From its opening moments, it’s clear that Proud Trash Sound will probably place among the most unique albums you’ve ever heard. “Trash Sound,” a rough, jagged cocktail of farm animal sounds, primitive guitar melodies, and a sunny beauty that hides under the muck, sets the stage well for the rest of the record. Buck Young masterminds Jason Crumer and Zoe Burke (Sapphogeist) enlist a host of collaborators, including Christian Mirande, Matthew Schuff, and Alan Jones, to craft marvelously messy sonic paintings of a surreal Wild West. I’m going to be honest; going in to my first listen back when the album was first released on cassette, I didn’t expect this bat shit insane formula to accomplish anything beyond novelty appeal. But wow, was I wrong. These chaotic collages of dirty country tunes, obscure recordings, and Crumer’s trademark blasts of cathartic harsh noise initially seem random and slipshod, but further listening reveals a level of care in composition that seems to contradict the source material. This is where the charm of Proud Trash Sound is found; who else could stitch together such disparate elements into songs that are simultaneously hilarious, punishing, thrilling, and arrestingly gorgeous? Who else could follow up an amateurish guitar stomp about pussy pains and fuckboys with one of the most sublime, emotional tributes I’ve heard (rest in peace Mr. Christopher Alan Murdoch)? Buck Young, that’s who, and I sure hope they keep it up.

Proud Trash Sound was initially released as a cassette earlier this year, which has since sold out. You can (and should) purchase the LP version here.

This diminutive but dense cassette by American project Mordan Jaikel is chock full of haphazard, cut and paste fun. Romping through 30 tracks in 27 minutes, Open Your Lie plunders a colorful toy box of sounds full of everything from plasticky synth melodies and zolo-esque prog miniatures to quirky spoken word and processed concrète samples. The segmented, almost schizophrenic vignette format works well for Mordan Jaikel’s music, for as much of its charm comes from the unexpected changes and impermanence as the eccentric collages themselves. From the hilarious speech manipulations of opening piece “Good Morning,” it’s clear that Open Your Lie is unafraid to explore both the playfully surreal and the unsettlingly cryptic; the latter is less present but crops up on oddities like penultimate track “Fire Machine,” in which a heavily affected recording creates a brief but spellbinding dark atmosphere. It’s amazing how these minuscule pieces construct their own little worlds and stories, which are almost immediately torn down and rearranged by the ones after.

R. Schwarz’s new tape collects “four more exposures of the universal wonder of wind congealing in a compact cauldron.” While wind, like much of nature, is a powerful but ultimately neutral force, the sounds on Wind 4-7 manifest in a dark, mysterious, even unsettling atmosphere. The pieces move along at a lethargic pace, their abstract structures consisting of both the sound of wind itself and clattering, clinking objects that are set in motion by it. On “4” and “6” especially, these objects, whose identity is unknown but sound to me like an assortment of wind chimes, aerophones, tubes, etc, create hauntingly tactile textures. It’s unclear just how processed these sounds are – at the very least they are sequenced, layered, and mixed with each other – but for the most part the music is quite bare and neutral, which makes its eeriness even more profound. There’s still light outside, but a storm is coming; the clouds begin to smother the sun, a chill descends, and the ever-present wind picks up its pace to whip your hair back from your face and rattle everything around you. Schwarz has done well with the elusive task of harnessing and manipulating such a primordial entity while preserving its energy.

While I don’t actually have the lovely white CD in my hands, I thought I’d talk a bit about World’s amazing and influential music in celebration of their revamped discography compilation out on Dotsmark today. World was a vicious noise-grind trio from the endlessly fruitful creative hub of Osaka, Japan, who recorded and performed with their unique lineup of dual vocalists Hiroshi Zen and Akira Kawabata and drummer Aono Tadahiko. Restricted to a pair of 7″ EPs, splits with YesMeansYes and C*****e Bastards, and some tracks for a few various artist compilations, World’s output is mainly characterized by relentless stop/start blast beats, squalling feedback and crushing distortion, and agonized wordless shrieks. They fills a special place between the semi-improvised amateur chaos of noisecore or “shitcore” music and the compact, composed songs of grindcore, embodying the best elements of both and giving your bones a good rattle while they’re at it. The Dotsmark release, simply titled World, includes everything previously released on Ormolycka’s 2014 Discography release as well as a 1995 demo and two more series of tracks from V/A comps.

Field recorder Jeremy Hegge’s albums are reverent auditory documents of places in nature. Acting as a passive observer, Hegge presents high-fidelity recordings of the harmonies of nature, from cacophonous clusters of animal calls to the soft sounds of moving wind or water. Six Days in Townsville is a collection of eight short pieces collected in and near the eponymous city of Townsville in Queensland, Australia, and explores a wide variety of sounds throughout these areas. As always, Hegge’s recording and mastering is of the highest quality, and the keeping of each element’s original orientation in the stereo range ensures absolute immersion and faithful reconstruction of the space. In addition to his usual interest in the noises made by birds and frogs and the like, Hegge also captures less familiar, more abstract textures, like the syrupy rumbles of “Parched earth, wet” and the low buzz of “Humming dusk, red clouds.” For me, these recordings uncannily portray that tense, electric feeling often present in the warm, dry twilight, like something big is about to happen. Ultimately though, just like physically being in nature, everyone’s relationship with these sounds will be different, and at the very least you can enjoy the vivid sonic environments on a purely superficial level; they’re pretty therapeutic.

