Matteo Castro is a name that may not be known to many, but to the few for whom it is familiar, you likely don’t need to read any more of this review to be confident that the latest Casa di Caccia material is absolutely superb. With both the inimitable Second Sleep label and his own diverse projects—Kam Hassah, Endless Sea, Drug Age with Francesco Tignola, Mercury Hall, Primorje with Giovanni Donadini, and of course Lettera 22 with Riccardo Mazza—Castro has always stood tall at the intersection of many different realms of experimental sound, bringing the same level of detail and commitment to quality in any context. That’s definitely true for Grand Totàl, the latest release from the duo with Gianluca Herbertson; it’s one of those tapes that obliterates from the very first seconds, the lush full-stereo intensity blazing throughout both ten-minute sides even as classic pedal-chain kinks like distortion panning and tension-filled brief bouts of silence keep things interesting. Any fellow fans of Negative Tongue or Lack of Attention will feel right at home for the duration of this jam-packed C21 (in almost direct contrast length-wise to the previous CdC release, one of two massive eight-cassette box sets released by Second Sleep earlier this year). At least in terms of my own retrospective thinking, harsh noise more so than most other genres/traditions in the avant-garde sphere grows and evolves regionally, and while the 90s may have belonged to the Japanese and the aughts to the North Americans, projects like this make a convincing case for the Europeans being the ones leading the charge post-2010.

What’s also great is that Grand Totàl is just one of a hefty handful of killer new tapes from Absurd Exposition; don’t miss Wasauksing Sniper, Discordia, or especially Moody Brooding.

Neither of these decorated artists need any introduction, and neither does Drainage, as it turns out; part one immediately kicks things off with a web of supercharged concrète that consistently highlights both Meirino’s trademark intensity and Noetinger’s virtuosic tape technique. This isn’t the first time they’ve worked together—back in 2012, Noetinger commissioned “Techniques of Self-Destruction” for that year’s l’Audible Festival in Paris, and then much more recently the two contributed remixes to the Lingua Corrente Reworks tape compilation and released a 2020 trio live recording with Antoine Chessex as Maiandros—but it is their first duo meeting, and thus the stamp of quality ensured by each is doubled up. Those same stamps guarantee that this won’t sound quite like anything either artist has done so far, because from Additive Manufacturing and The Blind Match to Genève / Paris and La Cave des Etendards, both allow for their approaches and ideas to be shaped by their collaborator in order to generate the most singular results possible. This is absolutely the case here; Drainage operates via a musical language built from scratch, one that mobilizes processed glitches, emf interference, and other razor-sharp microsounds in a sonic sandstorm beset by lengthier samples and field recordings. Though the overall sound is a futuristic one, made possible by the more than sixty years concrete music has existed, plenty of homage is paid to the deepest roots of the tradition: fleeting theatrical audiodramas in part three, the barrage of Henry-esque creaking wood at the end of part five. The level of detail and totality of vision at work here are a wonder to behold.

The Cleaner Tapes roster continues to expand with the best of both old and new names in queer noise and industrial music. Pain Body is only the Pittsburgh-based Rain Matheke’s second tape as Farrah Faucet, the first one being Depression Body on Summer Interlude earlier this year, but the artist already displays a mastery of the power electronics fundamentals that is head and shoulders above most stuff out there, as well as plenty of singular twists that make the material fresh, exciting, and as brutal as possible. Embracing a harsh-indebted palette for the instrumentals along with a wide-ranging assortment of samples and live vocal attack, Matheke also very much takes cues from genre titans like Straight Panic in structure (that full-frontal blast after the muffled, muttered speech intro in “Lungless” is flawlessly executed) and Interracial Sex in texture, how the sounds are immensely heavy and yet seem to always be decomposing (the run of “Venom” through “Receding” makes this tape essential listening for fellow fans). But I can also confidently I’ve never heard a PE album quite like this, nor one that tackles these same topics of bodily pain, discomfort, and trauma with such depth and panache. From its uncanny, saliva-soaked lyrical delirium to the cathartic noise crescendo that swells like irritated gum tissue throughout, “Flinching” encapsulates it all in a succinct nine minutes, slathering an atmosphere that is as enthralling as it is revolting. “…I’m thinking about rot on a microscopic level.”

