It’s always nice to see musicians you recognize from all sorts of different places coming together for a single collaborative release. Sometimes There Were Four documents 39 minutes from a live performance in Chicago’s May Chapel last year, its title a fitting heading for the lively quartet improvisations that it contains. With Joshua Abrams (Magnetoception) on bass, Tyler Damon (Both Will Escape, To the Animal Kingdom) on drums, Forbes Graham (Lagos Playground, which I reviewed here last October) on trumpet, and Ava Mendoza (who I had the pleasure of seeing live a few years ago) on guitar, the music twirls and ambles along at a digestible pace without sacrificing density. Mendoza’s guitar is the central element for much of the beginning section of “I Closed My Eyes,” her sporadic plucked chords and angular blues idioms echoing the legendary work of Zoot Horn Rollo on stranger Beefheart cuts like “Golden Birdies” before descending into textural extended technique mayhem. Each musician seems able to jump from traditional free jazz flurries to more abstract interjections at the drop of a hat; around the 17-minute mark of the opening track, Graham’s trumpet puffs a sprightly scale as Abrams shreds a punishing drone, while “Ready to Fall” flips that conventionality disparity when the latter’s bowed interjections contrast the former’s spittle-mincing squawks. A clear highlight of the album occurs once this second track settles in and Damon’s virtuosic percussion cacophonies finally unleash their full fury.

I’ve always thought “supergroup” is a dumb word, and disagreed with the implicit assumption that the collective prestige of a group of musicians somehow guarantees the quality of their music, but we’ve also been gifted with some great ones: Muleskinner, Them Crooked Vultures, Last Exit. And now, another addition to the list, and a band with a lineup I truly believe to be “super”: Telescoping. Composed of Stateside experimental music figureheads Alan Jones, Robert Millis, Dave Abramson, and Greg Kelley, the brand-new project emerges from the dark depths of isolation and quarantine with their self-titled debut: four cuts of dense, nocturnal improvised music. The sparse guitar additions lend a welcome element of conventionality to the proceedings, which move fluidly from stunning ambience to unsettling darkness in currents of loose drum set caresses, electronics, processed concrete sounds, and the ever-unpredictable sonorities that emerge from Kelley’s peerless use of extended techniques. Overall, the improvisations are cozy yet slightly morose, wispy chiaroscuros like the four mugs on the cover. It looks like a late-night Zoom conference where everyone is interacting but still isolated, which serves as a fitting analogy for the music’s exploratory, almost tentative nature. I thoroughly enjoyed this release, but I’m not yet sure of my opinion on the reading that occupies much of “More notes from A Handbook on Hanging”; Mr. Jones has a splendid voice, no doubt about that, but both the duration and source material seem like odd choices to me. Regardless of what my kneejerkingly-averse-to-spoken-word brain thinks about that, however, Telescoping is gorgeous, masterfully constructed, and essential listening for anyone feeling any of the following: confused, frightened, bored, sad, alone.

I first encountered the music of Oakland-based composer Nathan Corder when (almost exactly two years ago) I heard Anaconda, a duo recording—Corder on electronics and fellow Oakland musician Tom Weeks on alto saxophone—that’s one of the most violent, volatile documents of improvised music I’ve ever heard. On that release, Corder’s contributions were brash and abrasive, their shuddering and cracking providing much of the movement for the improvisations, so I suppose I expected more of that approach on System of Choice, the first solo release I’ve heard from him. Instead, the music on this album draws power not from immediacy, but instead its deliberate and enrapturing construction. Sounds are mercilessly processed and manipulated into an array of stereo-spacial objects for Corder to meticulously arrange and sequence, creating dizzyingly kinetic sonic events that constantly interlock and overlap. This is that sort of extreme computer music whose complexity can be intimidating; when I first listened to System of Choice I was frequently reminded of the overwhelming yet awestruck confusion I experienced during my initial encounter with Sun Pandämonium. But that’s also what makes it so enjoyable to listen to, and whether Corder’s mind-bending auditory architecture manifests as eviscerating glitch hailstorms, deconstructed electronica, or soft mechanical ambience like a robot’s final sigh, there are always countless layers and details to decipher. Repeated listens required.

