According to Discogs, sound artist Carl Kruger is “influenced by micro and macro sound.” At first glance that doesn’t seem to say much at all about Kruger’s music; after all, don’t all artists deal with sound somewhere on the spectrum between “micro” and “macro”? But that’s not exactly the case. Speicher (which means “storage” in German) and much of the rest of Kruger’s staggering discography thrives off the contrast of small and large sounds, translating the forceful clunks, clatters, and bangs of junk and other trivial materials into kinetic, hyperactive orchestras. “For My Nephew, Jordan” is a raucous tornado of heavily processed found sound, mercilessly twisted and sculpted into a variety of formations; the restless din of small objects, field recordings, and other oddities first takes the form of an overwhelming assault of abstract physicality, evolves into a reticent repose of detached glitches, and finally coagulates into a rumbling mudslide of noise. Speicher is only a C20, and before you know it things have moved on to “Outing,” a much more meditative piece that bases itself around a quiet environmental recording, concealing nocturnal murmurs within its lush mass of textures. Speicher is another amazing release from Kruger and from Tunnel Secret.

With a sonic arsenal as comprehensive as Joakim Blattmann’s on Bird Helmet, it’s no surprise that a very particular—and abstract—atmosphere can be conjured so well. The prolific artist, whose body of work mostly consists of live performances and installations with physical music releases seeming to be a rarity, constructs a lush sound environment of avian-adjacent sonorities, from actual field recordings of birdsong to spectral electronics and manipulations that evoke wings and flight in a much less straightforward way. The detailed collages of processed guitar, tape, and contact mic recordings act as a cradle for the untouched fragments of nature that occasionally emerge, sometimes complementing and assimilating the organic elements as mentioned previously, and other times drawing attention toward the disparity of source. Blattmann’s powerful, layered creations are both weighty and woozy, dense and filled with energy even as they drift with airy freedom. “Triel” ends up as a very physical track with its seething electric drones and tense rattles, with sparingly used violin contributions from Per Waago laced throughout. Bird Helmet isn’t a very long tape, but it’s just as pleasingly indecipherable as its enigmatic title; I think that unpacking all of its layers will take quite some time.

The avalanche of emotional hardcore assaults that comprises Mission Priorities on Launch brings a new meaning to the phrase “wall of sound.” The album’s production places all elements of the New Jersey quartet’s music on equal footing, wrapping the gorgeous guitar harmonies, pained screams, and propulsive drumming in a single, perfectly muddy package. There’s no way Hundreds of AU’s masterful balance of eviscerating emoviolence and impassioned, melodic crescendos could be better communicated; transitions that may have been jarring otherwise, like the progression from the ecstatic anthem climax of “Thruway” into the much harsher “No Sweet Home,” are made to sound natural and cohesive. Mission Priorities on Launch is a short album, clocking in at around 23 minutes, but the extended stretches of third wave post-rock-esque dynamic build-ups don’t feel like they slow anything down—mostly because the things they build to are absolutely stunning. “The End Result” is a very fitting title for a song with one of the most exhilarating payoffs I’ve heard in this sort of music in a long time.

I know absolutely nothing about Mordan Jaikel other than their name and that they make some of the most creative, eclectic collage music out there right now. After three fantastic cassettes on Mascarpone—True History, Soul Confusion, and Open Your Lie—we have the arrival of the enigmatic artist’s longest and most ambitious release yet. Dress for Success, a wonderfully sprawling tape that packs 39 short vignettes into less than a half hour, brings together the best of Mordan Jaikel’s endless stylistic plunderings. It’s probably their most Residents-indebted album so far, a facet of the music that remains faithful to the legendary art collective’s paradigms rather than simply aping their singular sound, manifesting as self-aware, synthetic pop secretions with all the loveable and slightly disturbing artificiality of Commercial Album. The sporadic forays into much more abstract sonic realms are also expanded upon, with tracks like “Post-Industrial Camouflage” feeling just as developed as the bite-sized songlets they’re sandwiched between. Dress for Success is delightful and dizzying throughout its entire duration, and you’ll constantly be finding yourself trying to keep up with the frenetic changes in pace, atmosphere, and energy as each of the 39 tracks mesmerize in their own special way.

I love reviewing IIKKI releases because it gives me a chance to not only discuss both auditory and visual art, but also to process the similarities and differences between how I experience each medium. Each of the label’s releases document a dialogue between a visual artist and a musician or band—in this case, multimedia photographer Nieves Mingueza and a musical collaboration between Craig Tattersall and Jason Corder, who perform and record as The Humble Bee and Offthesky, respectively. Much like the last album from IIKKI I wrote about (Federico Durand, Anna P. Cabrera, and Angel Albarrán’s Pequeñas Melodías), the dual facets of All Other Voices Gone, Only Yours Remains unfold with amazing unity. Tattersall and Corder construct impossibly lush, gorgeous sculptures of drifting ambience, dusty crackles, and delicate string laments provided by an auxiliary group of musicians that includes saxophonist Cody Yantis and flautist Esther Hernandez. The aching fragility of the music perfectly complements Mingueza’s meticulous collages of aged photographs, masking tape, and old parchment, further evoking an atmosphere steeped in fading memory (a video of the art can be viewed on Mingueza’s website). This impermanence is recognized by my favorite two-page spread of the art book, where Mingueza obscures significant portions of poignant photographs with deliberate partitions of paper. Even absent of their other half, both the art and the music that comprise All Other Voices Gone… are among the most sublime media I’ve encountered this year, and together they accomplish something tremendous.