It is not up for debate that Bryan Day is very good at what he does—nor that he is the only one who even can. Not only does he scratch-build novel sound sculptures that function as both musical and visual artwork, but many of them are also fully usable instruments as well, harnessed by the same hands that cobbled them together in amazing displays of improvisational dexterity (check out this video of him playing with Jay Kreimer as Seeded Plain a few years ago). That dexterity also allows for transposition to a variety of contexts, something explored on other collaborative efforts on eh?, Eyesore, and elsewhere over the years, a recent gem being 2021’s Crooked Doppler with Seymour Glass on Tanzprocesz. Like that tape, Woven Territories dissolves any boundaries between performance, observation, and processing, making it difficult—irrelevant—to tell who’s doing what. Is this a field recording of the same space in which these machines are trundling, or is it cut-and-paste? Is that the sound of a contact mic’d vibrating surface or the growl of an old tractor engine? Any answers I spitball tend toward the imagistic because of how vivid these surreal vignettes are, painstakingly painted in all the right colors. I am a big fan of the unwieldy motifs that show up in the lengthy sketches like accidental inkblots: short synth ditties like train station announcement tones; sweeping, gauzy swirls of loosely spooled tape blur.

As Bulk Carrier tapes pile up on my shelf like shipping containers on a brine-streaked deck, one has to wonder if such an aesthetically laser-focused project dedicated (recently at least) to decommissioned vessels will itself ever run aground. And then you actually turn on the deck and listen to the latest slabs—in this case, the two sides of Derbyshire—and remember what a load of bilge those doubts are. There is not and has not ever been anyone else whose walls sound like this, slow and hulking with a hard-to-define lifelessness to it all, the dirge of a dead ship slogging. This last quality dominates both Derbyshire and May’s Ojibway, each playing like even more of a eulogy than usual. While the latter carrier was only just taken out of service in 2022, the MV Derbyshire was lost to the maw of the northern Pacific more than four decades ago in 1980, and accordingly the two tracks that comprise the tape seem to yawn from the very depths of the ocean itself, the highs minced to shreds by ruthless pressure and the lows groaning at a register that sounds more tectonic than human-made. Stagnance is the clear structural backbone, but there are always very intentional cracks in the hull that keep things interesting and unpredictable. A watery grave has never been more appealing.

Trombe’s 2019 self-titled debut LP kicked off the Nantes unit’s ongoing two-piece experiment with a short and sweet exercise in minimal brut-jazz, with percussionist Erwan Cornic rattling chains and trinkets just as often as he plays full drum set and Thomas Beaudelin yanking the sax valves like root vegetables. But even though the duo has garnered praise from devout skronk stalwarts like Mats Gustafsson, their particular style has always had a distinct, almost delicate melodicism at its heart, and that’s only become more apparent with this brand new CD Déluge. Take “Flopée” for example, a lengthy track that opens with some of Trombe’s most straightforward free music tumble yet and ends with a serenade so sublime one has to do a double take, with the road between the two points being a relentlessly abstract and unpredictable one. “Foultitude” might be even better, and in spirit approaches the sound of Ayler/Corsano duo I’ve only heard in my dreams. This is the project’s most diverse and best release yet, and I hope its both inspired and singular approach is an indicator of a new direction in improvised music. I disagree with Takeo Suetomi’s statement that Trombe and others have “become more sophisticated and less jazz-like in their energy”; on one hand it just sounds a lot like AMMrogance (aRowegance?), and on the other, to my ears this stuff is jazzy as all hell.

