Somehow, armed with only a three track 7″ and a handful of singles, Portrayal of Guilt managed to make me anticipate their debut LP more than most upcoming releases this year. In my opinion, this is an album release done right; the only musical promotion for Let Pain Be Your Guide was a split single with Street Sects (“The Nihilist”) and the lathe picture disc “Chamber of Misery (Pt. I),” neither of which actually appeared on the record. Though I personally never listen to promotional singles anyway, it was a great feeling to go into the album with so much uncertainty about what it would sound like. That uncertainty doesn’t last long, though; Let Pain Be Your Guide starts strong with the vicious opus “Daymare,” the LP’s longest track and possibly the band’s most ambitious music to date. The vocals mine new territory with the low growls, accentuating the darker atmosphere and doom riffs with misanthropic fury. Industrial electronic textures that first appeared on “The Nihilist” are taken even further, adding to the already evocative songwriting; the outro of “Your War” with its noise contortions and pained gurgles is indescribably menacing, even alien. “Until We’re Dust” is a fittingly action-packed conclusion, thankfully subverting the tired cliche of an overlong sludge coda in favor of a driving build-up that culminates in the album’s most anthemic chorus. Really, my only complaint about Let Pain Be Your Guide is that it’s too short; and as far as problems go, that’s far from the worst one to have.

A few weeks ago, I was sent a generous selection of releases from the 2018 roster of French-Canadian label Empreintes Digitales. The label has been releasing CDs in the area of acousmatic and electroacoustic music for almost thirty years, and has introduced me to many of my favorite artists such as Paul Dolden and Michel Chion. I couldn’t choose which ones I wanted to review, so I decided to just write about them all!

eRikm – Mistpouffers (release date unknown)

French improviser and composer eRikm is one of the few artists whose work has been a consistent element in my journey into experimental music. His collaborative CD with Jérôme Noetinger, What a Wonderful World, was one of the first Erstwhile releases I heard and introduced me to the field of electroacoustic improvisation, and Zygosis made me realize the power of the turntable as an instrument in an avant-garde context. Mistpouffers, consistent with Empreintes Digitales’ focus on acousmatic music, collects three pieces that were composed and arranged from 2013 to 2016. “Draugalimur,” commissioned by the French music office, incorporates several spoken word segments within its immersive ambient soundscapes, including excerpts from traditional Icelandic folk writings. “Poudre” and “L’aire de la Moure 2” are both explorations into a very physical stereo space; the former’s treated recordings of firework explosions and the latter’s electric whirring and airplane engines are equally breathtaking.

Monique Jean – Troubles (Oct 16)

Troubles is Monique Jean’s third solo release, and its two pieces each boast an ambitious conceptual backing. The kinetic “T.A.G.” was inspired by rippling collective movements by crowds of people, an influence that is represented well by the composition’s litany of synthesized elements that progress with masterful pace and control. Jean’s sonic palette is dominated by the cold and artificial, with both actual recordings that are heavily processed as well as pure synthesis, but she commands this electronic orchestra with distinctly organic movements in mind. “Out of Joint” continues with that contrast, incorporating more recognizable sounds such as screams and the cawing of crows, but for an entirely different purpose; the piece is a sonic essay on the endurance of Shakespeare’s Macbeth throughout history.

Alistair MacDonald – Cabinets de curiosité (Oct 26)

The music on Cabinets de curiosité is just as colorful as the gorgeous artwork on the cover (painted by Shona Barr). Though each of the seven pieces explore different territory, the title of the composition that opens the disc, “The Tincture of Physical Things,” is a fitting unifier. MacDonald’s ‘cabinet of curiosities’ isn’t limited to just found objects; it includes any sounds that struck him as distinctive or significant, from the handmade glass instruments of Carrie Fertig used on “Scintilla” to the sounds of public spaces in “Final Times,” described by the composer as ‘cinema for the ears.’ MacDonald also pays tribute to Delia Derbyshire and early musique concrète on “Psychedelian Streams,” using more basic processing techniques on memorable objects from his childhood like Slinkies, wooden rulers, and wind chimes.

Åke Parmerud – Grains (release date unknown)

“Grains of Voice,” originally released more than two decades ago, is still one of the most powerful and conceptually interesting pieces of this entire selection of music. Parmerud’s own written summary of the work is fascinating, detailing his efforts to record different human voices from all over the world (the total duration of recordings Parmerud made during his journey approaches 20 hours!) and create a piece that ventures into several ideas, or ‘islands,’ amidst a continuous flow of sound. The composer’s treatment of the voices results in dark, sonorous waves, grounded by recognizable elements—for me, the most notable of these was an appearance of Ginsberg’s “Howl.” The other concepts are no less enthralling, what with the auditory riddles of “Les objet obscurs” and the philosophical musings of “Alias.”

“In the end, sound covered the face of the Earth.”

