Jack Dangers has been bitten by the dubstep bug and there are no two ways about it. Answers Come in Dreams finds the long time innovator giving in to (or perhaps trying out) the style du jour for a strange distillation of his own sound.
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Although only active for around six years, this Shanghai based noise project already has a sprawling discography that rivals many of the long-standing artists that inspired them, with a multitude of limited cassette and CD-R releases. However, I think this may constitute the band’s first solo, mass produced outing. And with this opportunity, the band does exactly as they should: a 73 minute single track of grating, painful dynamic noise.
While often pigeonholed as a "shoegaze" band, the duo of Lovesliescrushing is something entirely different. Ostensibly doing similar things: Scott Cortez's heavily treated and layered guitar noise and abstracted, mostly unintelligible female vocals from Melissa Arpin-Duimstra, LLC took these and pushed them to the furthest reaches, making little to no concessions for traditional musical style or structure. Here, a selection of pieces between 1990 and 2000 are presented, some for the first time, reworked and shaped into even more abstract forms of glorious noise.
It has only been three years since Sublime Frequencies released the inaugural entry in their Guitars From Agadez series, but so much has happened since then that it is a near miracle that Group Inerane even managed another album. The biggest event: second guitarist Adi Mohamed was killed in the uprisings that followed the coup d’état that ousted Niger’s president. Thankfully, frontman Bibi Ahmed narrowly avoided the same fate and recruited Taureg guitar legend Koudede to fill the void. Unsurprisingly, the new Group Inerane are a darker and noticeably different band.
I have always had a love/hate relationship with Edward Ka-Spel's work–he has written some of my all-time favorite songs (Tear Garden's "Romulus & Venus," for example), but he's also recorded an avalanche of stuff that I was not so enthusiastic about. Consequently, I became an increasingly casual LPD fan over the years and haven't heard their last few albums at all. That being the case, I was totally unprepared for how excellent this album is–I can't think of another band in history that has managed to write some of their best songs 30 years into their career. The Dots' best days are definitely not behind them.
Brian (Lustmord) Williams' long-out-of-print 1994 ode to the vastness of space has been remastered and reissued. The record may sound better now than it did 15 years ago, but I’m not sure that all of it has stood the test of time.
The full 33 minutes of Once in a Full Moon stands as Black Sun Productions finest musical moment to date. This is an ambitious piece of moon music that covers the territory between lunacy, ambition and grace.
The Caretaker is here to take listeners on a trip deep into the foggy subconscious mind where perception, memory, and dream all collapse into a syrupy void. If this six disc set isn't enough murky drone for a lifetime, I don't know what is.
The first thing that drew me to Japanese solo artist Takahiro Chiba(aka Slowly Minute) and his first official North American release wasthe connection with Adam Pierce (Mice Parade) and his NYC-based BubbleCore label. Being somewhat familiar with Pierce's unique approach toblending rhythms and music of diverse cultures, I was expectingsomething equally intriguing and exciting from Slowly Minute byassociation. Although not as high energy as Mice Parade, I was quitesurprised and definitely not disappointed. Tomorrow World'snear-raw mix of generic synth sounds, harp samples, hiccupping RolandTR-707 beats, acoustic guitar and piano add a certain charm to its lushyet strong compositions of weaving melodies and quirky arrangements.I'd been listening to this disc almost exclusively on headphones duringdaily commuting, so even the finest of details were apparent from theget-go. From the polyrhythmic programming and looping guitars andweaving keyboard of opener "The Song of the Sun in Autumn's Holiday,"Chiba sets a very relaxing and uplifting tone which carries throughoutmost of the disc. The repetitive guitar arpeggiation and jazzy ridecymbal motif of "Minutes Made!" lays down the foundation for bursts oflow-end synth squelches, distorted guitars and tom-tom rolls to playover and gradually shift into a more straight-ahead number. Thegorgeous "Little Bird" quickly became my favorite; itsBrazilian-flavored nylon string guitar and upright bass set to odd yetplayful machine beats and dense piano/keyboard/harp arrangements. Withits multiple melodic lines and feel changes, it's amazing that Chibamanaged to piece it all together without it sounding cluttered. "It'sthe Girl Who Goes to Do Some Shopping" turns on a dime from itstecho-esque rhythmic keyboard intro to sampled drum fills tofast-forwarded tape chirpings and dance beats. Although Chiba reliesheavily on the generic keyboard and drum machine sounds without muchaltering, what impresses me most about Tomorrow World is hisability to make the simple compositions sound complex and vice versa.Having recently formed The Lopops as a guitarist, I'm anxious to hearthis undeniably talented musician in a group setting or perhaps on afuture Mice Parade recording. 
Atmospheric tones have always been the trademark of Climax GoldenTwins, and on their latest release the group, who make little effort toidentify themselves beyond their collective name, moves into the moreintimate side of their range. Maybe scoring the feature film Session Ninehad an affect on the band, as the film features one character listeningto old recordings of psychological evaluations; these songs are createdaround acoustic guitars primarily and interwoven with sampledrecordings from over sixty years ago. These samples can be gloriouslysimple, from a conversation to narrative storytelling, or a fathertalking to a child, and when paired with the Twins music andmanipulation they take on a whole new life beyond their quaintbeginnings. Even though the music is quieter and sweeter than otherreleases, there's still an undercurrent of darkness, or maybe just atwinge of mortality here and there. Ominous feelings appear on selectsongs, like the voice at the end of "Every Word in the Bible" or thechild's voice on "Billy McGee McGaw," but these sometimes seemunintentionally so, and the music just seems to fit wherever andwhatever happens. Occasionally, though, like on "Little Noreen," themusic sets the scenario, and in these cases it's almost always asinister undertone. Sparseness is a key element all over, with songsnot extending into grandiose affairs or snarls of noise, just speakingtheir minds with as little words as possible. The album's second trackis the keynote speaker in that regard: called "Upright," the song is avery simple melody played on an upright piano with brushed cymbals, thevery "trick of singularity" as Shakespeare put it. There's littlevocals besides the scratchy recordings, but when there are ("Solid GoldMicrophone," for instance) they fit perfectly, and it's as though it'sa cover of a golden oldie just discovered in grandma's collection,brought forth and updated for the new ears of today. Maybe that's thekey: using technology of today to make songs that could fit somewherelost in time; and that's always seemed to be this group's specialty,never as fully realized until now. 
