Selving, the latest and perhaps greatest solo project from Dan Williams (a.k.a. Swarm Survival; member of Pyramid Dust, Culled, Ghoul’s Teeth, Rust Belt), first torched tape with 2021’s appropriately titled Willed Into Existence on the artist’s own imprint Structures Without Purpose. Though there was already plenty of cut-up DNA woven into the two mono-heavy blasts of that C20, those strands have grown like hungry vines through the thick analog churn of Guerrilla Bamboozlement Campaign and now thrive in the loamy ruins of Miniscula, cinch-amputating slabs of surging pedal-noise into jagged chunks with stretches of humid dead air in between. I hope I get to see a live set someday, because this is the kind of stuff that’s better witnessed than simply heard; every rumble and roar in “Bizarre Animalcule” sounds forced from a maxed-out effects chain by ruthless killswitch compressions—Caustic Pulse Rupture?—and one can almost see the knobs twisting through the soupy direct-action smog of “Muling.” There’s a (frequent) time and (large) place for the high-fidelity, stereo-lush shrapnel storms of audiophilic surgeons like T.E.F, Negation, Marion, and others, but I’m just as often in the mood for this blunt-nosed approach that is thriving in underground hotspots around the States and across the globe, a trend with aspects both fresh and classic that Fusty has been faithfully chronicling with many of these inspired recent tape releases. Miniscula has all the colorful density and textural eclecticism of Bamboozlement (one of my most played tapes in the box of noise-bags that lives right next to the deck), but here Williams also introduces a well-humored volatility into the mix, cross-contaminating currents and injecting left-field sample breaks with inflammatory irreverence. My sole complaint is that it’s too damn short.

Last time I reviewed an Everyday Samething release (Hydra’s Your Name), I discussed how the enigmatic imprint’s unique approach to tangible editions responds to “a point in time when physical music is much more ritual than utility to most.” That dialogue is only more relevant in the case of the newest entry in their catalog: Birdbath I, a brief bit of thoroughly DIY sound art by an unknown artist pressed as an “extremely limited” run of four business cards with the album artwork on the front and a QR code linking to a youtube upload of the music on the back, priced at a cool hundred quid each. By design, there is quite literally no incentive to own one of these objects other than the fact that only a handful were or will be made; they do not include a code for lossless download, nor is the youtube video solely accessible via the QR.

It’s a rarity parody that’s both amusing and incisive. Though scarcity in the underground music community is at its root simply a financial and logistical necessity, it has become some sort of benchmark for “legitimate” ownership and is now often intentional (read: artificial), an evolution with its bleakest results manifesting as limited digital NFT releases such as those distributed by Nina Protocol. Made-to-order imprints like Matching Head and experimental prank editions like those of Everyday Samething are deliberately dug potholes in that all-too-smooth road into the cancerous depths of capitalism—and the satirical aspect of Birdbath I lets us muse on what might be playing over the speakers in that cursed clown-car. The answer? Subliminal propaganda mutterings, dictaphone smear, sabotaged mass-media broadcasts, the best and brightest of this generation’s elevator music. A funereal radio play to score the most boring apocalypse imaginable. Hard to describe how desolate the sixth untitled section is: static-cracked sounds of idly tapped fingers and shuffled decks of cards, the dried-out signifieds of human presence passively decapitated from their referents. The material, which was anonymously submitted with next to no context other than the request for the unusual delivery method, could not be better aligned with it. Twenty-five minutes of that elusive superposition of forbidden revelation and utter uselessness that seems to be the only relevant art for our times… I will not rest until I own all four copies.

