Subtitled with the tagline “Free Sound and Vision for the Ages,” newly minted barebones blog/netlabel hybrid Fruit of the Spirit is one of several promising independent music sources stepping up in the wake of recent events, and is probably the one I’m most excited about. Each release is simply hosted on Google Drive in whatever format and metadata the artist(s) sent—farm-to-table freshness! My three favorites of the first wave of titles (all of them duo concoctions, incidentally) are the following. I’m not sure if there’s a way to directly support the label yet, but I hope there is soon.

Grey Windowpane – Catskin (Mar 14)

Cobbled together entirely from long-distance digital exchanges of “samples, cut-ups, voice memos and instrumentation,” Transatlantic duo Grey Windowpane’s debut Catskin is a series of messy yet careful collages, each one offering a casual, almost careless strain of theatricality that gives the hour-long album a deeply narrative feel. The vocal elements are some of the strongest and most memorable, from the Black Dice–esque nonsense psychedelia and unhinged lunacy of “Drillers Don’t Trip” to the evocative layering of “Yards of Valiente” and “Shane,” but contributors Troy Curry and Michael “Ma” Turner also include plenty of more inconsequential sounds as well (the shrieking teapot featured prominently in “Friday’s Needle” is a favorite).

Roadhouse Duo – I Am Stuck Between Two Cars (Mar 15)

I don’t know anything about Equipment Pointed Ankh, the band from which the Roadhouse project(s) apparently arose, but the hazy flume ride that is this tour CD-R is more than enough motivation for a deep dive (it’s unclear when the actual physical edition was first released). Chris Bush and Jim Marlowe pinwheel through several stylistic milieus throughout the single half-hour track, New Zealand earth-drone yawns and airplane-engine guitar roar and finally the most tired, dusty dance music, but its consistent character is that of a free-flowing jam, a.k.a. exactly what I needed this week.

Staubitz and Waterhouse – Live at Mystery Train 10/1/21 (Mar 20)

It shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that Pawtucket collaborators Mary Staubitz and Russ Waterhouse are just as compelling as a live unit as they are a process duo (for most of their releases, Staubitz records and Waterhouse processes/edits), but now this 3″-length document ensures that the evidence is out there, just in case. From their diverse arsenal of turntables, garden implements, electronics, and pre-captured sounds arises a whimsical but weighty atmosphere that gives the same uncanny comfort as a shrine made from yard detritus (or limes and paper). I was initially caught off guard by the somewhat clumsy tambura drone that elbows its way in around the ten-minute mark, but it almost immediately peters out and then bounces back, wracked with the same organic instability as all of the other ingredients.

Is there any act with more of a paradoxical mixture of obscurity and ubiquity than Barn Sour? Not exactly likely your next-door neighbor would have a copy of Conté for Dick ‎in their frequent listening stack, but ask anyone at a niche record shop or sparsely attended basement show and they’ll almost certainly have at least heard some of the buzz, because the snorts, neighs, and whinnies of Winnipeg artist Pat Klassen’s most fascinating project have quickly shaken the underground music community to its core. That was true even before the release of One Trick Pony on Matthew Sullivan’s new-ish imprint Staighre, but now, with what I can already confidently call their best work yet, Barn Sour has branded themselves as an unmatched and truly terrifying sonic force. The first two tracks immediately introduce the diverse palette of the release, a seamless amalgam of elements and emotions previously explored: weighty, fraught tape ambience; impressionistic piano and organ resonance; queasy delirium; incoherence both cathartic and horrifying. “Gouch Call” is an early standout with its strangled sax babble and guttural gargles, conjuring what is perhaps the fullest realization of the project’s consistently indescribable atmosphere—that is, until “Peace, Be Still (Mane Mix),” which is easily both the most frightening music I’ve ever heard and my new pick for favorite Barn Sour track. The unnamed contributor whose manic laughter graced the A side of horses fucked over the head with bricks returns to take part in a hair-raising dual-vocal attack, chilling shrieks and startling pitch-doubled shouts and feverish giggling all trampling over the ersatz slur of a mortally wounded phonograph. Even with such a towering precedent “Foal Dub” closes things out perfectly, hanging up the bridle in a loose, careless, apathetically ambiguous way that makes it clear one, two, ten listens won’t be nearly enough. I’ll check back in at #100; stay saddled.