Like a more subdued but no less enthralling companion to other precipitation-based NNM favorites like Prepared Rain and Changing Weather, this inspired split tape by instrument architects Quintron (Robert Rolston) and NYZ (David Burraston) can either cozy things up on a grey rainy day or open the sky when the earth is so parched that the ground is gasping. Side A features and is titled for Rolston’s custom-built Weather Warlock synthesizer, “which uses moisture, temperature, barometric pressure, wind speed and UV radiation to massage a major chordal drone” throughout its languid nineteen minutes. The artist’s goal of performing just enough preparation to simulate a natural process uninfluenced by human hands—”like a fire, or a lake reflecting moonlight. Constantly vibrating with change but also very still”—is a success; the track has the same comforts as a soft trickle on the roof of a tent or a bubbling brook, eternal yet unbottleable. Burraston’s “rain wire” weaves an equally soft but more active tapestry of damp static and the muffled raygun blasts as the drops hit the amplified metal string, its small sliver of the valley it stretches across somehow capturing the essence of the entire expanse. Two sides of the same puddle.

At the moment, I can’t think of a familiar sound that I both hate and love with equal measure besides the hum of an rattling snare drum. As soon as I notice it in pretty much any context it’s all I can hear, especially if the performance or recording is a sparser one, and sometimes it’s more grating than a squeaky kick pedal or an out-of-tune tom. But then I hear something like Music for Snare Drums and Portable Speakers and remember to appreciate this strain of resonance, which, when it’s the center of attention, has a lot to offer sonically. “Resonance” means multiple things in the case of this pair of live sets from the ongoing trio project; the tense, tactile interactions between the speaker playback (and feedback) and the snared surfaces as they’re both held and struck is in focus, but so is a distinct emotional essence that reaches far beyond just experimentation. The constrained eddies of “Hackney Marshes” especially get downright gorgeous at times, helped along by the respiring ecosystem beneath them, and the hiss and rush of the agitated wires sounds too organic not to be breath too as it sinks into the swamp. It’s a very exciting tape, even aside from the fact that the credits are a miniature who’s who of fellow radical minimalists, and it’s proof that austerity is not inherent to such a stripped-back, formal approach. So no more excuses from anyone else.

The description of A.D.T.F. as “mid-fi” is a bit of an oversell (or an undersell, if you’re me); even though all of Brisbane noise purveyor Minimal Impact’s digital editions are simply rips of whatever master was sent in by the artist, S27E152’s first release since 2016 sounds like it’s been buried in the earth longer than it’s been above ground, and perhaps even unlawfully exhumed for the sake of this edition (we’re very grateful). Roughly cocooned in the fusty thrall of dirt-encrusted tape, the roiling analog core of both side-long cuts—which would probably sound a lot like harsh were they blasted rather than trickled—takes on a meditative but haunting cadence, like the echoes of roars from deep within a cave, too far away to retain the raw desperation of whatever’s throat they came from. For me, this sort of thing is so easy to love but so hard to say why… I guess it goes back to what I wrote about in yesterday’s review, how even the slightest novelties in approach or aesthetic can keep an enduring sound both timeless and dynamic. How can something feel so cozy and yet so totally “hopeless”? “Fulfilled Desires” indeed; I want to wrap myself in the moldy grey blankets of the latter half of that track and sleep until I turn to dust. If you’ve read this far, chances are you probably feel the same.

The beauty of the avant-garde is that it both constantly evolves and remains the same; contexts, attitudes, and technologies are always changing, and yet the same core tenets—subvert, defy, experiment, express—will always be embodied by anyone who has or will ever fuck around with pedals or delve into extended techniques or record the rain outside their window. I mention this fairly apparent truth because one of the first things that came to mind when I heard the skittering tactility of Canyon (Los Angeles) was Yeast Culture’s IYS, an obscure but beloved record that came out more than thirty years ago. Both reside in a space that feels both dissected and organic, claustrophobic and expansive, all scrapes and rustles and pitter-patters that soothe the brain. But despite a shared lineage in focus and texture (and a passion for the foliage of the West Coast), R. Pierre’s latest document of “absolute music” is very much a fresh entry in a decidedly new canon of field recordings–based, stasis-inclined sound art exemplified by the work of the Modern Concern roster, Tsunoda/Unami, Abby Lee Tee, Norman W Long, and others. It is as confounding as it is relaxing—the thin, hissing constrictions of part two especially are almost unnerving at first—and perfect for a quiet moment here, there, or everywhere.