Olives and Orchids
Terrific stuff from Chicago's Herculaneum – a fresh, modern take on postbop and 60s avant garde jazz that's as addictive as anything the group has done to date – possibly their best yet! The group is a sextet with four horns, providing a really …
III
I don't care how many goddamn cute hobo bands there are out there right now. Not two runny shits. There's something Hank IV knows that few other current "of interest" bands realize, and it's a painfully simple thing: guitars were meant to sound li…
Black Summit
Strictly limited to 400 copies only, already sold out at source* Garden Söund is the rewarding collaboration of two hugely respected outfits: Barn Owl and Eternal Tapestry. Word of the album has spread like wildfire on a vast midwest plain, hence …
Castings
Castings is the third VHF release of lovely psych/folk by East Coast quartet Fern Knight, written, arranged and performed with their trademark quality and verve. Somewhat less fastidious than 2008's exquisitely arranged Fern Knight CD, Castings has a…
Small Craft On A Milk
If you were to dig through a random neighbor's record collection, chances are you'd come across something with Brian Eno's fingerprints on it. Maybe massive-selling offerings by Coldplay or U2, the still commercially viable art-rock of The Talking …
A Bureaucratic Desire for Extra-Capsular Extraction
A Bureaucratic Desire for Extra-Capsular Extraction gathers all of the music drone metal progenitors Earth recorded in October 1990, during their earliest sessions at Portland's Smegma Studios. Earth, featuring soon-to-be Melvin Joe Preston in …
Turntable History: Spin Ensemble
Arnold Dreyblatt's Turntable History: Spin Ensemble was recorded March 12, 2011 by Ernst Karel at Boston's Goethe Institut. This performance version of the original piece (released on CD as IMPREC323) provides a different perspective on the origin…
Ancestral star
Returning with a brand new album of arid, dustbowl blues and slow-motion desert-scapes, Evan Caminiti and Jon Porras resume duties as Barn Owl for a third album. Previously this band has tended to court associations with the sound developed by E…
Unboxed
Unboxed, a collection of dissected from the Lowest Form of Life 10CD box set (on RRR) (including tracks not available in the box set) is a splash introduction to a newcomer of the L.A.F.M.S. The Lowest Form of Music is an utterly devastating set of t…
Live in Buffalo
Aka: the shape of (free) jazz to come. Bill Nace on electric guitar and Steve Baczowski on bass saxophone bless us with two sides of furious, raw improvised music. Their motto is easy to recognize from the beginning: total freedom, with instrument…
Ante-Mortem
Astonishing new record: Ante-Mortem" is one of Ghédalia Tazartès’ major works of the last 20 years. Although simply named 1 to 23, the CD bears a collection of very diverse tracks, a couple of them connected in a thematical frame, others simply stand…
The World's Longest Melody
The World’s Longest Melody is a collection of experimental music written for the guitar by composer/guitarist Larry Polansky (b 1954). The guitar has long been an important component in Polansky’s musical explorations, and this CD has grown from the …
Gone
Columbus, OH two-piece horror sound unit, Sword Heaven clock in with a sweaty water boarded masterpiece of claustrophobic proportions. Fun house mirrors and stretched out faces yell from behind flaming curtains while a Neanderthal cave bat clubs y…
Entrance
To these ears, Sword Heaven’s recorded output has always strived to match the power and intensity of the band’s live performances. Due to low fidelity and the ineffability of putting live energy to tape, the ardent Sword Heaven fan is left with vi…
Sun Circle
The most recent release on the lichen label; all releases are hand-assembled by zach wallace in his native ann arbor environs and offer of a lovely wave of art-sound, field recordings, improvisation with natural non-instruments, and, in the case of t…
Mirage
With Mirage on Important Records, Smegma again does the impossible. 38 years after reinventing the musical wheel, they have recorded a stunning masterpiece. With four of the original members working together again for the first time in many years, to…
Heavy Deeds
Sun Araw - and the Not Not Fun label in general for that matter - are becoming ever more essential with each release. Heavy Deeds is the latest dubbed-out, tropical psych missive from this far-out collective, featuring an increasingly mature approach…
World of Echo
At first listen, World of Echo sounds like meaningless dreck that barely wakes up to complete a melody or enunciate a single verse of poetry. And Arthur Russell's legacy has never been richer for it. This year's mass rediscovery and m…
First Thought Best
Before Disco, and before the transcendent echoes, Arthur Russell wanted to be a composer. His journey began in 1972, leaving Iowa to study Indian classical composition with Ali Akbar Khan in Northern California and ending two years later in New …
Calling Out Of Context
Now I know what it's like to assume you know what Arthur Russell sounds like. Back in the day, those comfortable with his modern classical accomplishments were baffled by his acetates of loopy leftfield disco. Likewise, lovers of t…