Each of La Ciutat Ets Tu's tracks tends to showcase a particular sound or method, with little in the way of shifts in dynamics and/or timbre. While the sounds themselves may not be, Karkowiak's style is rather minimalist, and most tracks don't feature much in the way of dramatic shifts in sound or climate. The disc is diverse, however, from the muffled scratch and scrape of "O_Vbrdb" to the incessantly rattling ring of "Drhacze," with touchpoints many places in between. The buzz saw tone of "Aigua Per A" might have a hard-edged veneer, but Krakowiak doesn't force things into the red, and La Ciutat Ets Tu is palpably clinical, a collection of pieces crafted by a musician well in control of his sound, with little room for spontaneity or surprises. This almost scientific approach doesn't birth an album void of appeal, but some tracks aren't up to the challenge of sustained self-support, and, with most topping the five-minute mark, some occasional twists and turns might be a welcome addition.

Both Krakowiak's reimagining of percussion's sonic potential and the variety of sounds that he elicits from his instruments are impressive. In his hands, the simple striking of wood on metal can be recast in numerous ways, but while there may be no telling what sound he'll create from one track to the next, once the listener has settled into a piece, there's never much question where it will lead. Perhaps this is a partial explanation of why Krakowaik's discography is heavy on collaborations, as a dance partner could both lend an accompaniment to and elicit reaction from the percussionist. This isn't to say that Krakowiak needs help to make his music thrive, for La Ciutat Ets Tu has its share of vibrant sounds, yet another voice, whether provided by Krakowiak or another, might have been just what (at least in some places) this album needed.

Bookended by two longer tracks whose names constitute the disc's title, Sensitive/Lethal might seem the perfect arena for a showcase of Moore's Jekyl and Hyde, acoustic prettiness on one side, electric abuse on the other. "Sensitive" is built largely from acoustic guitar, but there's little very sensitive about the track, which builds thick walls around the acoustic strumming at its center. The sounds aren't gentle, but Moore opts for a layered attack rather than distinctly punishing sounds, creating a thick soup of feedback, drones, groans, and squeals under which the acoustic guitar trods on, quietly but insistently. It's only at the track's conclusion that Moore's acoustic seems to lose the battle, fading out beneath distorted remnants of the music's earlier heft.

"Lonesome," the short intermission between the disc's two titular pieces, isn't too shabby, but its sculptural feedback feels like a segue to "Lethal," which begins with ringing, distorted chords and a palpably darker tone. Moore's guitar is still a primary weapon, though it's augmented liberally with the purrs, squeals, and shrieks of electronics. The track makes use of a surprisingly hard stereo split, with much of the electronics in the left and guitar in the right, a move that can increase the music's disorienting effect, though, especially when the left channel's mostly a high, steady squeal, the division can feel distracting, an obstacle to the sound's potential to immerse. In a sense, the entire track deals with this problem; "Lethal," for all its noisy energy, tends to feel more obviously constructed than its predecessors. This isn't a death knell, of course, and the music doesn't feel overly forced or faked, but the track never quite takes hold the way it has the potential to, and these ears seemed inclined to keep the music at a distance rather than inviting it on in to rattle its inner realms.

Sensitive/Lethal proves that Thurston Moore's far from done finding ways to wrangle sound from his guitars, and that any fear of him relaxing as he ages is likely unfounded. The album's not going to scare most listeners as much as Moore did the young lady on the album's cover, but Thurston's still no stranger to aggressive sound, as evidenced here in spades. With his vast discography, this release might not signify one of Moore's absolute best, but it's a more than ample sign that he's in no way ready to let the kids have all the fun.