Common Errors is the perfect soundtrack to an existence on (as Desaulniers himself puts it) “house arrest”: queasy, confusing, restless, occasionally a lot of fun, brief (I hope). The two short pieces on this new handmade tape release are eclectic assemblages of improvisations recorded last year, disparate bits stitched together into evolving chains. At play here is the usual Translucent Envelope toolbox of woozy tape warble, slivers of haunted melodies, and insectile skitter, but some surprising new territory is plumbed throughout a concise 14 minutes. Snatches of voices and dissected conversations occasionally surface, establishing more of a human presence than is usually evoked, and the dedication to producing detailed vignettes results in some fascinating and immersive soundscapes still imbued with plenty of scruffy charm: broken radios and music toys are played by ghosts in an abandoned day care, an ambient loop slowly melts in a miniature furnace, heaven briefly shines through a small hole in the muck. This is music to really dive deep into, and won’t even take up much of the inordinate supply of extra time you all have. Here’s hoping things get “better and better and better,” for all of us.

I certainly spend a great deal of my time curating, writing, analyzing, concluding, etc., but as I’m sure is also true for many of you, listening is and always has been my top priority. Thus, my root source for all non-listening activities is listening: why do I enjoy this? What does it make me think about? Recently much of my attention lies with the burgeoning practice of “non-music,” a term that has always existed but now refers to a much more unified tradition of artful mundanity. I personally believe assigning names to genres is perfectly fine in order to simplify discourse, but this particular descriptor comes with concessions that must be made. First, as is this case for the title of this site as well, I don’t view any organized or presented sound, no matter how subversive of convention, as “not music.” Non-music refers to the extreme removal of these auditory results from what is commonly considered to be music, and does not argue against their actual musicality. It’s also important to recognize the back-endedness of assigning genre names. It’s reductive to assume that artists produce their work with these things in mind, so any and all arbitrary classification must refer to the works when they are actually observed; thematic/aesthetic unification instead of individual suppression.

To preface a review of such a short release with such a verbose disclaimer may seem odd, but I hope I’ve made clear that this sort of music is some of the most rich and thought-provoking art being produced today, so to me, no level of analysis seems too excessive. Hair Clinic is a project that like many others I know very little about. Their artist photo on Bandcamp appears to be one of those stroke simulation images, which display an assortment of nonsensical, distorted objects that nonetheless look familiar. The music on Mirror in a Bag, unsurprisingly, can be similarly described: the six diminutive tracks make use of the subdued domestic fanfare with which I’m sure we’ve all become quite well acquainted recently: squeaking chair legs, creaking furniture, old squealing hinges, backyard nature-symphonies, running water. There’s something mysteriously infectious about these recordings; I’m constantly coming back to it like some sort of sonic surveyor, unconsciously trying to identify and place each sound within its environment. Mirror in a Bag is meditative home life fragmented into small but well-formed pieces, each shard enough its own to be recognizable yet jagged enough to always remind us of the glaring absence of the whole. If you’re able to listen more passively, this enigmatic debut is a sublime dose of household improvisation, but if you (like me) are inclined to dig deeper, beneath the surface lurks a deceptively vast depth of ambiguity to excavate.

“Why do birds suddenly appear?” is less a question regarding phenomena of nature and more of a recognition of humanity’s increasing irrelevance in the environment surrounding us. Birds don’t “appear,” they simply find their way into our field of perception, but it’s a very human thing to place our own senses in the role of objective observer (though here there’s somewhat of a sardonic concession with the inclusion of “suddenly,” seemingly a recognition of the beholder’s inattentiveness/fallibility). The first release from Finnish duo Ahti & Ahti (Marja Ahti and Niko-Matti Ahti) follows an evolving tradition in contemporary experimental music of uncertain or distorted origin as captured field recordings, modular synthesis, and household improvisation are carefully assembled into a fluid composition. Both sides of the LP open with quaint yet slightly mysterious vignettes of breezy garden domesticity in a similar vein to the first track on Daniel Löwenbrück’s cassette 1800m, both of which blur the border between active participation and passive observance. The birds sing of their own accord, but is that just a wind chime swaying lazily in the wind or the intentional sounds of a homemade instrument? Is that some sort of flute-like wind instrument or the sporadic interjections of a distressed gull? Further uncertainties creep into the mix when the separately recorded electronic elements are introduced, creating unexpected and indecipherable textural interactions with irreconcilable spacial implications. Shifting, ambiguous, and deceptively eclectic, Why Do Birds Suddenly Appear is a pleasant and disorienting romp back and forth through a partition that many artists refuse to cross.