Even for someone who was not only just then getting into Gero, but noise as a whole, the surprise comeback release of Moenai Hai in 2016 was an exciting event, to say the least. Thinking back, perhaps more so than anything else that experience was the catalyst for the solidifying of my interest in experimental art in general. I’m far from alone in having a deeply personal connection to Juntaro Yamanouchi’s infamous project; awe, curiosity, nostalgia (of varying sorts and sizes), and gratitude are just a few of the many emotions that their music, aesthetic, and philosophy—or lack thereof—evoke for fans all over the world. Though the band has remained active for these past six or so years, the recent concluding installment in the >(decrescendo) series already feels like another significant, poignant milestone in a formidable body of work. This is attributable to the fact that, over its two-disc sprawl, Final Chapter carefully enshrines so much of what defines Gero’s undefinable art in a single, inexplicably unified acoustic experience. “Farewell Dream Treatment (a.k.a. Our Dream Is Over)” is an extended cut of the original >(decrescendo) release: a simple mono recording documents Yamanouchi quietly playing a HAPI drum at a park in the wee hours of morning, the softly malleted metallics humbly blending into the pre-dawn naturescape. The minimal, organic, solitude-steeped approach is of course not far from the hermitic reticence of past releases like Hell Driver (1999) and Gig in Train (recorded in 1993, released in 2019), but gone is the oppressive isolation and bleak despair that saturated that pre-reformation material—instead, Yamanouchi’s extended meditations sound more like a tribute to being alone rather than a desperate decrying of it. “Destructive Crust Treatment (a.k.a. To the End of the World)” elevates the beautiful, beguiling catharsis to new heights with a blanket layer of diaphanous distortion, which both alters and shrouds the sonic profile of the preceding disc like smoke over lightning storm desolation. You can still hear the pensive tones of the HAPI beneath the haze, and when the squawking birds send sharp sound-spires through the crust, the harmonies formed are nothing short of otherworldly… and yet they aren’t, because all in all Final Chapter may be Gero’s most profoundly grounded work yet, and for that reason it may also already be my favorite.

(Image credits to speranza.)

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This new batch from Sam McKinlay’s Lake Shark Harsh Noise imprint presents music from two artists not exactly known for producing the titular genre of music, one of whom is Chris Fratesi. The brains behind the obscure but beloved Gene Pick project, Fratesi has now released three full-length works of electronic sound art under his own name, each one more radical than the last. Sound for Blank Disc, true to its title, comprised eviscerating sessions of modified empty compact disc playback, while Red Lead utilized an even more unidentifiable approach to create unsettlingly lifeless soundscapes of displaced electrical din; if anything, Stunad is a sort of stylistic fusion of those two preceding documents, embracing both unruly digital indeterminacy and uncompromising minimalism. Generated using an ostensibly simple process—”source taken from a sine wave generator and then put onto CD then manipulated using a modified CD player”—the A and B sides of the tape are unique but complementary slabs of hypnotic glitch-stasis. The former is thick and bass-heavy, an incessant stutter of sterile distortion and fractured frequency artifacts that will put any listener in a turgid tech-trance within the first five minutes, whereas the latter strips the noise down to a shredded high-pitched whine. It’s impossible not to get hooked on the fleeting illusions of structure that haunt these unyielding sound-obelisks: wreckage of rhythm-remnants, gnashing loops, heathen harmonies.

Even though I and I’m sure many others are partial to the immediately recognizable sounds of shortwave radio recordings, producing compelling music in which they are the sole ingredient is more than just adjusting an antenna or twiddling a dial. Field Recordings and Shortwave Volume I, a new digital release by a self-described “post-rock duo,” contains the first material I’ve heard since Alyssa Festa’s 2017 self-titled tape that harnesses shortwave in a way that’s truly beautiful, immensely evocative of the person or persons behind the knobs yet still embracing enough dull passivity to let the static and garbled speech shine in all its otherworldly spectral glory. As with Festa (who unfortunately will not release anything else under that alias), the Charlotte, NC–based Peter’s Gate doesn’t provide information about any sort of methodology behind the compositions or improvisations, instead letting them speak for themselves—and speak they do. “6.58-7.06” and “59.4kHz 9900.0kHz” establish familiar textural presences, including the deadpan recitation of codes and messages popularized by the Conet Project and others, and set the languid pace at which the majority of the album proceeds, an introduction that makes the much more sudden jumps used later on tracks like “Found Radio” and “Voice of Korea (Taiwan Missiles).” The former is a truly gorgeous piece of music, making ample use of both near-dead air and active frequencies to paint a greyscale spectrum of metamorphosing noise, fragile stasis, and ephemeral melody—the brief cut to the Eastern new age song about four minutes in is breathtaking. And if you still doubt the humanism of this work, order a CD, which will apparently bear handwritten thank-yous from both members. Long story short: tune in. Now.