While my end of year review hiatus is always a much-needed break from an undammed influx of new music, there are usually a few remarkable or fascinating albums in December that demand immediate attention. One of many works in a large quantity of final month releases that exposes the stupidity of publishing comprehensive end of year lists in November, Barn Sour’s first 7″ horses fucked over the head with bricks concludes newcomer NYC imprint Careful Catalog’s superb 2019 with a flourish. The EP was released just a week before we rang in the new year in tandem with Mattias Gustafsson’s equally amazing Frusen Musik, and over a modest nine minutes it proceeds to fuck every conception you have about music over the head with bricks. The names of the two musicians listed on the release are most likely pseudonyms; James Druck probably refers to one of the key figures in a series of cases of insurance fraud commonly known as the “Horse Murders,” and who knows what “C.Lara” is referencing, if anything. The music itself doesn’t answer many questions, instead taking the form of a bewildering amalgam of emotions that cultivates a mysterious power through evocations both visceral and cerebral. Maniacal laughter rings throughout the entirety of side A, balancing any interpretation on an unstable tight rope between unfettered joy and complete hysteria while our understanding is further assaulted by shifting layers of dissonant drones, earthen clatter, and some brief beauty near the jarring, unceremonious end. On side B, harrowing, half-nonsensical, Boredoms-esque babbling is tempered by the cavernous reverberations of a somber piano melody, and barn sour burrows even further into a rabbit den of oddness and impenetrability that, coupled with the EP’s short length, makes it extremely addicting.

Covering as much new music as I do allows me to classify groups of releases based on some pretty inconsequential similarities. Astor’s The Aubergine Dream and Moth Cock’s newest tape If Beggars Were Horses Wishes Would Ride don’t share many qualities (apart from the fact that they’re both quite strange), but nonetheless one can associate them based on the hilarious text-to-speech introductions featured on each. On the latter the computerized deadpan is provided by Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman and honestly could function as a capable review of the album were I to transcribe it in its entirety—which I actually tried to do but the accent of the vocalizer makes a lot of the words unintelligible. If Beggars Were Horses continues the duo’s evolution into a style that brings together toy percussion patches, processed wind instrument skronk, erratic electronic freakouts, and God knows what else to create a roiling stew of noise. Even the most abrasive noises that Moth Cock conjure are swaddled in a smooth, synthetic outer coat of shininess, and much like their previous album 0-100 at the Speed of the Present the compositions often tread through territory that resembles meditative ambient music. After a tumbling and tumultuous A side (the latter quality is especially present in the volatile sonic amalgam of “If Beggars Were Horses”), the tape concludes with a pair of twelve-minute tracks that prove how truly bizarre yet infectiously magnetic Moth Cock’s creations can be. From the way “Wishes Would Ride” starts it definitely doesn’t seem sustainable over that long of a duration, but the bouncing rhythm loop soon reveals itself as a base for steadily unfurling waves of squalling distortion and effervescent pulses as its propulsive hi-hat hits drive everything forward—that is, until around the halfway point, when it all breaks down into frenetic chaos. The incendiary drumming and cavernous atmosphere of “If Bayonets Were Turnips” bring this wonderful release to a fitting close.

Aside from the name itself, many examples of experimental music evoke the controlled explorations and examinations of a scientific laboratory environment, from the almost industrial whirs and crackles of Andrea Borghi’s VHS machine dissections to the dynamic sterility of Keith Rowe’s arcane setups of pocket fans, objects, tabletop guitar, and other devices. I and many others greatly enjoy the sonic results of approaches like these, because while the sounds themselves may not contain much humanity they’re always introduced and manipulated with a distinctly human level of control. Filtro, the duo project of Italian sound artists Angelo Bignamini and Luca de Biasi, presents two extended pieces that certainly embody what I’ve just described on Forma. The two musicians rely on the limitless possibilities of “concrete sounds and electrical interferences” as sound sources for their improvisations, the material “treated with extreme dynamism using a reel to reel recorder and a modular synthesizer” to produce the shifting mass of buzz, hum, flit, and clatter that spreads itself across the two tracks. The warbling tape manipulations are flung into the fray like multicolored fishing nets, harnessing the lush combinations of found sound in maneuverable physical form while darting clouds of electrical static and radio noise are carefully woven throughout. Forma finds itself somewhere between call-and-response improvisation and collective cacophony as Bignamini and de Biasi form an immersive mass of sound through their interactions.

While I’m often told that my musical intake is above average, my equally above average amount of free time is nonetheless limited. I can’t listen to everything people send me, and regrettably I even sometimes turn off albums when they’ve barely begun because I can already tell I won’t like them. Unfair dismissiveness in the name of efficiency, a tale as old as time. This was almost what happened with Catriel Nievas’ newest solo release, which was brought to my attention via Tone Glow honcho Joshua Minsoo Kim’s top ten 2019 albums list (check it out, it’s a good one). The use of plucked guitar in ambient music is hardly ever something I enjoy, so right away I wasn’t feeling too optimistic about my opinion of El Lago de los Seis Lugares. For once in my life, however, I exercised some of that elusive virtue we sometimes call patience, and I’d recommend anyone who listens to this album do the same because it definitely pays off. The level of calm and therapeutic stillness that Nievas evokes here is astounding, and the intermittent interjections of guitar harmonics or delay-affected chords are a splendid addition that provide an important counterpoint to that wispy, peaceful atmosphere. The three untitled pieces are largely unconcerned with drastic dynamic progression; instead, they rise from silence to float languidly in midair as Nievas gradually adds delicate layers of found sound, effects, and other complementary ornamentation. El Lago de los Seis Lugares hardly reinvents the wheel when it comes to abstract ambient music, but I come to this sort of thing to be lulled, not amazed.

