Following up the concept of their most recent works, the duo of noise artist Mattin and Brainbombs member Anders Bryngelsson have again chosen to subvert two niche genres of music and attempt to recreate them in their own, deconstructed noise rock style. In this case, one album of Harsh Noise Walls, and the other three lengthy treatments of various subgenres of heavy metal. Unsurprisingly, the duo's reconstruction of this music ends up being less about imitation and more of a study and critique of what is expected by those specific styles.
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Blizzard is a luxurious reissue of a CDr Aaron Dilloway originally put out on his Hanson imprint back in 2009, presented here in high quality double vinyl. Dilloway and Robert Turman recorded these four pieces together during an actual blizzard, which not only further enhances mood, but also seems to creep in throughout these lengthy compositions. Largely based upon analog synthesizer and tape manipulation, the duo not only captures the frigid, isolated mood of being caught in a massive snowstorm, but the sounds of one as well.
The quartet of Nakama (Adrian L√∏seth Waade on violin, Ayumi Tanaka on piano, Andreas Wildhagen playing drums, and Christian Meaas Svendsen providing double bass) expand upon their use of silence in juxtaposition with experimental jazz from their previous record, Before the Storm, into this newer, more conceptually structured work. The album is based upon Svendsen's structuring, which instructs the performers to improvise their playing reacting to a visual structure, giving the work an additional layer of complexity that makes the album all the more compelling.
For their fourth record, the duo of Kane Ikin and Paul Fiocco took a different approach, and decided to revisit fragments of previous recordings that lay forgotten on various hard drives and cassette tapes for a multitude of years. Beginning with these elements, they then reworked the material and recorded new parts, making these recordings a sort of hybrid of unreleased works and new material. Because of that, In The Lens may at times feel more like a collection of songs rather than a full-fledged album, but that is no major detriment considering how well these compositions are executed.
Wire’s latest mini-album is a somewhat darker, subtly more experimental, and arguably superior sister to their self-titled 2015 release.  In fact, these songs were all written during the very same period, but they were split off into their own release because they ostensibly shared a path directly opposed to the aesthetic of Wire: the self-titled album was a deliberately no-frills document of what the band actually sounds like when they play together in a room, while Koreans documents what they can achieve with studio enhancements and liberal editing.  Despite those very different approaches, the two albums do not actually seem all that different to my ears.  I guess I was hoping for a bit more of a radical departure than this.  While there are a few intriguing exceptions, Koreans mostly just sounds like more of the same hook-heavy and slightly off-kilter songcraft that I always expect from Wire.  That is certainly not a bad thing, but Nocturnal Koreans is definitely more solid than revelatory.
After a bit of a long slumber, Kranky has resurfaced with the first full-length from New Orleans’ Melissa Guion.  Guion’s previous discography is a bit lean, as she has previously only released one cassette back in 2014, but she seems to have quite a fully formed aesthetic that will no doubt delight fans of the Kranky milieu.  In fact, it is quite hard to discuss Precious Systems without making favorable comparisons to Grouper, as Guion is quite a similarly enthusiastic proponent of hazy, reverb-swathed vocals.  Musically, however, MJ Guider is far more indebted to shoegaze and gauzy 4AD-style Romanticism, crafting propulsive and hook-filled songs that feel artfully hollowed-out and slowed to a narcotic crawl.
New Jersey based harsh electronics trio Concrete Mascara have a handful of limited releases since their inception in 2011, but Perennial Disappointment is only their second full length album, following 2014's Blossoms of Shame. The title is obviously a tongue-in-cheek, self-effacing joke, however, because the eight songs that comprise it seethe with menace, creating a dark, violent environment via aggressive vocals, destroyed electronics, and perverse attempts at building rhythm.
Go Go Theurgy is Polish composer Anna Zaradny's first album in eight years, following 2008's Mauve Cycles. Like that release, there is a significant amount of experimentation and abstraction to be heard on this record's two side long composition, yet for all its dissonance there is clearly order here. Order that takes the form of deconstructing and rebuilding more conventional pop and electronic music elements into completely unique contexts. It is challenging but captivating all the same.
