The Legendary Pink Dots have been in the midst of a creative renaissance for years now, fitfully releasing some of the finest work of their career amidst the unending and distracting tide of solo projects, reissues, live albums, and archival discoveries.  The lion's share of Edward Ka-Spel's best ideas, however, have definitely been winding up in LPD's more abstract and experimental work.  I am personally perfectly fine with that, as that is the side of the Dots that I have always preferred anyway.  I suspect that most longtime fans were initially drawn to the band by their songs though and they have presumably been suffering through quite a long dry spell in that regard.  Pages of Aquarius is an album for them, as it is a solid, concise, and hook-heavy collection of industrial-tinged songs that harken back to the Dots of earlier times.  In fact, if I did not know better, I would have guessed that this album was recorded in the early '90s.  I am not sure if that is necessarily a bad thing or a good thing, but there are a definitely a handful of instant classics here regardless.
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It is fair to say that Robert Crouch has injected some major conceptualism into A Gradual Accumulation of Ideas Becomes Truth. The overarching theme, outlined in the title, is how locations can develop histories that never existed based simply on someone's insistence they happened, a process akin to that of meaning devised by method of symbolic interactionism. That concept applies appropriately to the recorded material as well: a series of compositions based upon modular synthesis that largely avoids the now cliché bleeps and bloops and instead results in lush passages of electronics that form their own little worlds.
David First has been active as a composer for a multitude of years, never allowing his work to draw too heavily from just one style or technique. Many of his pieces feature elements of everything from folk to noise to classical drone, and almost everything in between. Because of that, the self-imposed limitations of the four part Same Animal, Different Cages adds additional depth by stripping much away. Etudes for Acoustic Guitar is exactly as its title implies: 12 performances utilizing only a Guild D-40 acoustic guitar, and the final product is diverse, compelling, and at times challenging, but a resounding success.
Given a little context, a mathematician could tell you what circles and landscapes have in common. They could at least begin by telling you that circles are musical. Traveling counterclockwise around a circle, it is possible to plot the contours of a sine wave on graph paper using a right triangle and a trigonometric ratio, 
Jon Mueller may be most often recognized as an exemplary and audacious percussionist, but even the most casual experience with his recent works makes clear the depth of his creativity. On this latest album, he draws influences from his other projects (Death Blues, Volcano Choir), as well as builds upon the stylistic developments of his other recent works, such as the heavy use of vocals, to reach an unparalleled depth and complexity of composition.
If history is any indication, it seems to be nearly impossible to simultaneously run a thriving record label and remain a vital and evolving artist: one side always has to suffer.  That said, Peter Rehberg has somehow managed to fare better than just about anybody, as Editions Mego remains one of the best experimental music labels on the planet and his current work with Shampoo Boy is excellent.  It has been a long time since Rehberg has released a significant solo album though and I was not all sure what to expect from Get In, as he was once at the absolute vanguard of electronic music and presumably always has the potential to be there again, but it does not seem like he has been swinging for the fences all the much lately.  As it turns out, Get In is indeed in no danger of redefining music or unlocking bold new vistas of artistic expression, but the consolation prize is that it is one of Rehberg's stronger and most consistent albums to date, showing that he is still every bit as capable of brilliance as ever.  Sometimes being good is a lot better than being first.
Newly reissued by his own Saltern imprint, 1985's Off the Wall takes its droll title from the rich acoustic properties of the Berlin studio that Wada was using as a practice space at the time.  While not quite crazy enough to warrant the more expected meaning of its title, this is definitely a very strange and ambitious album, as Wada’s small ensemble employed an arsenal of homemade bagpipes and organs to exploit the sonic properties of their surrounding architecture: the room guided the composition.  Unusual instrumentation and process aside, Off the Wall is also a curious anomaly stylistically, transforming the Eastern drone aesthetic of La Monte Young and Pandit Pran Nath into something resembling medieval Scottish free-jazz.  For better or worse, that is definitely a niche that does not get filled very often.
Thanasis Kaproulias’ latest release as Novi_sad expands on the compositional strategies found on his last work (2013’s Neuroplanets) but goes a step further both in concept and presentation. The single piece that makes up the audio portion of this multimedia work is first made up of sound provided by other well known sound artists, such as Richard Chartier and Carl Michael von Hausswolff. Not satisfied with that, however, Kaproulias then merges these with decidedly non-musical recordings (bridge vibrations, earthquakes, stethoscopes, etc.), and then further processes them with quantitative data from major financial crises. Decidedly high concept (and accompanied by a hardcover book featuring visualizations of the sound by Ryoichi Kurokawa), Sirens excels on both a conceptual and purely sonic level.
The rural areas from which William Fowler Collins and James Jackson Toth hail have an inescapable influence on this new collaborative record. Across the three pieces that make up Under Stars and Smoke it is impossible to not hear the ambient desolation of Collins’ New Mexico home, while Kentucky’s own Toth provides unsettling Appalachian folk-tinged guitar and vocals. The two styles meld together perfectly, and with an appropriately challenging approach to production and aesthetic, it is a powerful entry in both artists’ already impressive catalogs.