No matter the combination of musicians on the disc, the music is raw and jagged, both in terms of recording quality and its overall form. Haphazard abstractionconstitutes much of the disc, though the different combinations musicians come at their sound from different angles. Courtis and Yamamoto make a big mess, which is leavened by the subsequent work between Courtis and Yoshimi, which finds a more meditative plane, largely due to the vocal work of the latter, processed and layered over the scrapes and swoons of Courtis on violin. When the hometown pair of Yamamoto and Yoshimi pair up, the result is perhaps the disc's most interesting track, with searing guitar, minimalist keyboards, and effected squeaks and squeals from Ms. P-We. When the full trio get together for the album's longest track, the proceedings grow more crowded, but never claustrophobic. The twenty-six minute track finds each musician seemingly carving their own path. Yamamoto continues his ragged shredding, and Yoshimi dirfts between vocals and a jumble of keys, with Courtis' contributions at times a background ambiance, at others a forceful fog that threatens to envelop the whole of the sound. With so many wholesale shifts in atmosphere, the track feels longer than it actually is, a quality that can reasonably be assigned to the disc as a whole.

Live at Kanadian packs a punch, though its lack of focus can lessen its power. The fidelity of the recording is another drag on the music's force, but it's not so egregious to dissuade the intrepid listener. There are treasures to be found, but this is the sort of release that doesn't exhibit them openly. Patience is required, but with the three musicians involved, is that much of a surprise?

The disc begins with "B is for Burning," a endless staccato staircase into the sky, in which each musician's swirling sonic pointillism plays amongst the contributions of the others in a exactingly precise dance of sizeable collective momentum. Not all of Arms is so exhilirating, but Zs aren't a band who, even when they slow things down, are apt to take the easy route. Their instrumental interaction is the group's most impressive skill, a stregth that is played upon consistently in the album's composition. "Balk," seemingly simple, reveals itself to be a taut conversation, the track's circular motion a series of well-placed interjections moving like pistons to create the track's motion. "I Can't Concentrate" runs the band up and down some musical stairs in an dogged fashion, but like a seasoned military regiment, they do so perfectly in sync, devoid of any unnecessary motion or unintentional misfires. "Nobody Wants to be Had," perhaps the album's most uncharacteristic track, proves to be one of its best, unyielding and propulsive in its dynamic. Rhythmic strumming from guitarists Charlie Looker and Matthew Hough and the pounding drums of Brad Wentworth and Ian Antonio create a succession of repetitive waves of sound, but, as ever, Zs quickly change the pace, with the track shifting into segments of vocal duet by the guitarists over stabs of instrumental accompaniment, with Looker and Hough's intonations in near-perfect unison despite their often rapid and irregular cadence. These excursions make the song's main theme all the more momentous when it returns.

Despite the aural workout that much of the album provides, Zs seem in tune with recommended aerobic practices, concludes with "Z is for Zone," nine minutes of sparingly tinkling bells and the song's titular phrase sung in repetition. The track may not be as much a display of the band's proficiency in composition or playing, but it's not a disappointing end, just another unexpected turn from a band who's better than making them than most. Arms, though, doesn't rely merely on sheer technical complexity or compositional ingenuity; in the end, Zs have made an exceedingly compelling album, and, one can only hope that even with the changes in the group's line-up between 2006 and now (Zs are now a quartet, and only Hilmer and Antonio remain from the Arms era), there's much more exciting music to come.

Balmorhea's beauty, however, isn't without its flaws. This isn't to say that River Arms is rife with mistakes or awkward constructions; on the contrary, if anything, the opposite is true. Lowe and Muller's arrangements aren't superficial, but there is a degree to which they adhere too repeatedly to the same tropes that can mar many soundtracks. Instrument interaction, swells in the music, the birth ands progression of harmonic accompaniment all come and go in a rather predictable manner, and while it's undeniable that the results are often pleasing to the ears, when Rivers Arms goes even slightly off of the beaten trail, it's surprising how welcome the shifts are. "Context," a mix of field recordings (some musical, some not), is a buoy, perhaps the most interesting track on the album for its ability to retain a sense of beauty amidst more challenging listening. Recordings of crowds and trains make appearances elsewhere, but only on "Context" do these sampled sounds get first billing. Another highlight, "Process" sacrifices little in the way of melody, but the addition of a more interestingly jumbled mix, with the plaintive guitar crowded by some decidedly less polished accompaniment, makes the track stand out amongst its peers.

