrier. With their new EP, Super Roots 10, Boredoms break that tradition by relying on remixes to elevate weaker source material.
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When I first threw this 12" EP on the turntable I wasn’t sure what to expect. The cover art gave me twinges of pretentious freak folk, while something in my gut said it was going to be another stagnant piece of guitar drone. However, it is neither, and I was quite happily surprised by the unabashed noisy sludge rock that followed.
One look at the sleeve of this 7" gives a good indication of what to expect. Being a 45rpm disc with 17 tracks total, it’s a good bet that the song list is really irrelevant. Upon listening, it is pretty much impossible (and unnecessary) to know where the tracks begin and end. But one thing is sure, it is a metallic grindcore blastbeat noise assault.
It seems that there has been a recent surge of interest in experimental music coming out of the People’s Republic of China in recent months, perhaps culminating in the recent Sub Rosa compilation that John Kealy 
Lasse Marhaug’s Pica Disk label is shaping up to be a powerful force in the world of noise. In the spirit of this year’s sprawling Incapacitants Box is Stupid collection, here the work of Yasutoshi Yoshida is compiled from rare tapes and CDRs, along with a nice smattering of previously unreleased tracks. It is a chance to hear the development of one of the modern titans of Japanese noise.
In 1973, Gary Higgins and his friends recorded Red Hash, an album that (completely unbeknownst to him) gradually became hailed as a lost psych-folk classic. More than three decades later, he returned to the studio to record this follow-up. The result is most definitely not another minor masterpiece, but it certainly is strange and memorable nonetheless (though often not for the right reasons).
Without doubt, this is the best rendition of Erik Satie’s marathon piano piece to surface. Performed last year in Brussels by Stephane Ginsburgh on Satie’s own piano, this is beautifully recorded extract from the mammoth work is breathtaking. Listening to this in the still of the night is anything but vexating. The calm, contemplative music brings about feelings of bliss and by the end of the recording it is difficult to be annoyed about anything.
Last year, the earliest known recording of the human voice was discovered to have been made in France in the mid-19th century. This limited edition is beautifully packaged but seems superfluous; the brief recording is not exactly catchy and is available easily across the net as it is. I can only assume that there are more recordings made in the same way and it would make more sense to package them up together. Yet evidently only this one recording is interesting enough to be singled out for release.
Om's first studio album with Grails' Emil Amos on the drum throne contains some of the most confident, ambitious, unexpected, and brilliant work in the bands' history. Exasperatingly, however, there is not very much of it.
Christopher Riggs can't keep still, but it is to our benefit that the seemingly ADD-riddled guitarist produces output that makes even the most ambitious musicians and labels blush. Riggs returns with Gold Danny, another venture into perverted guitar noise from the current Michigan resident and former Oberlin Conservatory student.