Derek Bailey and Han Bennink’s live album (1972’s aptly titled Derek Bailey & Han Bennink) easily has one of my favorite album covers. And after listening to it last night, I thought about something else that makes it great: that it’s FUN. A bit scary at times, with the screaming and whatnot, but in the end it is just two creative, talented improvisers having a grand time making noise. The second studio LP from the duo of Chris Corsano and Bill Orcutt, Brace Up!, shares this quality. Corsano and Orcutt are not only experienced in the art of group improvisation in their own rights, but they’ve also been playing together since at least 2013, when The Raw and the Cooked was released. You can truly hear the wordless two-person language in which they have become fluent; Corsano’s frenetic, free-form flurries are always just slightly cursed with rhythm, and some of the record’s best moments come about when Orcutt’s torturous, resonant attack of the guitar strings retreats slightly and they tease out that tiny bit of order for even a second or two. But then again, there’s no sense of convention necessary in the beautifully organic “She Punched a Hole in the Moon for Me” (which I’m 80% sure is a reference to Scott Pilgrim). Plus the album cover is hilarious, and pretty representative of what the music sounds like—but don’t be fooled; there is some gorgeous stuff on this.

Buy the LP here.

Peter Keller’s long running project Bacillus takes its name from a genus of enzyme-producing bacteria and infectious pathogens, a fitting namesake for more than twenty-years’ worth of experiments with sonic decay. Serial Infector is Keller’s first recorded work in almost a decade. It focuses on the horrifying concept of people who intentionally spread diseases and infections to others, much in the same way as Bacillus’s gritty electronics worm their way into the listener’s unsuspecting ear. The tape comes in a medical biohazard bag, which I’m not sure is able to contain the relentless, gnawing sounds that threaten to break out of their red plastic shell at any moment. The first side’s maelstroms of decomposing industrial sound, blasts of distorted feedback, and pedal noise howls come to a head with the vicious centerpiece “Bulgarian Nurses Affair,” a deafening mass of pestilence whose edges crackle with piercing glitches. Side B starts equally loud with “The Deliberate Infection of Over 400 Children With HIV,” a song I hope is not based on actual events, and “Intentional Transmission,” both of which pummel the eardrums with merciless high frequencies and squalling loops of noise. Serial Infector never relinquishes even a bit of its energy, even on the short interlude “Stolen Syringes” that sounds like a buzzing horde of disease-bearing gnats.

The first side of Fragments of Consciousness, the new tape from Bruising Pattern (also known as Peter Stipsits) on Lost Light Records, begins rather innocuously with a thin wave of static dwarfed by a guttural rumble. But by the time the first thirty seconds of the track have passed, Stipsits forces the wall into harsher territory, rolling the crackles to the front of the mix until they merge with the lumbering bass undertones. The result is a formidable, roiling slab of noise, bubbling but harsh like a boiling pot full of cement, that commands the listener’s attention for its entire 29 minutes. Hiding high above the chunks of distortion, however, is the soft clinking sound of a delay pedal clock, an element that foreshadows the higher register of the second piece and adds a new dimension to the piece. Though still up-close and confrontational, side two of Fragments of Consciousness whips up the crumbling cacophony into a tight drone, the crepitating noise concealing a more recognizably tonal hum that sets the whole wall on edge. Stipsits uses his minimal palette to find balance between arresting abrasion and anxious tension, making Fragments of Consciousness one of the more captivating wall releases I’ve encountered this year.

The Portuguese title of Federico Durand’s new album, Pequeñas Melodías, translates in English to “Little Melodies.” I couldn’t think of a better name for this collection of soft music box twinkles and synthesizer drones, muffled and broken by the decaying tapes onto which they were recorded and manipulated. The opening pair of tracks introduce cascades of flickering tape loops, portraying a powerful sense of nostalgia and dusty beauty yet entirely avoiding cutesy-ness, an easy trap to fall into when those distinctive toy-like plinks are used. “Las Estrellas Giran En El Pinar” brings guitar into the mix, and “Los Juguetes De Minka Podhájská” draws unique emotions from its reliance on fragmented playback, with the stuffy melodies sometimes dropping out for as long as a second at a time. I should also mention that Pequeñas Melodías, along with all releases on the IIKKI imprint, is a collaboration with a visual artist, in this case photography team Albarrán Cabrera (Anna P. Cabrera & Angel Albarrán). Even before I had finished my first listen of the record I was skeptical about how these intangible, elusive feelings could be augmented or even matched by photographs, but that was before I actually saw what Cabrera and Albarrán had contributed (you can view a video preview of the photo book here). Their gorgeous shots are filled with rich darkness and film imperfections, evoking distant warmth in even the most nocturnal images. The accompaniments for the longest two tracks, “Racimos de Luz” and “La Tarde Ronda Por La Casa,” are breathtaking, and somehow handily complement Durand’s immaterial works.