It's not that Balmorhea need to be abstruse to be enjoyable; Rivers Arms, even at its most straightforward, is a disc with it's share of comely charm. But, by its close, the album seems to have swam by too smoothly, with some of its beauty rendered ineffective in its failure to inspire attentive listening. This is Balmorhea's first widely-available release, so, for most, it's likely an introduction to the group. But, given River Arms' relative lack of diversity in sound, and the music's tendency to adhere to rather well-worn maneuvers of composition and arrangement, to many listeners, this disc will be reminiscent of a sound they've heard many times before.

Amidst the Noise and Twigs features Volcano the Bear's usual hodgepodge of sounds and styles, though the group's penchant for bizarre sound collage largely wins out; "Before We Came to This Religion" and "Burnt Seer," are the only tracks that conform more entirely to traditional song form, and even then, there's a leap of faith involved. The music of Volcano the Bear is of a dichotomy that's become more prevalent in music, though no one's done in it quite the same way. The group work often with organic sound, making acoustic instruments a prevalent voice in the mix. But, concurrently, the quintet forge a decidedly alien sound, warping the music via shifts in tempo, disjointed layering, and unexpected bursts of discordant sound. Melodies and rhythms often push stridently through, but not without competition; in "The Three Twins," a simple and repetitive line of piano is a focal point, but it's forced through a gauntlet of sound, from complimentary vocals, softly chanted, to a baby crying, and slightly off-kilter chopstick percussion, before emerging as the backbone for a segment of straightforward sound, complete with conventional drums and vocals. Of course, the track isn't permitted to finish in such a manner, and the strings that are merely an accent earlier in the track grow more abstract and insistent, the vocals shift into a ghostly chorus, and the melange slowly takes over the piano before bringing the disc to a close.

While it's their improvisation and folk-concrète, perhaps, for which Volcano the Bear are best known, the tidbits of more strightforward songcraft mark many of the best moments on Amidst the Noise and Twigs. Like unexpected clearings in a dense forest, they offer a welcome shift in atmosphere, another twisting turn down the path of Volcano the Bear.

Working more with animal rights and environmental causes (the disc’s cover features a colorful portrait of what is likely one of his beloved pet chickens), Akita has shown he’s not just the transgressive, bondage-inspired nihilist that some have made him out to be, but this disc proves that Merzbow, where the well-being of his listeners ears is concerned, is , luckily, as uncaring as ever.

As a tone setter, "Empty Temple" is a doozy. The opening track rides a deep drone for more than nine minutes, with a crescendo of noise that operates much like a well-crafted horror film: though one knows what's likley coming, the climax is worth the wait. "Abyss Whisperer" and "Pentinent Runes" are the album's chillers, and perhaps it's due to some suggestive power of the album's track titles, but there's a vaguely primeval tone to the sounds, like primitive ceremony heard through centuries of sonic grime. "Wendigo Psychosis" follows the general pattern of "Empty Temple," building in volume and density as it goes, though rather than an extended crescendo, the tracks is constructed as more of a two-act composition, and even at its most clamorous, the music retains a calm distance at its center, with Robedoor eschewing the freak-out tendencies that other bands might show in such a situation.

In making a calamitous noise, two avenues can be taken. There are those who do so with abandon, in a cathartic expression of random sound, and those who do so with an unnerving control. Robedoor are certainly in the latter camp, and no matter the dynamics of the duo's music, there's a bleakness to it all, crafted with chilling care. In that way, perhaps Robedoor are just like the film character who inspired the album's name, loving custodians of a scary, savage beast.

The product of years of work, Black Mirror features twenty-four tracks from all over the globe, newly mastered. Spanning almost four decades (from 1918-1955), much of the music retains a timeless quality, likely due to the fact that, despite when it was recorded, much of the music played here is often based in folk traditions, meaning that any well-versed ethnic music listener will likely hear ingredients that have been used for decades, even centuries, and are utilized by performers to this day. Flamenco, Balinese gamelan, and Scottish bagpiping appear alongside lesser known musics like the Chinese Rulin musical drama, and the South Indian periya melam. When possible, Nagoski provides a context for the music, and it's not rare for the story behind the recording to be as captivating as the music itself: Nagoski's story of Gong Belalowana Bali's debut gamelan recordings is perhaps the most arresting, though there remain other details of note, such as Petar Perunovic-Perun's friendship with Tesla and his transformation from the world's formost Gulse musician to Serbian propogandist in the US during the first World War. Nagoski's attempts to document the musicians and/or the recordings adds a level of fascination to Black Mirror, but there's no upstaging the music that makes up the compilation.

