Over their career, Corrupted have been taking a slow (naturally) shift away from their initial starting point: the sludgy assault of the early releases has been replaced with something more akin to modern composition or ambient music. As such, Garten der Unbewusstheit is a logical progression for them as it combines the extreme heaviness of their old recordings with an almost gossamer thin presence. I have always associated their work with the darkness and the atrocities that appear on their album covers and on this album they distil all that hate in one clean swoop into a powerful, positive gesture without losing one shred of their music's emotional effect.
Two new shows just for you. We have squeezed out two extended release episodes for this weekend to get you through this week. They contain mostly new songs but there's also new issues from the vaults. The first show features music from Rider/Horse, Mint Field, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Anastasia Coope, ISAN, Stone Music, La Securite, Bark Psychosis, Jon Rose, Master Wilburn Burchette, Umberto, Wand, Tim Koh, Sun An, and Memory Drawings. The second episode has music by Laibach, Melt-Banana, Chuck Johnson, X, K. Yoshimatsu, Dorothy Carter, Pavel Milyakov, Violence Gratuite, Mark Templeton, Dummy, Endon, body / negative, Midwife, Alberto Boccardi, Divine. Cow in Maui from Veronika in Vienna. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
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This is the second installment of Nate Wooley's wonderfully uncategorizable improvisation project based upon a fixed backdrop of abstract tape recordings.  Notably, it sounds radically different than the skittering and nightmarish first album (where Wooley was joined by Paul Lytton and David Grubbs) and continues to betray no hint of Wooley's background as a jazz trumpeter.  This is improvised music at its most difficult and listener-unfriendly, alternating between queasily dissonant droning and explosive catharsis.  I like it, but it is very much pure, uncompromising art without any nod to accessibility.
Concluding a trilogy of releases that began with 2008's Indications of Nigredo and 2010's Order4, Closure... is a dense, operatic work of noise and harsh electronics. Tied together as an album and an overarching narrative, it is a bleak and grating disc that conveys violence throughout. It is a challenging and complex work, but a multifaceted one that takes multiple playings to deconstruct and fully appreciate.
Following up their debut LP and EP, Chicago’s post-everything supergroup Anatomy of Habit (featuring members of Bloodyminded, Tortoise, and Indian, amongst many other projects) continue their penchant for dramatic, expansive rock-tinged music. For their Relapse debut, they provide two lengthy, side-long pieces that distill everything that was great about their early releases into a cohesive, rich album that stays faithful to their previous work, while adding an extra layer of polish.
After three weeks of listening to Haley Fohr's fourth (or fifth) album, I still have absolutely no idea what to make of it, which is probably a good thing (unless it is not).  In any case, Overdue finds Fohr further distancing herself from her abstract experimental past and embracing an equally strange present (and future?) that resembles some kind of unholy mixture of Zola Jesus, Xiu Xiu, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Codeine, and an exorcism.  As cool as that admittedly sounds, it does not resonate nearly as much with me as Fohr's earlier work.  The sheer force and conviction on display is still quite impressive though.
Thanasis Kaproulias has been quietly building an impressive repertoire of conceptual sound art releases for the past few years. Neuroplanets may perhaps be the most varied and complex release yet, by not only utilizing source material from four titans of the field (BJ Nilsen, Daniel Menche, Francisco Lopez and Mika Vainio) but also applying data from neurological and astronomical research into his compositions. The end product is something that sounds more like a collaboration where the original artists’ sound is measurable, but also Kaproulias' reworking as well.
Reissued in mono, Dino Valenti's solo album is a heady mix of sparse melodic guitar and his idiosyncratic cocksure crooning, both benefiting from brilliant production that balances ego and echo.
This is a bit of a surprising album, as it finds one of American's premiere psych-rock bands noticeably toning down the more psych-inspired aspects of their work in favor of a more sun-dappled, spacious strain of rock.  Fortunately, that move towards a cleaner, more melodic sound coincides with an impressive leap forward in their songwriting, resulting in a handful of great, memorable songs amidst all the newly subtle Spacemen 3/Suicide/Hawkwind worship.  The full album is still a bit too formulaic overall for my liking, but the Shjips demonstrate they know how to craft a killer single or two.