Pentiments’ first CD release is appropriately one with a radical focus on digital media both physical and disembodied, an aesthetic purview that should come as no surprise to followers of LA-based sound researcher Connor Camburn, whose sparse discography under his own name and as Litüus on Careful Catalog, Chained Library, and other imprints comprises some of the most forward-thinking computer music of the past few decades. It would be difficult to say anything about 00U0U_akhnQkunEcw_0CI0pI_600x450 that hasn’t already been covered in the evocative (if a bit verbose) liner notes, so I’ll aim to build on them instead, especially the excellent phrase “the incidental grandeur of malfunction.” Here Camburn codes, composes, and cointegrates an entirely new musical language based in data output both intentional and erroneous, uncovering obscure alien logics in the interactions between unpredictable systems of tones and textures. The ensuing musical works manifest in a variety of forms; some are kinetic (the seething, hyperactive noise arrays of “01082016”), others lethargic (“08112020” / “08292021” and their slow-paced flow of decaying pulses that ring both inquisitive and sorrowful in turn), but all display a disconcerting amount of emotional sentience. Whether that’s simply the result of nothingness mirroring the preoccupations of the observer or the subtle agency of some sort of ghost in the machine is up for debate, but the latter possibility is difficult to ignore when confronted with something as profoundly arresting as the penultimate “08242021,” a piece that just seems too sensible, too organic to have been produced by a passive algorithm. To return to the introductory words, 00U0U_akhnQkunEcw_0CI0pI_600x450 is billed as “a stark and laconic argument against the oncoming ‘technological singularity’,” and it succeeds—these are the sounds of humanity being boxed up in modular caskets by silicon caretakers of our own making.

Darksmith’s body of work is in large part defined by juxtaposition, stark contrasts between often oxymoronic concepts—light and dark, comfort and unease, the familiar and the uncanny. End of Life, perhaps a sequel of sorts to the artist’s last Second Sleep LP Hatred of Sound, memorably begins with one such paradox: the reverberating peal of a ringing knell is spread across tapes frayed so thin they seem to disintegrate in real time, draping a gauze shroud fit for funeral rites… death, for all its weight and ubiquity in virtually every aspect of our existence, is a weak, sickly thing, arriving with only quiet gasps or soiled undergarments as its fanfare. Mortality is not a novel element in the San Francisco stalwart’s music, but it hasn’t been this salient until now, and the implications are less than reassuring. Appropriately, this new full-length features some of Darksmith’s most frail and insubstantial collages yet, each full of spidery details that only reveal themselves when heard in a silent, shadowed room. The hollow concrète specters that haunted Collapse are resurrected throughout—amplifications of the empty space between voice/vitality and vacuum/void. There’s also a curious throughline of musical sampling, which features most prominently in the closing track that comprises side B. Distorted rasps, distant metallic screeches, and other ephemera orbit the suspiciously cozy 4/4 loop (the source of which I’ve yet to identify) in a telescoping tunnel of nocturnal texture, a leisurely hearse cruise toward a conclusion that sounds like the poorly maintained subterranean infrastructure of existence itself. Stark, bleak, and, of course, masterful; one expects no less from a Darksmith record.

London’s Luciano Maggiore has been recording, and performing radical sound art for more than a decade now, both in inspired duo collaborations (with Francesco Brasini, Enrico Malatesta, and most recently Louie Rice) and as a solo artist. Focusing on radical repetition and generative playback of  electronic sonorities stripped to their most basic essences, his ever-evolving explorations manifest in forms ranging from the microscopic yet lush glitch-storms of Intersezioni di Vortici, Studi Ritmici e False Chimere to the bewildering dream-logic groans of Locu to the soothing loop-based meditations of pietra e oggetto—no two releases sound the same, and self-talk, unsurprisingly, upholds that trend. The sparse aesthetic of this gorgeous trifold digipak from Maggiore’s own imprint Edizioni Luma is both playful and uncanny, evocations similar to that of fellow sonic minimalists Sukora and Arek Gulbenkoglu (see the covers of Ice Cream Day! Nice Day! and fissure, fissure, fissure, respectively), and its contents, the result of a year of research and composition, comprise some of his most basal material yet. Here, the slightest of dramas are soldered from as few as two or three textural currents, each orbiting and bouncing off one another in lethargic pseudo-rhythm like tiny particle systems hovering above absolute zero. (The passive voice there was not unintentional. These compositions seem just as algorithmic as they do written.) The first cut employs electrical sputters and pulses that interact with almost percussive resonance, while the second is all warbles and smears beset by a hiccupping bass frequency, and then the third sort of brings it all together… it’s hard to describe how self-talk feels both static and dynamic, but it does; not unlike wall, what you hear if you skip ahead to the fifteen-minute mark is not the same thing you hear if you actually listen to the fifteen-minute mark, if that makes any sense. Fascinating music that’s as exciting as it is elusive.