With his uniquely total approach to reel-to-reel manipulation—the sounds of the manual actions themselves are presented alongside the dark, spectral sonic manifestations of his tape abstractions—sound artist Giovanni Lami has accomplished something very special: he has created an entirely singular musical language. I first saw this on 2016’s Bias, an all-time personal favorite that I’m pretty sure I bring up every time I review Lami’s work, where decayed tape extracts form the basis for a series of indescribable sound environments shrouded in shadow. The opening track of Raw, the Italian artist’s most recent release, recalls this distinctive palette used to create Bias; “XXXXXX,” and later “180807,” outline a fragile structure of distant, cavernous yawns surrounded by muffled clatter and stifled scratching. But though this is the longest track on the album, the remaining pieces aren’t constrained by that nocturnal atmosphere. “180824” is a much more neutral fragment and brings the disorienting sounds of reel speed finagling to the forefront of the mix, introducing an invasive tactility that carries over into “160506.” With In Chiaro / In Guardia last year, Sinalefe in February, and now this (not to mention the Hysteresis series) it boggles my mind how well Lami makes use of compact album durations. Raw is an unexpectedly colorful release despite its short length, spanning the staggering range of sonorities and headspaces that Lami is able to hop in and out of with aplomb.

“Must be listened to at maximum volume” is such a tired request—some of us like having undamaged hearing!—I couldn’t imagine listening to Побочный Эффект (which translates to “side effect”) any other way. Over each half of the C40, Шумоизоляция crafts a mercilessly loud and abrasive wall, almost painful in their concentrated assaults, like high powered drills boring through your head. But throughout both pieces, the compact columns of abrasive, crunching noise seems to expand from its initial constraints, becoming more and more oppressive—and immersive—as they progress. The first side is relentless and infernal, and its mangled frequencies unfurl into a fiery soundscape of roiling, crackling distortion. In this first piece and the one that follows, the densely packed layers slowly reveal buried signs of instability beneath the forceful wall, restless clatters and shudders that underlie a seemingly unyielding explosion of sound. As the second track unfolds, it’s this facet that I can’t help but direct my attention to, and by the end I’m convinced that the entire thing is going to collapse under its massive weight. High volume gives the cathartic blasts of Побочный Эффект the thick, deafening, overwhelming presence they deserve.

Fans of the aptly named subgenre “powerviolence” will be familiar with the fact that even this more specific area of hardcore can be further parsed into various styles and scenes, whether it’s the classic thrash-infused West Coast sound (faithfully documented by the wonderful Power Violence Project), the thunderous, throaty crust punk of bands like Dead in the Dirt, or the adventurous psychedelia infusions of Gasp and Stapled Shut. Ultimately, though, the unifying factor is that feeling of suffocating, crushing weight, something that Lifes absolutely nail with their debut LP Treading Water. The band whips up an astounding racket considering that it only consists of two members, and the absence of guitar allows the crunching bass to bathe the breakneck punk explosions in oppressive, all-consuming low end. I started off by identifying some of the commonly recognized sects of powerviolence because Lifes seem to draw from them all. There’s fast-paced d-beat gallops, spazzy grind blasts, sludge breakdowns, brief moments of anthemic melody, and it’s often embellished with harsh electronic inflections that add even more layers to the already dense cacophony of anger. At around 23 minutes total, Treading Water is a furious and concise statement from a promising band.

Despite its overall disorienting atmosphere and restless, unpredictable form, Invisible Touch finds its footing in the richly organic, much like another 2019 highlight from Reserve Matinee: Hanging Lichen’s Old Northwest (Growing). But “footing” does imply a level of stability that just isn’t found in Eric Grieshaber’s abstract granular workouts and found sound manipulations. No sound in Invisible Touch is comforting or even reliably permanent; the multitude of elements in these six tracks are constantly caught in frenzies of entropy, bouncing off each other and around the confines of the sonic environment like agitated gas particles. The dense clusters of tactile ricochets that bound throughout “Starlight” and “Memory of Apex” emulate a rattling blender filled with globs that clash and meld but never truly homogenize; “Macing Dog” slowly slogs along a trail of slime, a gelatinous mass of dragging bulk and slapping tendrils; and “Neural Lace,” apparently just a synthesizer jam, outlines some truly cosmic territory with spacious kinetics. It’s a theme throughout Invisible Touch that the heavily processed sounds end up taking on the form of some much more recognizable source; listen to just a few seconds of “Piss on Money” and it appears to be just a cloud of detached rings and high end resonance, but overall I can’t help but be reminded of some sort of sterile retail environment, the noises resembling dinging cash registers and scanner beeps.