Oakland DIY duo Breeze truly put the “no” in “no wave.”  Their irreverent brand of anything-goes improvisation isn’t entirely indebted to the archetypal no wave sound, but more often than not Jackson Blumgart and Max Nordile find themselves falling into the lumbering, not-quite-in-time grooves, nonsense vocalizations, and razor-sharp guitar skronk that we all know and love. I first encountered the band through their short digital-only release The Guilty Baby, which luckily was not that long ago so I didn’t have too much time to wait for new music. Of the two releases with which Breeze graced us on November 26th, Toad Crossing is definitely noisier and harsher, frequently delving into straight-up terrifying territory as the two friends summon unholy frenzies of punishing synth noise, piercing saxophone wails, ear-splitting feedback, and completely unintelligible ranting and raving. This 26-minute release is greatly helped by its high volume and substantial dynamic range, both of which imbue the music with a sense of dangerous instantaneity. Hulking cacophonies of rusted metal and studio detritus threaten to collapse at any moment, and any brief respite from the madness is unceremoniously pulled away on the most fleeting of whims.

It’s not uncommon for bands who have crafted a unique or eclectic style, or even labels that cultivate a singular aesthetic, to carve out a “personal genre” for themselves (R.I.P. David Markson) with some crazy name. Some personal favorites of mine are “vapor punk,” “fog electronics,” and “shitgaze.” Self-classification, however, is notoriously unreliable, and many of these artists’ music ends up failing to meet the expectations that such creative titles evoke. I thought for sure this would be the case with the “death Appalachia” that allegedly graces Fruits from Saturn, the new collaborative tape from Deathbird Stories and Vadim Budman; there’s no way anything could sound that cool. As you can probably guess, I was dead wrong. The pairing of these two musicians spans the quite large expanse of ocean that separates the U.K. from Canada, a geographic scope that is somehow matched by the formidable racket the duo conjures. “Gone to Croatoan,” perhaps fittingly named for the word found carved into a tree after the mysterious disappearance of the island colony of Roanoke, is among the tape’s shortest tracks, but doesn’t waste any time whipping up a howling storm of distorted guitar gunk. Whether Deathbird and Budman are getting right to the point on “Gone to Croatoan” and “Moons of Gomrath” or constructing massive sprawls of harrowing, dissonant atmospherics on “The Word for World is Forest” and “Tindalos,” their ability to swirl various sound sources into gargantuan drones that rival the apocalyptic meditations of Daughter of Darkness is pretty astounding. The length may intimidate some of you, but personally I hadn’t even looked to see how long Fruits from Saturn actually was until about two-thirds of the way through and was baffled to see how quickly the time passed. I assure you, listening to this hefty slab of true “death Appalachia” will be eighty minutes well spent.

Most questions along the lines of “what’s the best ______ ever?” are pretty damn difficult to answer. But when someone asks me who I think is the best guitarist of all time, my response is an absolute no-brainer: Derek Bailey. No other practitioner of that classic instrument has seamlessly combined sublimity, technical skill, and uncompromising originality with such aplomb in a staggering variety of contexts. Across enrapturing solo performances (Aida, Standards), unconventional experiments (String Theory, Music and Dance), mind-blowing collaborations (live album with Han Bennink, Mirakle with Jamaaladeen Tacuma and Calvin Weston), and even more conventional ventures like Arcana’s Arc of the Testimony, Bailey created an impossibly idiomatic musical language, the impact and legacy of which reverberate long past the musician’s death in 2005. On Dis-Ordnance, Welsh artist Ash Cooke (also known as Chow Mwng) pays homage to every avant-garde guitarist’s hero with a style he calls “Gwrth-gitâr,” which translates to “anti-guitar” in Cooke’s native language. For Cooke, “Gwrth-gitâr is free playing in the sense that anything goes. It does not explicitly reject standard Western tuning, melody or harmony, but it does reject the need for such things. It seeks to explore new ways of using a traditional and universally familiar object to paint an alternative view of the world. It is unrehearsed and leaves as much to chance as it does to the ability of the operator. It has no interest in being reproducible.” In the case of Dis-Ordnance, Cooke seeks to paint more than just an alternative view of the world; he grounds the five elusive improvisations that comprise the album in specific locations around the mountains of North Wales, using found objects to coax unfamiliar timbres from his acoustic guitar and fragments of more traditional playing to retain an element of conventional harmony amidst the abstract explorations. The recordings are focused on the assaulting sounds of the guitar, but snatches of the surrounding environment often sneak in, and can be viewed as either auxiliary elements of the improvisations or as their sources of inspiration. Dis-Ordnance is simultaneously familiar and alien, personal and primordial, intimate and grandiose—a series of paradoxes made possible by the all-encompassing ideology of Gwrth-gitâr.