Works with unique soundmaking repertoires are far from uncommon on this site, but that doesn’t mean each one is exciting and fascinating in its own right. A notable few artists have researched the accordion as a tool for longform drone music or extended improvisation—Pauline Oliveros and Tizia Zimmermann are two great examples past and present, respectively—and even fewer, if any, have paired the demanding instrument with a windshield-wiper motor and fan activated truck shock absorbers (only the latest iteration of Gianfranco Piombo’s both visually and sonically enthralling setup), which makes Route des Sources something to behold, at the very least. The two untitled sides are built upon the soft mechanical trill of the motor, a meditative sound that (unsurprisingly) belongs to the same family as spun bicycle wheels and analog film projectors, soon joined by the evocative yawns, sighs, and trembles of Piombo’s unusual approach to the accordion, the multiple layers of drones and vamps feeding off each other in dense, ever-growing harmonic waves. On one side these currents collapse into a sporadic barrage of percussive punctures, while on the other they more promptly coalesce into something much more rhythmic, even propulsive. How Piombo manages to so precisely drift to that from minimal, purely textural tactility to is a mystery, but one you get to hear play out in its entirety, so the answer has to be in there somewhere.

“These rare finds are songs recorded in our earliest stages of developing our sound. Straight from the 4-track tapes. Enjoy!”

Much like last year’s Dreamworld: Othaside—albeit without the fidelity upgrade—Lost in the Underground Pt. 1 is a humble reminder that Blackout is not just the best producer of the classic Memphis era, but one of the greatest of all time. Beyond the reverent efforts of the artist’s own Snubnoze imprint in recent years to unearth previously unheard recordings and reissue past material to a new audience, history weighs heavy on 2023 with regard to one of hip-hop’s most distinctive and enduring milieus: this year marks three decades since the first releases by pioneers like DJ Paul & Lord Infamous, Lady Bee, and Criminal Manne, and earlier this month Tommy Wright III paid tribute to Princess Loko on what would have been her 44th birthday, a year after her verse on Wright’s “Still Pimpin” was sampled on Beyoncé’s Renaissance. All this to say that getting six fresh heaters from Blackout right as we head into the autumn months just feels right. Not to mention the fact that this short mixtape features some of his best and most complex beats, every sputtering hi-hat and offbeat synth interjection exemplifying the essence of the scene even at such an early stage. The featured MCs include Lil Slim, who complements the cemetery trudge of “Fuck Dat Talkin” with a plodding double-tracked flow, the ghostly adlibs and triplets skulking right behind the beat; frequent collaborator Lil E, his immediately recognizable anxious tone conflicting with a tempo so sluggish it sounds like the tape recorder itself is dying; and Terror, bringing it home to the freshly dug grave in the dreamlike “Evil Fasho.” Everything heads old and new could possibly want is here on Lost in the Underground Pt. 1: twisted toybox arpeggios, sparse but solid bass, Blackout’s iconic shoutouts. The “Pt. 1” in the subtitle has exciting implications to say the least.

Also available on CD.

