Sound artist Peter Kutin’s TORSO installation is composed of four speakers on a biaxial rotating structure, their output captured by carefully placed static microphones that transfer the sound they pick up to a four channel PA system. With sounds specifically chosen for this work, Kutin examines the effects of acceleration and spacial feedback on audio sources in motion, a disorienting and hypnotic effect that comes across in the dizzying, rhythmic oscillations immortalized on the Dinzu cassette release. The initially insubstantial presence of heavily processed drones and spectral vocal treatments gains ferocity as their movement changes speed, accumulating strength even as hints of fragility and instability are sown by the sounds’ passage past the microphones. “Part II” presents an extended study of this evolution, with quiet wails gathering volume as they are gradually plagued by squeals of feedback. The recording of the installation also captures another crucial element: that of the human audience, whose subtle coughs and shifts ground the alien sounds that are emitted by Kutin’s elaborate sonic windmill.

Peter Kris of German Army’s second outing as Concrete Colored Paint (after his split with tape skronk duo Tap Water on Lighten Up Sounds earlier this year) is titled Free Association, a phrase that could have a variety of meanings for this particular work. Firstly, some of the only information provided on the album page is that many of the sounds were recorded in Puerto Rico, a country well known for its efforts to become a freely associated sovereign state. Kris once again captures more than just the sounds of the environments he records, evoking the stuffy humidity of the Caribbean and a sense of endless space as the songs of sea birds fade into the distance. There’s also a “free association” between Kris’s use of field recordings and his more musical additions to the pieces: the fuzziness of it all makes it difficult to pinpoint where the purely diegetic sounds end and the external contributions begin, an ambiguity that gives off more beauty than confusion. You get the sense that he’s carefully playing along to whatever musicality he hears in the recordings he’s collected, using formless drones and loops that easily blend into the warm, hissing sonic backdrop already present, constructing vivid, comforting soundscapes.

At only five and a half minutes, Cavatus and PKWST’s first collaboration is over pretty quickly—but I highly doubt that it will fail to make an impact on any listener. The horrifying depravity of these two artists’ aesthetic vision on Ruins of Bronzemaw should come as no surprise considering their recent collaborations and releases. Though both musicians’ bodies of work have a broad stylistic history, Cavatus made his first foray into gore on last year’s Dinosaur Maker, also on LLHV, and PKWST’s Roman numerals series touches on similarly dark, disturbing territory. This new release, though, is a different beast, and its unhinged, insane deconstruction of goregrind, industrial, and harsh noise makes for some of the most intense music either artist has produced. “I” begins things in a truly murderous, unceremonious manner, irreverently smashing together detuned guitar chugs, clashing rhythms, deafening blasts of chunky distortion, and disgusting gore vocals to produce a stumbling musical Frankenstein. True to form, the album is mastered too damn loudly, but anything else would just be insufficient. To listen to Ruins of Bronzemaw is to be pummeled into submission by said ‘musical Frankenstein’ until you’re nothing more than the bloody mess shown on the cover, a task happily accomplished through overwhelming volume, nightmarish atmosphere, and, of course, unapologetic grossness.

Events Without Reference is restless and impatient in a very similar manner to many spastic harsh noise records, but the sounds that Jacob Deraadt, who releases music as Sterile Garden, makes use of are not nearly as brash or abrasive. Up until the final two, the tracks feel like disjointed sketches of decaying textures, the disconcerting sonorities of crumbling caves and abandoned factories carefully scraped off the walls and glued onto woozy tape loops and synth piddles. This scattered structure is not a weakness for Events Without Reference; the skittering vignettes construct a palpable atmosphere without staying in the same place for too long or avoiding new sounds in order to expand upon a certain combination. As a result, the tape has a presence far beyond its muffled, fuzzy, diminutive sounds, tracing the ghostly outline of a sound-world that’s fragile but formidable. And when “Crisis of Belief,” the longest track at seven minutes, hits, its much more lethargic progression is a welcome detour, slowly scraping and skulking along a concrete floor and dragging any debris it collects along with it. Deraadt’s delicate, dusty sonic palette is often one of frailty and weakness, full of sounds that feel like they could fall apart at any moment, but as exemplified by “Cynics Prayer,” those often result in some really beautiful moments.

