It is rare for me to get very enthusiastic about tour-only releases, as I feel that artists generally want their best material to be heard by as many people as possible rather than just a handful of collectors.  This compilation of The Legendary Pink Dots’ ephemeral holiday EPs was an exception though, as it has always driven me slightly crazy that I had missed the boat on so many special one-off releases.  Also, Edward Ka-Spel always seemed like the rare artist who might be unpredictable and prolific enough to cheerfully release his best material in an incredibly limited edition.  Upon hearing the sprawling Festive, I can safely say that that was not the case, as a lot of LPD's holiday epics tend to be drifting, understated soundscapes or amusing experiments in twisting and tweaking samples, but a few pieces are legitimately striking and the cumulative effect of all this material at once is pleasantly overwhelming.  As such, this prolonged plunge into the benignly deranged holiday rabbit hole is strictly for fans of the Dots' more abstract and unrepentantly indulgent side.
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It has been an interesting couple of years for the former holy trinity of the UK’s blackened and gloom-shrouded post-industrial dance deconstructionists: Raime picked up guitars and turned into a post-hardcore band, Haxan Cloak started collaborating with Björk and composing film scores with NIN's Atticus Ross, and Demdike Stare doubled-down hard on their techno roots with a series of extremely beat-oriented 12" singles.  Sean Canty and Miles Whittaker’s latest full-length roughly picks up right where the extremely varied Testpressing series left off, leaving behind most of the duo's more indulgently bleak and bombastic tendencies for something considerably more visceral, pared-down, and propulsive.  While I almost always favor the more abstract/drone side of the spectrum to the dancefloor, Demdike Stare prove to be the rare exception to that rule, as they are a hell of lot more listenable when their darkness is more understated and spectral.  Some more melody admittedly would be nice, but Wonderland is quite a strong, striking, and beautifully focused work.
There is a distinctly lo-fi theme that runs through Colin Blanton's (ant'lrd) newest release. The three lengthy pieces are all nicely covered in a light haze of noise and distortion, but it never fully obscures the beautiful melodies and motorized rhythms that lurk beneath that scratchy, decaying surface. Instead, that element of dirt and grime enhances what it covers, resulting in an album that wonderfully blends the raw with the delicate.
One important lesson that I have learned over the years is that promising-sounding collaborations between experimental music artists are almost always disappointing, as the resultant releases tend to be half-baked edits and reworkings of improvised jams that occurred when all the musicians involved happened to be in the same town for a day.  Consequently, it was a delight to discover that this trio of Aidan Baker,  Andrea Belfi, and Erik Skodvin feel like the exact opposite of that. While this second full-length for Miasmah was admittedly improvised over the course of a couple days in Berlin, Palace is the work of a band with both strong vision and razor-sharp focus. Of the three artists involved, Palace is most similar to Skodvin's solo aesthetic, but these deliciously tension-filled and slow-burning reveries easily transcend the sum of their parts.
Following up her excellent album Gather & Release from earlier this year on Category of Manifestation, percussionist Sarah Hennies showcases her continually developing skills as both a composer and performer. Intentionally stretching the definition of what truly constitutes percussion at times, Everything Else is another distinctly different, yet no less amazing entry in her discography.
As an ostensibly cultured person, I pay embarrassingly little attention to current activity in the modern classical and jazz scenes, which is likely a lingering remnant of my uncompromisingly punk/DIY-centric formative years.  For the most part, this has not backfired on me, but occasionally something absolutely amazing manages to pass by me totally unnoticed, such as Michael Gordon's staggering minimalist epic Timber (2011).  Thankfully, fate has conveniently intervened to give me a second chance to celebrate the joys of this singular percussive masterwork, as it has now surfaced yet again as a live album with a companion disc of remixes from a murderers' row of experimental luminaries like Fennesz, Tim Hecker, Oneohtrix Point Never, Squarepusher, and Ikue Mori.  For the most part, the original piece proves extremely difficult to improve upon, but several of the remixers certainly make a compellingly valiant effort.
Sarah Davachi’s impressively prolific 2016 finally winds to a close with this release, which is arguably the finest of her three albums this year.  Following the uncharacteristically acoustic/organic All My Circles Run, Vergers again returns to the synthesizer (in this case, a rare, vintage, and analog EMS Synthi 100), but the two albums are actually not all that different: a completed Sarah Davachi album always sounds languorous, gently hallucinatory, and elegantly minimal regardless of how it originally started.  In any case, the big draw here is the opening 20-minute epic "Gentle So Gentle," as it is easily one of Davachi's strongest and most beautifully sustained compositions to date.