In 2017 I had the privilege of seeing Toshiji Mikawa play a rare solo set in the back room of a tiny record store (you can watch a high-quality recording filmed by John Wiese here). Though at the time I was still very new to noise, and therefore even more clueless about gear and technique than I am now, with the help of a later google search I was able to figure out that the unique device featured heavily in Mikawa’s performance was the Cocoquantus. Due to said gear cluelessness I am unqualified to say definitively whether or not it is technically a “wooden synth,” but regardless, the visual of the object itself and the way it’s manipulated do evoke the nature of the materials T. Jervell is working with on the less caustic but no less captivating 2nd Two: sinewy and rough-edged but also playful and colorful. This new tape leans into the more abstract elements of Jervell’s debut—the often-sublime and always-unpredictable (K) En sommerdag i Kroken (Ruter)—whittling down the artist’s interest in complex textures with essences both digital and organic to a brief, focused study in the vein of Daniel Iván Bruno similarly superb Brazo. Intricately woven hybrids of direct improvisation and composition via edit, the seven tracks (with titles that are somehow at once straightforward and surreal) each glimmer with a unique varnish, from the freshly squeezed splinter-bubbles of “Blue Boy Sprott…” and extraterrestrial-sounding contortions of “A Boy in Love with Lyra…” to the plucky ambience of “Planks of Wood…” and “Presets…” Beneath the thorny, deeply experimental bark layer of 2nd Two is a bright and joyous sapwood shining with life, and beneath that a stocky, steadfast heart.

In writing about Kino’s Playing series a few weeks ago, I mused about the convolution-qua-trivialization of the field recording tradition, a trend that always interests me no matter what the genre, medium, or context. But it’s also true that charting the aesthetic and/or conceptual evolution of an art form in this way can also end up obscuring the beautiful simplicity of the object itself. Take the newest release on NNM favorite Vacancy, Luigi Bilodo’s self-titled debut cassette, for example. An unassuming C60 with each half comprising a single unedited piece, it could conceivably fit at the end of some stylistic arc-trajectory of field recording and sound art in general, but that doesn’t change the fact that at the end of the day, one side features the sound of rain on a pizza box and the other a gas-powered tractor-mower. Radically repetitive, minimalistic, and above all humble, Bilodo’s work is resolutely neither more nor less than what it is. “Pizza Box of Rain” might be described as a stripped-down, budget-conscious peer of Henry Collins’ Prepared Rain, but where that release drew intrigue and variety from the lush complexity of the passive percussion arrays, here the unceasing pitter-patter upon the cardboard lid is heard from within the box, a placement that reads as claustrophobic but in fact plays as calming, even cathartic (helped along by how expansive the stereo range is). There’s a lot more room to breathe in “La Pelouse (New Country),” a pastoral tractor-mower ride over verdant fields, the lulling purr of the engine blurring into a warm, full drone that fills ears with sunshine and fresh grass clippings. The diptych as a whole has such a wonderful homespun essence; it radiates an emotional energy both despite and because of its mundanity.

Them Teeth have been active for more than a decade at this point and still haven’t been given their flowers, let alone the freshly picked deadly nightshade they rightly deserve. The mysterious duo had already ventured into the deepest innards of the shadowy Swedish woodlands by the time they recorded the material presented on Erstwhile and Auditory Witchcraft, they always seem to find new, even more darkness-soaked annals for their obscure sound-summonings: in the case of Sun of Serpent, Moone of Cipher the skins and strings were strung across a misty lagoon veined with slivers of lunar light; Illfänas, on the other claw, is described as “an untamed offshoot from the previously set path” of the past two records, seething and crackling with the heat of a bonfire that threatens to reduce the surrounding foliage to cinders at any moment. Raw, hypnotic rhythms have always featured prominently in the project’s sonic grimoire, but this LP elevates their presence to new heights, building each carefully structured and uniquely memorable track around pounding percussion rituals that channel both the metronomic throb of drone-rock triumphs like Outside the Dream Syndicate: Alive and Deux Lives and the supercharged Auvergnat folk music stylings of Toad. The more abstract elements of Them Teeth’s singular sound also reach new heights here—many of the meditative jams collapse or simply rot into stretches of harrowing electroacoustic dirge, leaves curling and branches blackening as the flames spread over all. It’s almost too easy to get completely lost in the outstretched arms of the forest, even as tracks like the superb closer “Du skola aldrig få hvila” prove that this is a concise and considered full-length (that also happens to be the band’s best yet).