Piercing white hot treble hiss gushes from sterile iPod earbuds, pumping out deafening volumes into the passive, helpless skulls of my fellow commuters and fracturing my focus as I attempt to read a self-imposed requisite of at least thirty pages from my fifth book of the month and year.
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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The series of deluxe Japanese reissues of Sunn O)))'s oeuvre has peaked with this version of one of the group's finest moments. Long and undeservedly out of print, this early album has had its original vinyl artwork restored (the less than stellar art from the original CD has been relegated to an inner sleeve) and has been supplemented with a reworking of the album by Nurse With Wound. Reissue packages rarely look and sound so good.
As this is Stereolab's lead vocalist's side-project, Laetitia Sadier's Monade has to suffer comparisons. Less heavy on the rock or drone than her day job, this four-piece go more for the diamante sparkle of lounge music and toe-tap Gallic cute-pop than her other band's heavier krauty feel. This, their second 'real' LP (their first being bedroom recordings), is another reliably steady and similar set of songs that won't set the world ablaze but retain a certain pop charm.
This is exactly what would be expected from pairing Jamey Jasta with axeman Kirk Windstein, this sludgy metalcore amalgam showcases the best qualities of both parties. Undulating with vibrancy amid its steady cathartic release, their self-titled release propounds an infectious, somewhat transcendent alternative to lesser acts in the crowded heavy music marketplace.
Mick Barr's latest album sees him take the concept of a face melting guitar solo and turning it into a multi-faceted and layered composition. There is no room here for any straightforward musical structures to provide a basis for Barr to take a solo from; instead he just goes at it without any thoughts given to easing the listener in gently. The concept of free jazz is one familiar to most but here is an example of free metal, the guitar screeching away from the pack and leaving a scorched trail behind it.
I wasn't sure what to expect upon receiving this disc. The stark, digitally treated artwork that adorns the heavy, textured sleeve has little in the way of credits or information, and no specific background on the artist, which is, I'm sure, his intent. A bit of the Google finds that it is the debut release of Greek artist Thanasis Kaproulias, and none of this is needed to enjoy the disc, which lays comfortably between the rough experimentations of proto-industrialists like Throbbing Gristle and the modern day esoteric work of Francisco Lopez and Asmus Tietchens.
In some ways this work is reminiscent to the 
This is the sound of Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore getting it on under their Mirror/Dash duo. Recorded in May of 2005 at the Le Weekend festival this improv set couldn't be mistaken for the work of anyone else. There is no mistaking the signature sounds of these players, Gordon's vocal remaining the ultimate love-it-or-hate-it sound in alternative circles.
David Reed is obsessed with the dark. Every synapse in his brain aims to realize a stygian monstrosity from the most basic electronic utterances. Into the Void successfully gathers those expressions into a crawling black chorus of sound, like a cantata sung for the terror infinite and empty space can inspire.
Having had the privilege and pleasure to catch this dazzlingly deviant duo in concert on several occasions this decade, this album of covers seemed all but inevitable. Here, much to my delight, the diminutive diva and her frizzy-haired ivory tickler present some of these practiced though never before released songs on disc for the very first time.