Ambient music serves different purposes for different people. Some fall asleep to it, others use it as background music for reading or studying, etc. For me, it fills many needs, and the mark of a great ambient album in my mind is its versatility. Blush, the new tape by Belgian artist | RG |, conceals a myriad of valuable elements within its unassuming, calm atmosphere. It’s certainly music you can drift away to, and makes sure to stay out of your way if some intense thinking is on the docket, but | RG | has ensured that these soft sounds have substance. There’s a distinct tangibility to many of the reverb-drenched drones, implying a musique concrète methodology, and especially in tracks like “Sink Shots” close attention will reveal very physical constructions beneath the clouds of fuzzy ambiance. This long piece is the tape’s strongest, delving the deepest into the harmonies between the corporeal and treated sounds used. Stretches like the middle section make me wish this was explored more in the rest of the album, but it also shows that | RG | is drawing from a very deep pool of material with admirable restraint. This restraint is what makes Blush a much more universally appreciable album, and allows it to complement both distracted activity and focused listening.

I expect a lot from the artists I love, so much so that I am often way too critical of their new creative efforts. And as the lead-up to the release of Ariana Grande’s fourth studio album, Sweetener, began, I went a bit overboard. Despite liking the first single, “No Tears Left to Cry,” a veritable blizzard of complaints would inevitably be uttered whenever Grande was brought up. But I was being ridiculous. Did I think that “The Light Is Coming” was a bad song with bizarre production choices and annoying repetition, and that “God Is a Woman” was overindulgent and had one of the trashiest music videos I’d ever seen? Yes. Was I annoyed that there was to be a song on the new album named after Grande’s latest beau? Yes. Was I completely lying to myself and being melodramatic when I swore to never listen to Sweetener? Absolutely, and I’m glad I was. This record is ambitious, sprawling, and imperfect, but it’s also fantastic. All of my doubts were soothed by the surprisingly well-ordered track list and flow, and I’ve even come around on both of the aforementioned singles. “R.E.M.” and “Sweetener” are new favorites, both instances of the perfect production evolution from the bombastic dance instrumentals of Dangerous Woman to this record’s increased use of electronic music and trap flavors. In my opinion, Sweetener sort of falls apart at the end, with the unneeded “Pete Davidson” and the lengthy closer “Get Well Soon,” but hey, I’ve flip-flopped on basically everything else so who knows how I’ll feel about it in a week. Sweetener is no Dangerous Woman, but I was way too hard on an artist I love and respect when I should have put more faith in her. Thank you Ariana, as always.

Sound experimenters Karl Fousek, Devon Hansen, and Robert Tellier-Craig come together in this trio to create lush electronic soundscapes. After releases on Dinzu Artefacts and Spring Break Tapes over the past two years, their new tape on Never Anything, No Way of Knowing, is a short C30 filled with spacious electroacoustic constructions, the two pieces (it’s uncertain whether the music is composed or improvised) floating and swelling through different combinations of textures. It’s difficult to tell who contributed which sounds, but it’s not difficult to discern that these musicians really understand how to play well with each other; each element enters at the perfect time to complement and be complemented by the others already present. I’ve noticed at least three unifying categories of timbres used: the synthetic and mechanical, the airy and ethereal, and the organic and tactile. This latter group of sounds is probably the most unique characteristic of No Way of Knowing, and includes things resembling anything from footsteps in puddles to the rustling of dewy leaves; an obvious (but gorgeous) contrast to the tape’s more artificial facets.

While solo improvisational albums can be, and often are, great, the true potential of freely played and electroacoustic music is realized when two or more artists work together, exploring the way each individual’s contributions interact and coexist. No label supports this argument better than Erstwhile, whose extensive roster of duo records spans a staggering range of creative combinations. My Trust in You, a new disc from reductionist composer Lucio Capece and tape improviser Marc Baron, employs an ambitious arsenal of textures and elements, making use of everything from environmental recordings to noise-encrusted tape loops to disarming passages without any sound at all. Opening track “Believe in Brutus” begins the record in a disorienting fashion; it is here that Capece’s and Baron’s interplay is at its most whimsical and kinetic, with crackling chunks of sound quickly rising, falling, and fighting against interjections of bird chirps and complete silence. In contrast, “Black soils- museums without statues” begins a movement toward more patient, droning structures. It’s a trend that continues throughout the remainder of the tracks, culminating with centerpiece “Kneel for your psychoacoustic rights,” whose cathartic beauty is an unexpected treat after a roiling start. My Trust in You initially seems to be among the more immediate of Erstwhile’s releases, but soon reveals that many more layers are in need of uncovering.

On Расстояние, Finnish artist Dmitri Zherbin’s new CDr out on Magma Tones, otherworldly collages draw their contents from a vast pool of sound sources. Zherbin harnesses collections of field recordings, tape loops, feedback, acoustic guitar, and what sounds like some circuit bending too. The whole thing doesn’t even reach 21 minutes, but it’s paced well, evolving through varying moods and atmospheres. “Часть 1” begins with a pleasant clip of people talking over a semi-buried melody, a nice natural mix of sounds that stands well on its own. Before long, Zherbin brings rumbling, mechanical electronics into the mix, keeping them mostly in the background and subtly unseating the feeling of comfort that had crept in. Electric wails and clunks conclude the piece, descending into uneasy, tense territory, before “Часть 2” begins and the beauty is back. This is probably the best part of Расстояние, as flitting stereo-spread guitar meanders around a droning circuit tone; really gorgeous stuff. The latter part of this piece and “Часть 3” largely retread territory already explored, which is disappointing considering the release’s short length; but Zherbin also proves they know how to work with and shape these abstract sonic elements.