I suspect someone could probably spend years compiling a thesis that contextualizes and explains the ideas, techniques, and inspirations behind Jan St. Werner's bizarre Fiepblatter series, but its overarching concept is apparently a simple desire to "dismantle genres." Last year’s completely bonkers and uncategorizable Miscontinuum took care of that objective quite conclusively though, so there was not much left to prove with this follow-up.  I am not sure if St. Werner would necessarily agree with me or not, but Felder is certainly a hell of a lot more listenable than its prickly, disorienting predecessor.  That said, it is still quite an unapologetically alien and uncompromising release, gleefully taking organic, orchestral elements and mangling them into a stuttering, splintered, and kaleidoscopic mindfuck.
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Wyrding may be a relatively new project, this being their debut album other than a single that was previously a limited hand-made object, now reissued as a cassette and bonus tracks on the digital version oft his album. The band, however, is led by Troy Schafer (also a member of Kinit Her and Wreaths, amongst many others) and they have deep roots throughout the Wisconsin underground scene. The resulting album is an idiosyncratic blending of black metal and neofolk minimalism that also draws from religious music and other fields, but comes together in a way that somehow manages to make perfect sense.
Spectre, aka Skiz Fernando, was at the forefront of the sadly short-lived ambient dub/illbient/whatever genre hybrid that popped up in the middle to late part of the 20th century. While many have come and gone that were associated with the loosely defined style, Fernando and his seminal Wordsound label have endured, continually releasing music that may not have been commercially viable, but always retained artistic integrity and conceptual complexity. On his tenth solo record, his trademark sinister moods with infectious beats continues. But best of all, it sounds just as fresh as his debut The Illness did some 21 years ago.
This seventh album under the Surgeon moniker from UK techno iconoclast Anthony Child is a bit of an unexpected divergence from his previous work. Naturally, the pummeling repetition and industrial textures remain delightfully intact, but From Farthest Known Objects is considerably weirder and messier than I would have expected (in a good way).  There is a fairly straightforward explanation for that transformation, as Child discovered that a particular hardware set-up yielded sounds so bizarre that he found himself wondering if he had inadvertently created a receiver for distant intergalactic transmissions.  That is only half the story though, as From Farthest Known Objects works so beautifully only because Child had both the ability and vision to harness those sounds in a compelling way.  I do not know if this is necessarily the best Surgeon album ever, as Force + Form is widely considered to be canonical, but it sure feels that way to me.  If it is not, it is at the very least quite an impressive late-career evolution.
I have a curious relationship with Axel Willner’s music, as I have always thought that he is kind of brilliant, but generally too perfect, poppy and dancefloor-focused to appeal to my personal sensibilities.  Also, I keep forgetting that he even exists for some reason, so I am continually surprised every time that he releases a new album and I discover that I like it.  Predictably, I am most drawn to his darker, weirder side, which previously peaked with Cupid’s Head’s stellar "No.  No…"  Every album by The Field has a couple of great songs though and The Follower is no exception to that trend.  In fact, it is probably my favorite of Willner's albums to date, as it is as flawlessly crafted as ever, but considerably more shot through with ghostly textures and undercurrents of melancholy than I ever would have expected.
On his last couple of albums, Glenn Jones has let the world into his music. Back in 2011, the rattle of Commonwealth Avenue’s B-line train snuck into The Wanting. More or less an invisible addition, it was the consequence of recording in an apartment that sits on one of Boston’s busier thoroughfares. My Garden State opened the doors and windows and walked out into the New Jersey neighborhood of Glenn’s youth. It has a thunderstorm and chimes and an annotation about frogs, and they are more than just filigree on the proverbial fretboard. "Alcouer Gardens" would be a different song without the rain and thunder, and the non-stringed sounds add details to the loose narrative announced in the titles. Now comes Fleeting, Jones’s sixth solo album, recorded in Mount Holly, New Jersey with Laura Baird. The studio windows are open again and there are birds in the trees, but the emphasis placed on the influence of people and places cuts at the idea that there is an inside and an outside to begin with. It argues that music, often tucked away inside headphones or living rooms or performance spaces, is more than a confined curiosity of the wider human world.
In a continuation of an amusing trend begun with 2014’s stellar Feeling Tropical Feeling Romantic Feeling Ill mixtape, Demdike Stare have yet again coaxed another odd non-Shapes release out of the singular Mica Levi.  This one is perhaps even stranger than its predecessor, as it is centered around an infectiously skittering and warbling 2-step "single" that Levi and frequent collaborator Tirzah released to YouTube all the way back in 2011.  The rest of Taz and May Vids is filled out with a few other excellent Tirzah collaborations, a Demdike Stare remix of a Tirzah collaboration, and a couple of very different outliers.  While the Brother May-assisted "More Red" is admirably bonkers, the primary appeal of this EP is definitely the murky, poppy, and beautifully warped Tirzah pieces.  Admittedly, it seems like Sean Canty and Miles Whittaker had quite a struggle in collecting even a mere EP's worth of material (the three Tirzah songs add up to barely 8 minutes), but these scraps from the vault offer some dazzling (if fleeting) glimpses of Levi's skewed and inscrutable pop genius.
On their second album as a duo, Marco Marzuoli and Alessandro Sergente lay out a reticulated blanket of pulsing guitar tones and modulated electronic pitches dedicated to the moon. Luna’s three programmatic tracks do a remarkably good job evoking their subject. Each one sounds like it has been washed in silver light and painted onto a blue-black canvas. Their shapes are uncertain, as much shadow as form, and they radiate with uneasy energy like they know they hide more than they reveal. Appropriately, the album's every sound hovers uneasily in place, shifting the air and color around it in long undulating waves both oceanic and astronomical.
Cloudland Canyon is a band that has seemingly been around forever, remaining constantly in the periphery, yet never quite making much of an impression on me with their reverb-drenched, chameleonic psych/krautrock revivalism.  I always saw them as an almost-good band of people with great record collections who were a bit too self-conscious, over-meticulous, and reverent to fully realize their potential.  On this, improbably only their third album since forming in 2002, they have cleverly punched-up their sound with a lot of fun ‘80s-style electronic grooves, resulting in something unexpectedly resembling a Chris & Cosey/Panda Bear mash-up at times.  That admittedly innovative aesthetic still does not click entirely for me, but the handful of songs that lean heaviest on hooks and retro-dance grooves are quite good.  And some of the other ones are even better.
Matt Elliott’s first release under the Third Eye Foundation moniker now sits at a full two decades ago. What is most striking is the fact that, considering how deeply rooted in the era drum 'n' bass/jungle music sounds now, Semtex is largely still as fresh sounding today as it was then. Because of less reliance on the overused "Amen" and "Funky Drummer" loops (though they appear), Elliott produced a work with significantly more depth and nuance, which is why it seems much more timeless than its contemporaries. Reissued here with a bonus disc of demos from the same era, and a lengthy selection of downloadable extra material, it is a nearly four and a half hour revisiting of one of the seminal albums of the mid 1990s.