While newly mastered, the tracks on Black Mirror won't be mistaken for modern, cutting-edge recordings, but that's in no way a shortcoming on most tracks. There might be some sort of cultural Pavlovian reaction for the modern listener's ears to find some manner of cultural nostalgia in these old recordings, but the album doesn't succeed solely on such superficial merits. Black Mirror contains excellent music; one could assume that in the days when recordings were rarer and every musician didn't have a home studio or laptop on which to record their work, many of the musicians who had the chance to record were some of the best of their ilk. Listening to Lata Mangeshkar's haunting "Aayega Aanewaala," the first hit for the vocalist, who would come to be a highly acclaimed performer on Indian soundtracks, exhibits one side of Black Mirror, which features tracks from musicians who, stars in their homeland, remain unknown to American ears. But for every Mangeshkar and Pipe Major Forsyth, so esteemed in his abilities that he once served as personal piper to the King George V, there are more obscure performers, like Nji R. Hadji Djoeaehn, largely unknown save for his name, or, in the most extreme case, the unknown Burmese musicians whose playing closes the disc.

The diversity of the collection can be a little disorienting as it spans continents and decades from one track to the next, but Black Mirror, despite any motion sickness, presents a rich stream of great performances, preserved and repackaged astutely in yet another inspiring Dust to Digital release.

Brought together by guitarist Henry Kaiser, the album's ensemble is largely from the West coast, with Joe Morris the only Easterner on the roster. Reedsman Vinny Golia takes the part of Ayler on the recordings, with Aurora Josephson playing the role, as it were, of Ayler's partner Mary Maria Parks, whose vocals, lyrics, and philosophy of life were such a large influence on Ayler's later work. To imply that these players aim to masquerade as Ayler and his collaborators, though, would be misleading, for while they stay generally faithful to the original material, there's a decidedly modern sound to the disc, and a new energy injected into Ayler's old tunes. What is projected most noticeably by Healing Force is not a reverence towards Ayler on the part of the album's creators, but, instead, a genuine affection for the man and the work; it's a surprise to hear Weasel Walter, for instance, speaking about universal harmony and prayer as part of a group intonation on "New New Grass/Message from Albert," but one feels nothing but a legitimate desire to do right by Ayler's work, and the group does just that. Golia is a capable reedsman, and, at times, gets Ayler's style down nearly perfectly, and Josephson, as the music's other primary voice, sings with a more gentle affect than Parks did originally, but gives up little of the soul imbued by her predecessor. The group takes a more meditative tone, for the most part, than was present on Ayler's renditions, often opting for more drawn out, slowly building introductions to the pieces, and opting for simpler, more stark arrangements during the music's funkier segments. "New Generation" loses its brassy swagger in exchange for obtuse improvisation and pared-down bass & piano rhythmics, and "Heart Love" loses its late-sixties swing, recast with an off-kilter incantation of the chorus and a solo vocal performance from Josephson. In a sense, especially in terms of the New Grass material, that Kaiser & Co have done away with much of the contemporary influence that made Ayler's later music a hard pill for many of his fans to swallow, recognizing that, more than the hippie idealism, it was sometimes the container in which it came that was distasteful to many. It is in this way that Healing Force goes furthest in its reconsidering of Ayler's later work, and by getting at the core of the music and dispensing with some of its frills, this group just might spawn some new converts to the late gospels of the church of Ayler.

