With two different generations of Italian electronic artists coming together, Maurizio Bianchi and Dedali stick closer to its title than the more industrial tinged harsher noise I was expecting.  The four pieces hint at Bianchi’s initial new age-y sound from his late 1990s reappearance, but manage to stay on the good, experimental side of that, with Dedali’s contributions providing a contemporary sheen.
Hotter than July. This week's episode has plenty of fresh new music by Marie Davidson, Kim Gordon, Mabe Fratti, Guided By Voices, Holy Tongue meets Shackleton, Softcult, Terence Fixmer, Alan Licht, pigbaby, and Eiko Ishibashi, plus some vault goodies from Bombay S Jayashri and Pete Namlook & Richie Hawtin. Solstice moon in West Midlands, UK photo by James. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
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Field recordist Jana Winderen’s latest finds her indulging her long-standing passion for capturing the sounds of hidden environments yet again, this time in and around the Barents Sea region of the Arctic Ocean. Using an array of specialized microphones and a great deal of editing, she has woven the resultant decontextualized sounds into an immersive suite of frozen and mysterious desolation.
This cassette is the debut solo release from Andrew Fogarty (also of Boys of Summer and Toymonger) and it builds on the same dreamy electronic textures as his other projects. Caught somewhere between '80s sci-fi soundtracks, sound effects, and drifting electronics, the music on this EP is a shimmering blend of styles and sounds.
This is a tantalizing set of early '70s reel-to-reel tapes by Soft Machine co-founder Ayers: lovely, intimate, and enlightening stuff by an idiosyncratic talent who made it look easy while giving off an allure of privilege, trippiness and innocence somewhere midway between Howard Marks and Christopher Robin.
A lot of artists find inspiration in the works of H.P. Lovecraft but very few capture the essence of his horror. Metallica's "The Call of Ktulu" is a classic piece of thrash but it comes nowhere close to the cosmic terror and unease of Lovecraft's prose. Similarly, Alexander Hacke and The Tiger Lillies’ Mountains of Madness was a loving but ultimately camp tribute to the author. However, here the Southampton trio have honed their sound to create the same sense of dread that made Lovecraft’s stories so disturbing.
Moving past his more abstract work from the Trans- series of releases, Carsten Nicolai instead opts for a more rhythmic electronic work that, while not well suited for the club, demonstrates his knack for turning pure chaos into rhythmic composition, even if it can’t be danced to.
This URSK series by Utech has been establishing itself as a force in bringing wider attention to projects that otherwise may have lingered in obscurity. For example, this Malaysian band has had only a few, very limited releases before, but with this higher profile disc more will get to hear this distinctly unique take on dark, murky free jazz. 
At its core, this spilt CD has monolithic foundations of thick, oily, viscous slabs of broken-down and tar-black overdriven guitar and feedback. Here, the Australian Grey Daturas' familiar line in bonecrushing doom-laden oppression is ably bolstered and reinforced by the equally weighty French female-fronted Monarch, both outfits commanding an impressive array of heavy weaponry. Between them, their down-tempo gargantuan dirge is seemingly capable of crushing whole continents. One gets the impression that they would like to physically obliterate the miles between Australia and France if they could, and for the most part it succeeds.
The second, larger installment of their collaboration,following a double-3” on Phonometrography, is another deep slicing into the insurmountablevisions that make both peerless examples of sound artists driven by discoveryand new substance over stylized forms. It is also another immaculate package as expected from Hafler and Die Stadt.