I recently wrote about Ami Yoshida’s fantastic Tiger Thrush, a personal favorite of mine, for another site, focusing on the ability of mouth and vocal sounds to elicit visceral discomfort in a listener. Sindre Bjerga works with similar techniques at the start of Jan Ken Pon, an unedited live recording from his 2016 tour, cutting and mangling abstract vocalizations with hiss-marred dictaphone manipulation, creating muddy soundscapes of moans and gurgles. As I view it, the portable tape recorder is such an effective tool for producing collage-based music such as this because its low fidelity introduces a distinct element of intimacy, that can either enhance the comforting nature of familiar sounds or the formidable horror of unfamiliar ones. Bjerga plays with both throughout the half-hour performance, with the same syrupy tape distortion dripping from high-pitched delay pedal feedback, object improvisation, and field recordings. The homespun cacophony swells with movement and tension through the piece, culminating in a stripped down finale with only some murky loops, clatters, and ascending feedback that sounds like a tea kettle about to lose its lid. My only complaint is that it ends rather abruptly; but then again, I feel like any ending to these uneasy sounds would feel unceremonious.

I operate under a sort of plausible deniability when it comes to lyrics, especially in regards to hardcore music. They’ve never been a very important aspect of music for me, but if they’re bad or cringe-inducing they can quickly ruin the whole package. So usually, if I can’t hear or understand what the vocalist is singing, I don’t make an effort to find out. But Great Reversals vocalist Aaron Whitfield’s passionate bellows are always completely intelligible on Stalactite, a discovery that made me wary…until I realized how great his words are. Abstract imagery and introspective angst have equal footing, exemplified in the final line of the titular centerpiece: “Meet me between two unseens, I need to know I have value in your eyes.” Whitfield often leads the charge, but none of it would work without the meaty, dense riffs, filled with plenty of palm-muted thrashing and harmonizing leads, and the dizzying drum work of Eric Scobie, whose mastery of the bass and toms manifests in the textural paintings of “The Rattlesnake King,” arrestingly sparse breakdowns, and galloping d-beats. Stalactite is a safe but refreshing take on NY and metalcore influenced hardcore, with none of the shortcomings that often plague those styles.

Right away, Ke I Te Ki feels more spontaneous than Suzuki and Onda’s last collaboration, Ma Ta Ta Bi. According to Onda’s insightful abstract for the album, Ke I Te Ki was recorded live at the Emily Harvey Foundation in New York City, a notable landmark of the American avant-garde. The gallery’s exhibition spaces are very open and unrestricted, allowing the duo to perform in their preferred environment; i.e. one where the audience is not confined to one place and the performers are not completely separate. Suzuki and Onda’s fondness for unusual sounds that occupy a space in distinct ways comes across well in these excerpts, and the excellent recordings give a sense of both the intimacy of the materials used and their acoustic properties in the much larger surrounding environment. The title track expands on squeaking textures presumably made by Suzuki’s Analapos, while quiet scrapes of metal and rustling plastic provide a softer undercurrent. “Yo Ru No To Ba Ri” takes us to a dark, aquatic soundscape, with the Analapos providing wistful whalish wails and what sounds like responses from Onda in the form of what I think is an electric fan, and some field recordings of seagulls later in the piece. Funnily enough, the only sounds of which I knew the origin for certain was the occasional beeps and honks of cars outside the building, which introduce a unique feeling of isolation to the music. These two artists clearly enjoy the work they do together, and that passion comes across even in the album’s sparsest moments.

The music on 5 Clocks, 5 Musical Pieces, 1 Museum comes from audio constructed by artist Mauro Sambo for a sound installation of the same name, located in Fondazione Querini Stampalia in Venice. Sambo worked with recordings of the five recently restored clocks on display at the museum in addition to samples of works by five Italian composers that correspond to the appearance and sound produced by each clock. The result is a fascinating intermingling of concrete sound and the lofty, spectral arrangements of composers such as Domenico Cimarosa (“Diana”) and Luigi Cherubini (“Well”). Each segment weaves the rhythmic ticks and metallic clinking of the clock mechanism into the classical pieces, delving into territory distinct from the others. “Diana” bonds the metronomic rings of a green marble and gilt bronze clock with both formless drones and synchronized rhythms from Cimarosa’s work, even briefly exploring the amplified sounds of museum-goers that were presumably picked up when Sambo was recording the clock. Even though the album provides only part of the installation’s full effect, there is still a profound and well-crafted sense of space, sometimes identifiable like the aforementioned recordings of passerby on “Diana” to the mysterious environment created by stereo manipulations on “Lyre.” 5 Clocks, 5 Musical Pieces, 1 Museum masterfully captures the beautiful and the uncanny, the alluring pregnancy of historic objects and art, the unyielding force of time.