If you don’t already, make sure to follow Ted Byrnes’ Instagram account. One of his greatest strengths as an improviser and performer is his ability to retain the assaulting physicality of his approach in audio recordings, but seeing the techniques, setups, and speed he uses is a wonder to behold. Seriously, it seems like I always need to pause his videos to make sure he doesn’t secretly have more than two arms. Something else gained from witnessing Byrnes play is that, no matter how abstract and alien his work often sounds, much of it is generated using a standard drum kit setup. This element is crucial to Tactility, his most recent full-length on Cincinnati’s very own Arkeen imprint, a new venture from Fantastique Distribution. Not only are these all drum set improvisations, but some of the pieces are even dedicated to much more conventional drummers whose styles and music have influenced Byrnes: Jamie Muir (King Crimson) and John Bonham (Led Zeppelin). Byrnes’ reverence for the latter is especially palpable in the corresponding track (“JH Bonham”) which sees him executing a dexterous hand solo reminiscent of Bonham’s legendary “Moby Dick” performances. The following tracks are less conventional; “Shells” is a brief but detailed array of pleasing clatter ostensibly generated using strings of the titular objects, while “Small and Large” demonstrates some of Byrnes’ most awe-inspiring acrobatic phrasings as he transforms simple metal-on-skins percussion into a lush, enrapturing sonic environment. “Auto Parts” is another illustratively titled track much sparser than the cacophony conjured by Byrnes’ project with Sam McKinlay (a.k.a. The Rita, whose remix of Tactility is included on a 3″ in the deluxe version of the album), Cackle Car. By the end of “Fix It,” the album’s longest and most eclectic piece, you’ll feel as battered and bruised as if you were just another one of Byrnes’ objects—but also exhilarated and astonished.

Berlin harsh noise duo Jugendwerkhof are a project I’ve been following ever since Low Life High Volume put out their debut release Blutstätte ‎in 2018. Their deafening dual assault of “scrap metal, electronics, broken instruments, feedback, [and] voice” offers up equal amounts of the two qualities I appreciate most in this genre: intensity and immersion. Schandwandlung is their longest album yet, and as the first track wastes no time in revealing, it’s also a different beast. Newly heightened emphasis is placed on the percussiveness of the waves of noise the duo generates, and desperate, incoherent howls and shrieks are often foregrounded, giving the music an undeniably metallic edge (both in the stylistic and the textural sense). And that’s just part one. The next segment evolves from tightly orchestrated clatter to a warped, savage stretch of depraved vocalizing, contact mic abuse, and torrents of distortion that resembles the violent death of some horribly mutated beast. Schandwandlung seethes, spits, slices, and smears itself over the remaining half hour, as Jugendwerkhof’s fiendish industrial emissions manifest in forms ranging from plodding, punishing static walls  to roiling, white-hot, hyperactive blasts. A terrifying new release from this great band in an equally terrifying year.

One of the countless reasons that freely improvised music is so exciting is the near-limitless possibilities that extended techniques open up in the hands (or other body parts) of skilled artists. Standard musical instruments once viewed as innocuous, constrained tools become sources for untamed sonic energy. There’s an online review of Derek Bailey’s Aida by Rate Your Music user ac_church that puts it well (I’m pretty sure I’ve quoted it here before): “it’s strange to find yourself in a same room with a guitar after you’ve listened to Derek Bailey… it suddenly becomes an incredible alien artifact of immense power… ‘you really could do all that? how come I didn’t know?’ ” Alex Cunningham is no stranger to escaping the restraints of a conventional approach; his nimble, abrasive violin assaults instantly drew me in when I first heard Fiddle back in 2018. But as the title track on that release—produced using the self-imposed constraint of “improvise a fiddle tune”—makes clear, Cunningham also owes a great deal of reverence and love to the traditional music to which his instrument of choice is essential. His most recent release Echo’s Bones Were Turned to Stone continues in the direction of last year’s Knell on Fort Evil Fruit with a set of extended dynamic pieces. As always, we not only hear the deep, dense drones Cunningham coaxes from the violin but also the resin-shredding strength of the bowing that produces them, the mesmerizing swirl of cascading string slides and ersatz chords, the moments of invigorating Appalachian fiddle stomp (however brief or abstract). The St. Louis String Sawer’s latest is a jagged, harrowing, and triumphant exclamation from the dark depths of isolation.