Looking at the credited musicians for Lumb (Boney Dog Davis and Sleepy Sugar Thompkins) and the absurd list of instruments, which includes anything from “possum fiddle” and “git’r” to “tall tales” and “crunch and twinge,” it’s just as hard to discern what’s actually real as it is in the music itself. Do any parts of those aliases come from the artists’ real names? Is there really audible use of a “hobo sack” in any of these recordings (because yes, it’s entirely possible, if a hobo sack is what I think it is)? Where exactly do the “gravy samples” stop and the actual musicianship—a term used quite loosely here—begin? But the answer I, and you, should give to these questions is who cares? The newest tape from the enigmatic Sugar Pills Bone project is about as intellectual an affair as you make it to be, but by the time you come across the… gratuitous “Without Me” sample on “Greasy Piece E” I’d venture that you won’t want to lean too heavily into some astute critical analysis. Like Proud Trash Sound, an album with which Lumb shares some notable qualities, the primary goal here is fun, and it’s not hard to have it as you submerge yourself in these jittery junk piles of frantic bluegrass blasphemy, startling noise blasts, disorienting tape-sample tendrils, hilariously recognizable snatches of pop songs and who the hell knows what else. I implore you not to just take my word for the astonishing heights of absurdity this thing reaches; at the very least just listen to “Cain’t Deny My Wormhole, Buckaroo.” It’s always great when you enjoy music because it cracks you up—something that’s very hard to pull off. If I end up grabbing this tape it’ll go with Horse Cock Phepner in the “Jack just needs a good laugh” pile.

Here on Noise Not Music I spend a great deal of time chronicling the presence and development of musique concrète techniques in contemporary experimental music, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t largely prefer these modern usages to the work of more classically influenced early pioneers such as Luc Ferrari, François Bayle, and Pierre Schaeffer (who himself coined the term and practice of “musique concrète”). But something that I must admit is frequently lost in the rugged DIY experimentalism of newer artists is the sense of theatricality and often filmic narrative that’s so powerfully evoked through the use of orchestral samples, speech snippets, and other fragments of more conventional art filtered through magnetic tape manipulation. However, there are also countless composers and musicians out there who pay homage to that distinct era and the specific milieus the music occupied, from the digestible throwback sound of Fletcher Pratt’s Rituals for Magnetic Tape Vol. 1 to the warbly nostalgia and pseudo-classical movements of sound-smiths like kNN (Renato Grieco) and Marc Baron. Berthelot is not a name I’ve heard before, but his newest album Miniatures Héliotropiques certainly cements its place in this esoteric canon. The digital-only release collects 22 individual miniature pieces in a vignette style that reminds me of Pierre Henry’s pioneering 1967 LP Variations pour une Porte et un Soupir, though that album’s minimal palette of creaking doors and clattering clutter (its title does translate to “Variations for a Door and a Sigh,” after all) can’t hold a candle to the wide variety of sound sources and lush interweaves Berthelot utilizes here. It was the opening track, “Contracture de prolégomènes,” that first turned my mind to classic concrète, with its reverb-saturated kinetics and symphony snatches, but Berthelot makes good on his promise that each piece “tells its own story” and ventures into some very unique—and, occasionally, recognizably modern—territory. There’s head-bobbing rhythmic electronica on “La marche à suivre était trop haute,” synthesized cacophony on “Brume organique” and “Bricoles de ville,” and pulsing alien transmissions on “Ribambelle de mouches.” The density of this album is a bit overwhelming, and it’s definitely going to take me a while to really decipher the strange energies that manifest in each diminutive composition.

Though black and doom metal both can greatly benefit from compositions that are quite freeform in nature—swirling, repetitive storms of smothering darkness (see Yodh, Antelux)—they can also, like most musical styles, be bolstered by some excellent, concise songwriting. I don’t use “concise” here in the way I typically do to refer to the lengthy atmospheric excursions spread across Naga’s third studio album Void Cult Rising. These are not condensed microcosms of horror and violence; the six tracks take up plenty of space with their massive, elephantine grooves, building anticipation both within the riffs themselves by alternating low and high chords and over the course of the song via some excellent dynamic control. I call them “concise,” however, because nothing feels longer than it needs to be.  The grimly titled opener “Only a God Can’t Save Us” is in the upper percentile of tracks in terms of length but comes across as an expertly paced tone-setter, and the full breadth of Naga’s structural prowess is demonstrated on “Melete” where a plodding jam falls into quiet repose before culminating in a spectacularly crushing climax. Though the lumbering, deliberate pace is maintained throughout, even when desperate blast beats claw their way through the murk, an abundance of rhythmic variation and frequent appearance of psychedelic elements make Void Cult Rising a gripping and engaging entry in the 2019 metal canon.