True to form, Government Alpha’s newest release Vandalism is screechingly intense from the get-go. Yasutoshi Yoshida’s long-running harsh noise project continues be refreshing and mercilessly abrasive as ever, even following a body of work that spans nearly 25 years. The crushing blast of noise that begins “Ash of Virtue” sounds like it’s been waiting an eternity to escape, and after a fleeting bubble of feedback the waves of distortion come flying from their prison with full force. The dense, formidable walls that Yoshida constructs are lush and enrapturing enough not to disappoint with stagnancy, but regardless they are constantly in motion, seemingly rocketing forward at high speed yet surrounding and enclosing with an ever-tightening grip. The tension is kept up until near the end, when some cathartic breaks from the cacophony blast high-pitched feedback tones before the distortion returns. “Corruption of Decoration” is a less restless piece, and Yoshida opts to work with heavier, crunchier textures, whipping them up into deafening C.C.C.C.-esque whirlwinds of jagged, psychedelic howls. Spanning not even twenty minutes, Vandalism is an exhausting, visceral journey, and my new favorite of Government Alpha’s recent tape output.

“Gob” has to be the grossest word in the English language. Just ask John Updike—it features prominently in a particularly revolting passage from In the Beauty of the Lilies that I never, ever want to read again. I think it’s so powerfully disgusting a word because it sounds so much like the thing to which it refers, some viscous, bulbous drop of a gelatinous substance. On Stud Mechanism, Leeds-based musician Territorial Gobbing (also a member of Thank, whose 2017 EP Sexghost Hellscape is one of the great modern no wave releases) crafts irreverent tape collages that are fittingly mud-soaked and sticky, the artist wrangling blasts of screeching feedback, pop radio excerpts, and uncomfortably amplified mouth sounds into intense, schizophrenic amalgams. No sound ever sticks around long enough to build a consistent atmosphere, but there’s a disorienting, visceral presence to these hodgepodges that is much more patient than the artist themselves, and when the contortions cut off into silence on “Hey Judas Priest” you find yourself begging them to come back. I think it’s more than appropriate that Territorial Gobbing, instead of the conventional “music,” to refer to their work as “wiggly pleasure air.”

“You can lead a horse to water, you can make it drink, you can do anything you want, I’m so proud of you.”

Alice & the Smoke Castles of Paris is Manja Ristić’s heartfelt tribute to fellow Serbian artist Alisa Simonović, an oil painter whose work has been lost to time, though it played a significant role in Ristić’s life. She grew up with a few of Simonović’s paintings, and was especially partial to a mural that hung in the home of the artist’s mother that has since been lost. This work takes the form of one of the most personal and impactful ventures an artist can take on: that of a homage to a respected fellow artist, especially one who has been underappreciated. On Alice & the Smoke Castles of Paris, Ristić structures her expectedly astute use of field recordings and abstract textures around the somber notes of an old piano in Simonović’s family home, an element than even absent of context instills an ineffable sense of emotion and reverence. According to Ristić, the compositions feature “spontaneous interventions or unresolved movements,” a statement that might imply that the album feels disjointed or difficult, but that couldn’t be further from the truth; instead, the way the sounds are placed, anchored by the plinks of the piano yet creating an immersive and spacious environment, makes for music that flows seamlessly from the creator’s thoughts. The final piece, “Lament for Alisa,” features unaccompanied piano with sublime use of the instrument’s broken foot pedal, a fulfilling end to a work steeped in feeling. Another masterpiece from one of the most talented sound artists out there right now: surprise, surprise.