Hearing Beauvais, who's career has featured a great deal of wild sonic abandon, plying rather stripped down duets of drum machine and distorted guitar can be disconcerting, and while there are a few forays into abstract terrain, Lonesome Drifter is far more imbued with a concerted restraint than anything in the Mammal oeuvre. Beauvais within this context is like a wild cat in captivity, with the potential for an unexpected outburst but any real threat of menace seemingly constrained. Still, it's not a wholly unbecoming Mammalian mode, and the darkness that usually tints Beauvais' music is certainly still casting a shadow over his music, this time in a more concentrated form. Beauvais' reliance for simple repetition on much of the album proves an unexpected boon for one often reliant on the power of the unexpected; the stripped-down doom aesthetic of much of the more rock-based material, especially, inspires easily an almost automatic head nod or foot tap. Even when Lonesome Drifter enters noiser waters, Beauvais continues with the uncharacteristic restraint, with only "Incinerator Ballad" letting loose like the Mammal of old, though, in form with the rest of the album, in heavy, repetitive rhythm.

It's certainly a surprise that Lonesome Drifter's best track might be "Fatherlands," which begins with spare, simple guitar and hushed vocals. Even as the song drifts into a distorted postlude, the melody remains an undercurrent, and, in lyrical terms, it's Beauvais' starkest work, a farewell to parents repeating "It's time for me to go" with more than a twinge of ominous finality. These moments of pathos represent a watershed moment for Mammal, an inward turn that could serve as a catalyst for a new chapter for Beauvais. And while it'd be a shame for him to lose his wild side completely, at least on this most recent effort, Beauvais' bare bones approach fits far better when he's showing his sensitive side.

The subtle shudder of a stilled video image is a prime sound source for Möslang, with rapid buzzing undulations a near-constant underpinning of the disc’s tracks. Listening to header_change tends to be an enveloping experience, with blankets of electric vibrations cascading forth in gentle ebbs and flows. While there exist changes in the pitch and character of the sounds, Möslang’s approach on each of the disc’s tracks is largely the same. The electronic fog of each track is manipulated to shift the tone of the piece, both in subtle and more apparent ways. At times, Möslang’s transitions are like those of a sunrise, with change happening so slowly that only the wholesale transformation is noticed, but at others, the tempo of the sound’s wavering is altered quite sharply, or the differing patterns of undulation are pulled into phase, a multitude of voices becoming one. Möslang stretches the stills’ data to its limit, and what one might expect to be a claustrophobic experience feels surprisingly expansive.

The term “glitch” has quite a loaded connotation in contemporary discussion of electronic music, but it remains relevant to Möslang’s technique here, which can sound like an army of skipping cd players set loose on the listener’s ears. The concept of a soundtrack without a film is one often conjured in music reviews, and onheader_change, Norbert Möslang puts a microscopic twist on the idea, making a soundtrack frame by frame.

There are snippets of melody on these discs, but the majority of their contents are of a noisier nature: proto-industrial oscillations and groans, the alarm-like effects of repetitive tones, and rough, lo-fi excursions into a distorted brand of musique concrete. There's a varying sense of purpose about the album; at times Bates seems to have worked on a particular approach and honed it its purest form, but at others one can sense a vibe of more haphazard experimentation, with sounds arranged seemingly randomly. The work with a more obvious arc of intent is Bates' best, while some of the more unhinged segments fall into ineffectiveness when combined with the quality of the recordings. When he's on, though, Bates' melange of instrument mangling, tape manipulation, and various other bits of sonic construction has a strong sense of atmosphere, especially given the rather simplistic mode of composition that is a constant through much of each disc.

When the murkiness of the recordings is used to his benefit, Bates' sonic experiments are engaging and enveloping, though it would be a mistake to assume that the appeal of the release of Migraine Inducers/Antagonistic Music has only to do with the sounds therein. The discs' liner notes mention how much of a rarity these albums were when originally issued on cassette, even to contemporary collectors, so the number of those in possession of the tapes must be a very select few. However, as the crowd for damaged sound grows larger and larger, a spotlight is often thrust on even the most obscure of artists, and the rarity of this music, now available in an attractive gatefold sleeve (also available on reissued vinyl), is sure to be alluring to many listeners. These are long unheard sounds, and while their reissue decades later isn't likely to be the source of many grand revelations, Beta Lactam deserve kudos for digging this stuff up.