At this point in his career, each new Dean McPhee release feels like a legitimate event, as he surfaces quite rarely and always hits me with at least one absolutely stunning piece when he does. Consequently, this review could probably be condensed to merely "Dean McPhee has a new album," as that would convey everything necessary to perk up the ears of most people already familiar with his body of achingly beautiful, slow-burning guitar magic. Unsurprisingly, Witch's Ladder does nothing to dash those dauntingly high expectations, as it picks up right where 2017's Four Stones left off and that one was a very strong contender for McPhee’s finest album. And now Witch's Ladder is a strong contender for that honor as well. Beyond that, the only salient details are that the cover art comes from visionary symbolist painter Agnes Pelton and that the album's second half is a near-perfect two-song run of hauntingly sublime beauty.
Hood Faire
Given his association with the Folklore Tapes milieu, McPhee's unusual choice of cover art is not a surprise, but it is a telling detail that provides some insight into what he seems to be reaching towards with his own work. When reading The Whitney's description of last year's Pelton exhibition, I was repeatedly struck by phrases like "meditative stillness," "shimmering veils of light," and "awareness of a world that lay behind physical appearances." All of those phrases are apt for the five songs of Witch's Ladder as well, but McPhee admirably finds an ingenious array of ways to get there. That said, the pieces do all share a rough foundational aesthetic of "fingerpicked 'folk music' played on an electric guitar," though each either ultimately builds into something considerably more transcendent or blossoms into quietly beautiful psychedelia in the margins. All are excellent and feature emotively smoldering or lyrically melodic solos at their core, but the most interesting twists occur in the final three pieces (in ascending order of brilliance, no less). In "Red Lebanese," for example, the winding and languorously smoke-like melody fitfully evokes a trippy synth spiraling off into space, while "Eksdale Path" unexpectedly coheres into a killer "dual-guitar harmony" passage. As much as I love "Eksdale Path," however, it is immediately eclipsed by the epic closer, as "Witch's Ladder" is basically three songs' worth of killer ideas seamlessly blended into one. In fact, I had not even finished typing "sounds like the twin-guitar attack of classic Iron Maiden just dropped by for a surprisingly tasteful cameo" before it turned into a hallucinatory duel between intertwining forwards and backwards guitar melodies (or at least a convincing illusion of it). It is a characteristically mesmerizing bit of show-stealing slow-motion sorcery, but the show already quite wonderful beforehand, as there truly is not a single wasted note on this album. Witch's Ladder is another instant classic from Dean McPhee.
Samples can be found here.
Part of Ulrich Schnauss's musical history is building layers of beautiful electronic imagery, both within his solo work and partnering with others. Schnauss is paired up once again with Danish recording and mastering engineer Jonas Munk, member of space rockers Causa Sui and half of the ambient chill-out duo Billow Observatory. These two equally talented creators produce a lush mélange of extraordinarily hypnotic dreamscapes on Eight Fragments Of An Illusion. Rich kosmische textures, vibrant guitar, and concentrated layers of electronic atmosphere make for an engaging ride, especially when experienced on headphones.
Founded as a band in Omaha, Nebraska in 1998, Naturaliste's first release in over 15 years is certainly a drastic departure from the local, improvised shows the group was responsible for. Rather than those frequent, though often dubiously captured recordings, Temporary Presence is not only a highly quality document of fully realized artistry, but also a document of where the band is so many years later.
Mike Griffin, as Parashi, is one of the most prolific noise artists in the upstate New York region, both on his own and in collaborations with others, such as John Olson (as Spykes) and Noise Nomads. Against Eugenic Massacre features him doing what he does best: a murky combination of psychedelic electronics, incidental rhythms, and mysterious ambiences that perfectly balances between harsh experimentation and complex environments.
This short release captures the only performance from the trio. Recorded at Hosei University, Tokyo, on John Duncan’s first visit to Japan in 1982, it is a fascinating document both in the context of that visit but also in terms of the creativity, emotion, technique, and improvisation. The participants are meeting here for the first time, although they were familiar with each other’s work through tape exchange. Duncan is finding and processing shortwave radio signals, Tatsuo using piano, tape loops, and synth textures, and Phew vocalizing in English and Japanese. 
Three years after the mesmerizing Homage to Dick Raaijmakers, Thomas Ankersmit is back with yet another bombshell inspired by an underappreciated electronic music visionary. In this case, that visionary is Maryanne Amacher, who also happens to be the person who fatefully introduced Ankersmit to his Serge modular synth. Naturally, the Serge retains its central role from the Raaijmakers album and Ankersmit masterfully wields it again to conjure up another hallucinatory swirl of phantom sounds and strange aural phenomena. The conceptual themes are bit different this time around, however, as Ankersmit explores the ideas laid out in Amacher's "Psychoacoustic Phenomena in Musical Composition: Some Features of a Perceptual Geography" essay. Unsurprisingly, Ankersmit does a stellar job psychoacoustically mapping out his own compelling perceptual geography with this release, but his most striking bit of sorcery actually occurs off the album, as the piece was engineered to trigger otoacoustic emissions, which are "sounds emanating from inside the head, generated by the ears themselves."
Newly reissued on vinyl (and digitally) with beautiful new artwork, Paradise Lost was originally released as a cassette back in 2019. As is the norm for many Chalk releases, additional details beyond the fact that it exists are quite thin, but this one takes that to an amusing extreme, as the Discogs entry for the original cassette notes "label and artist name are not listed on the release." That said, I believe I can say with moderate certainty that these two longform pieces were recorded on an 8-track reel-to-reel between 2016 and 2018 and that Chalk primarily played a synthesizer. Also, his Ghosts on Water bandmate Naoko Suzuki contributed some very well-hidden vocals and created the artwork for the original tape. To some degree, it makes sense that this album originally surfaced as a very limited-small run tape, as it does not feel like one of Chalk's more significant opuses, but it is quite an enjoyable and interesting release nonetheless. In fact, the title piece feels like legitimately prime Andrew Chalk material to me, though I suspect many longtime fans will be more fascinated by the surprising and divergent "This Pendent World."
Minneapolis-based Magic Castles make a glorious return with their fourth release on Anton Newcombe's label, weaving together jangly hooks and minor chords and slathering it with fuzz. The release is triumphant in that it was released at all, following the band's 2016 hiatus and songwriter Jason Edmonds' near-fatal car accident in 2019, not to mention contending with a pandemic. Sun Reign is a lush and dreamy masterpiece of layered musical intensities, awash in evocative imagery and heartful melodies.
