Kevin Tomkins and Paul Taylor’s legendary Sutcliffe Jugend project has alternated between periods of being extremely prolific, followed by utter silence ever since its inception. Their first albums as SJ appeared in 1982, one of which was the legendary 10 tape We Spit On Their Graves, then no new material for 14 years. The pattern has repeated ever since, though admittedly not to the same extremity. S L A V E S, a six CD release, capped off a busy 2016, preceded by three other full length albums. Sprawling is an appropriate term, but it is very well developed, varied, and also makes clear that Tomkins and Taylor have no intent of staying in that narrow box most associate with the project.
Three new episodes for your listening enjoyment. After two weeks off, we are back with three brand new episodes: three hours / 36 tunes. Episode 697 features music from Beak>, Brothertiger, Kate Carr, Gnod, Taylor Deupree, FIN, Church Andrews & Matt Davies, Ortrotasce, Bill MacKay, Celer, Kaboom Karavan, and Ida. Episode 698 boasts a lineup of tracks from Susanna, Nonpareils, KMRU, A Place To Bury Strangers, final, Coti K., Dalton Alexander, Akio Suzuki, The Shadow Ring, Filther, Aaron Dilloway, and Ghost Dubs. Episode 699 is bursting at the seams with jams from Crash Course In Science, Chrystabell and David Lynch, Machinedrum, Ekin Fil, Finlay Shakespeare, Actress, Mercury Rev, Dave Brown / Jason Kahn, øjeRum, d'Eon, Jeremy Gignoux, and Shellac. Mountain photo taken in Japan by Chris. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
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Texas duo Steel Hook Prostheses are a decade and a half into their career of blackened electronics and malicious noise, and with each new release they continue to find new spins on their intentionally desolate and unpleasant sound. Calm Morbidity is a consistent, yet diverse record that does different things and goes in varying directions, but never loses focus, and also never lightens the mood.
David Reed's newest album as Envenomist may be a collection of six songs, but the presentation and consistency between them seems more akin to a long from composition broken into distinct pieces. His bleak analog synthesizer works have been notable as a recent member of Bloodyminded, and as part of the trio Nightmares with Mark Solotroff and Jonathan Canady, but here he is in sole control. Perhaps due to it being a fully solo excursion or his compositional intent, the arrangement is sparse but strong, and the final product is a bleak synthesizer creep that hints at film score but is an entity entirely unto itself.
Alan Courtis (aka Anla Courtis) is one of those composers that at times is occasionally too prolific, spreading himself thin over numerous collaborations and solo works each year. Because of that, his work is sometimes less focused than it could be, simply due to the extreme breadth of what he puts out. However, when one of his releases is obviously a fully realized concept, his work is usually exceptionally compelling.  Los Galpones (The Sheds) is one of his more targeted works, by that standard. A record built upon mostly just guitar and metallic objects, it is a wonderfully unified suite of four distinct pieces that work together perfectly and creates a nuanced sense of post-industrial decay.
For his two most recent (near simultaneous) releases, Jim Haynes has scaled back his audial representation of decay to something a bit colder and more intentionally off-putting. Both albums are largely based on field recordings taken from a residency in Estonia, and capturing the detritus of Soviet era electronics (and some still active) via shortwave and then processing the results. The final products may be somewhat sparser than his other works, but no less fascinating, and with an additional menacing edge.
Eli Keszler's Cold Pin was easily one of most remarkable and inventive albums of 2011, but he has largely been working under my radar ever since, steadily releasing a flow of live recordings and small-edition vinyl-only collaborations.  Consequently, I was delighted to discover that he was finally ready to unleash another solo opus.  Last Signs of Speed, the inaugural release from Berlin's Empty Editions, is inherently a bit less radical than Cold Pin, as it is sadly not built from a motorized string installation.  It may as well have been built from a motorized percussion installation though, as Keszler's hyper-kinetic free-jazz-inspired drumming is compellingly inhuman and unpredictable.  There is also some music: the album description intriguingly references both Scientist and Iannis Xenakis as key influences, but that dub influence is a damn subtle one.  Instead, Last Signs generally sounds more like Xenakis mixed with a truckload of drumsticks being fitfully poured down a long and winding flight of stairs (in the best way possible).
Emptyset has always been a project that I felt weirdly guilty about not appreciating more, as they seemed like a more cerebral and mercilessly deconstructed twist on the UK's industrial-damaged post-dance milieu of Raime, Haxan Cloak, and Demdike Stare.  Also, I love James Ginzburg's Subtext label.  Unfortunately, all their songs sounded vaguely the same to me and I found all the praise for their architectural inspirations a bit mystifying.  Yet still I kept optimistically buying each new album hoping for a masterpiece that never arrived.  Thankfully, this debut release for Thrill Jockey finally makes everything click for me.  The same general template as always is still in place (improbably dense, ribcage-rattling bass and a slow-motion kick drum pulse), but Ginzburg and Paul Purgas have now distilled it into a thing of truly bludgeoning elemental force: Borders absolutely explodes from my speakers.  Also, the duo now wield a bass-heavy homemade "zither" to wonderfully visceral and snarling effect, which I did not see coming at all.  I am officially now a convert.
This winter marks the 20th anniversary of Maurizio and Roberto Opalio’s singular My Cat is an Alien project, a milestone that they are celebrating with a pair of fascinating and divergent releases.  Originally recorded back in 2015, Eternal Beyond is the fruit of an explosive and wildly experimental 4-day session with French black metal vocalist Joëlle Vinciarelli that does not sound at all like black metal.  RE-SI-STEN-ZA!, on the other hand, is billed as a sort of culmination of My Cat is an Alien’s entire career.  As I have not yet heard much of the Opalio’s earlier work, I cannot vouch for the truth of that, but I was pleasantly surprised by the title piece, which sounds like the work of a radical art commune a la Amon Düül embellished and collaged by a talented noise/musique concrète artist.