The A side of Cancelled Tangents, “Cessation,” made it onto the Insubstantial Magnetics mix I posted a week or so ago, and since then I’ve been unable to stop thinking about it. Ross Scott-Buccleuch, who performs with Craig Johnson as Liminal Haze and solo as Diurnal Burdens, makes absence the loudest it’s ever been as he molds blank tape playback, no-input mixing board manipulation, empty Walkmans, and low fidelity field recordings into stretches of beautifully marred ambience. “Cessation” is an intimate odyssey through hisses and clicks, slowly building a singular atmosphere despite its segmented structure. To me, there are few sounds more meditative than the amplified silence of a room, which seems to be what concludes the first side: all slightly tonal hum and distant rumbles, together with the soothing texture of boosted tape hiss creating something truly gorgeous and hypnotic. “Slight Tyranny,” in contrast to the previous half, unfolds its equally contemplative sonic palette in a more restrained, reticent manner, slowly but deliberately progressing through episodes of buzzing feedback loops and dictaphone recordings.

In the words of a beloved TV character, sometimes you need to “make quiet things heard.”

Sam Britton, who makes music under the alias Isambard Khroustaliov, commands electronics the way a painter wields their brush. Regardless of whether This Is My Private Beach, This Is My Jetsam is meticulously composed, skillfully improvised, or some equally masterful combination of both, it transposes textures and sounds one might associate with cold artificiality to something wonderfully organic. “Psychic Zero,” the longest track on the disc, is based around an experimental synthesis engine Britton constructed with colleague Patrick Bergel, and forms an endless stream of digital buzzes, granular drones, and restless glitches into fluid, flowing currents. The final moments are nothing short of enrapturing, as the crackling electric clouds that have spent the last twenty-odd minutes shifting into various shapes almost completely break down into a sparse pitter-patter of tactile clicks. The next two pieces expand on the lifelike quality of Britton’s sonic sculptures in a more direct way, utilizing processed samples of his son Kip’s voice to engage in very abstract conversation with quirky synth cells and plasticky electronic contortions. Much like its cover, This Is My Private Beach becomes a beautifully scattered display of color despite its abiotic origins, like the spilling consciousness of a dying android.

Here, on Udgitha of the Dogs, the concrete and the incorporeal run endless circles around each other to form each sublime composition. Vito Lucente is a Toronto musician whose work I hadn’t encountered until now, which was clearly an egregious oversight; he’s making exactly the kind of ambient the world needs more of right now, using subtle rhythms and tactile textures as anchors for the immersive waves of noise that swirl and unfurl over the course of each track. The title track, which opens the tape, is probably the shortest, most digestible fourteen-minute piece I’ve heard in recent memory, despite its lack of significant dynamic change or evolution. Lucente’s lush dreamscapes of chromatic, fuzz-drenched drones remain largely stagnant in the context of the entire piece but never cease their gorgeous, whirlpool-like currents, all the while kept in focus by a quiet but tangible crackle that occupies the center of the stereo space. “One in the Many” and “Lifting Metric Structure” both expand on that element of grounding physicality, with the former’s clatters melting into the pool of reverb that surrounds them and the latter almost seeming to be torn apart by amplified tape manipulations. The final tracks are as beautiful as the mysterious chunk of prose written about them on the Bandcamp page (which I have reprinted below) would imply, a fitting end to a journey that feels spiritual even to me, probably the least spiritual person out there.

Mass of hexagonal prismatic cells, Honeycomb Laden with a Glowing Light of Honey. Laborious works of a fellowship hive, the Queen bee buzzing intoxicating nectars. And blanched to divinity from process of scald, the White Dog Udgitha blocks her noise. Essence of harmonies in balance, uniting creatures white, black, and yellow. Connection evolved from a circle of virtue, devotion, and praise—One love. One ecosystem, that is all. The Origin and End of Everything.