As former members of the ambient/industrial project Maeror Tri, the duo now known as Troum developed and refined their combination of booming atmospheres and subtle soundscapes. As Troum, they continue their trek into spaciousness, creating drones of sweeping drama and roar.
Give us an hour, we'll give you music to remember. This week we bring you an episode with brand new music from Softcult, Jim Rafferty, karen vogt, Ex-Easter Island Head, Jon Collin, James Devane, Garth Erasmus, Gary Wilson, and K. Freund, plus some music from the archives from Goldblum, Rachel Goswell, Roy Montgomery. Rubber ducks and a live duck photo from Matthew in the UK. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
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A new compilation from Soundway is always cause for excitement and this follow-up to 2006's excellent Panama! is no exception. I have no doubt that this album will finally cement Panama’s deserved reputation as the funkiest, sexiest isthmus around (tough luck, Suez!).
This is fifth release in Honest Jon's uniformly rewarding plunge into the EMI Hayes Archive of vintage recordings. While the previous albums have all been exotic, haunting, or unique, The World Is Shaking is the first that can be considered sensuous and fun. Here the normally disparate worlds of musicology and awesome parties unexpectedly intersect.
This is an aptly titled and blessed-out slab of shimmering pastoral ambiance by this Tokyo-based composer. Saunter is inspired by the unfamiliarity and heightened awareness of moving to a new home (and the philosophical underpinnings of traditional monochromatic Chinese landscape paintings, of course).
Pelican's newest release and their first for Southern Lord is a quick, three song 12" that swings gracefully through the tropes of heavy instrumental rock. Ephemeral is dusty and straightforward. It is free of noodling and epic run-on sentences and it hides a handful of riffs that give away the band's metal roots.
After several years of relying on a computer as his primary compositional tool, Gregg Kowalsky took a page from the mischievous intellectuals of the Oulipo and embraced voluntary artistic constraint as a means of liberating himself from the oft-crippling burden of unlimited possibility. Tape Chants is the result.
Brood is the second album born from a fruitful collaboration between Phil Western and Mark Spybey, who, until this project was hatched, hadn't worked together since their shared time in Download. Fans of that electronic supergroup will find much to enjoy with the music presented here, though it certainly isn't a rehash. Tightly sequenced psychedelia and ritualistic rhythms meet with brooding, subsurface vocals and a sound palette that ranges from far Eastern inflections to the claustrophobically industrial. 
On her second album on the Hymen label, Tonikom’s Rachel Maloney continues to refine her blend of danceable electronic abstraction with elements of ambient and even slightly poppy approaches that can work just as well for the dance floor as for close attentive listening.
Back from a long hiatus after a single critically acclaimed release (Trace Elements, on Colin Newman’s Swim~ label), Paul Thomsen Kirk reappears from his Hiroshima based enclave with a new, lavishly packaged album that blends electronic atmospheres, old school industrial textures, dubby bass, and breakbeats with compelling virtuosity.
I'm never sure whether I should dance, laugh, or squirm to a Gary Wilson record. All three are understandable reactions to his porno lounge sound, a fact that makes his music all the more uncomfortable. Lisa Wants To Talk to You comes on strong with saccharine keyboards and guitars, but is full of strong melodies and the same compellingly bizarre lyrics that have always characterized Wilson's obsessive world of women and loss.
