The first new album in several years from this New Zealand trio is a patiently unfurling behemoth that finds them veering between loose rock songs and all-out improvised noise. It is a riveting excursion into shadowy lands of unknown destination, with little to disrupt the veil of gloom.
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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Due to be released on vinyl soon, this is currently only available as a double CD from their recent Australasian tour. Although recorded around the same time as their Boris collaboration, Oracle is pure Sunn O))). There is a move away from the murkiness of Black One but without a total return to their classic sound. Granted there is a lot of droning guitars but there is an equal amount of guitar-free experimentation which is even heavier than I had expected.
Von Südenfed is the unlikely pairing of The Fall's irrepressible Mark E. Smith with Andi Toma and Jan St. Werner of Germany's Mouse on Mars. What results is not quite a post-techno version of The Fall, and not quite the post-punk reimagining of IDM. Instead, it's a dozen tracks of mutant digital funk fighting for attention as Smith drones, mutters, mumbles and hiccups his way through the machines, short-circuiting everything in his path.
Paul Dickow has more than impressed me since the release of Drumsolo's Delight in 2004. Since that time a series of outlandishly excellent 12" records have been released and Dickow has proven he can turn any song into gold if given the chance to remix it (check out his remix of "The Love That I Crave" by The Blow for proof). Future Rock rounds up everything great about those singles and situates them within the context of a solid full-length record chocked full of jazz, rock jams, and dub thick enough to make even the most resigned yuppie learn how to move his hips.
The performances of Dylan Nyoukis (Blood Stereo member and Chocolate Monk label CEO) come across like rinses of an infectious disease. His collaborations end up drenching the other party in a gnarled sheen of vocal mutations like a plague sweat. Fellow Brighton heads Towering Breaker attempt to keep their grip on their own noise/splutter before the maw of Nyoukis gulps them down.
Skye Klein opens Compressor with the furious bitch-slap of reversed bass, cracking snares, and an ominous array of machine noise perverse enough to warrant comparison to Venetian Snares. "Gridlike" is melodic, catchy, and vicious in its delivery, a near perfect combination of song-writing and sonic attitude. Klein tries to maintain that intensity for 48 minutes and almost succeeds.
From the basic description, one might be left shaking their heads: organ improviser Nils Henrik Asheim and electronic noise thug Lasse Marhaug got together and improvised some material in an Oslo cathedral. However, as odd as the setting sounds, the result is fascinating. 
An initial spin of this album will leave a sense of "what the hell did I just listen to?," but a few more rotations and what's revealed is some of the most spastic of free jazz and a set of music just waiting to have a cartoon accompaniment. 
There may not be a more satisfying album than this released all year. Wound tight around the spine of a clear idea is a simple and elegant network of art, music, and performance cemented in wonder. Torch Songs is firm and tangible: a mass of skin, muscle, and bone that strikes and, in striking, cuts a path from earth to the stars.
