Chris Corsano / Michael Flower - Earth/Wind/Fire



An almighty overdriven banjo (Michael Flower) jams with Chris Corsano on percussion. Proper freak-out stuff. The banjo seems a lot more nimble an instrument than the guitar. Which makes for some good spazz. Elemental.

Frank Bretschneider - rhythm



As clinical, forensic and deft as you'd expect. One of my favourite Frank Bretschneider releases this one. As the title suggests, it's full of beats. Pretty lively and about as accessible as Raster-Noton gets.

Ankersmit/O'Rourke Split



Jim O'Rourke seems to be using one of those shitty overdrive guitar pedals fifteen year old kids go to Denmark Street to pick up. They come in lots of different colours and have names like 'hyperdrive'. Despite that it's a fairly good guitar piece from him. Thomas Ankersmit takes his sax on a power-drill drone that I am definitely feeling. I think he edges it. I'd like to see him live now.

Oren Ambarchi - Stacte Motors



Oren Ambarchi attaches motors to a guitar and cymbals to create pretty novel rhythmic noise pieces. The guitar piece is insanely physical and immersive and probably the most interesting thing i've heard this year. If anyone tells you this is 'dad noise' they are full of shit.

Sylvain Chauveau - Nuage



Film score from Sylvain Chauveau. Hit and miss. Orchestral strings and his brand of minimal piano. Distinctive in places, pedestrian in others.

Wild Combination: A portrait of Arthur Russell is screening in Berlin in Feb 2008 and then hopefully the rest of the world. Keep an eye out.

Arthur Russell

Russell Haswell & Florian Hecker, UPIC Diffusion Session #13 @ Conway Hall, London

Video by Fail

One of my recent finds is Devo - New Traditionalists. Just a breath-taking record from Mothersbaugh & Co. If only we scrobbled vinyl...

Nice little piece to promote Ed Banger Records. Not fond of all of their hipster output, but Justice do manage to cook up the odd sludgy disco track that hits the spot (e.g. Waters of Nazareth).

And no, I still don't like Daft Punk at all. Thanks for asking.

My friend Matt, AKA Woebot has posted an ace mix to go with Panda Bear's new record Person Pitch (Panda Bear is Noah from Animal Collective).

Here's Woebot's post and here's a direct link to the mix

There's a new documentary film on free jazz pioneer Albert Ayler. site is here. I'll be seeing it for sure.

Podcast of the month/year/decade from Sheikh - failCAST. Don't miss.

Issue 1 featuring:

Geir Jenssen
Sunn O)))
Carsten Nicolai
Kit Clayton
Lasse Marhaug
Herve Boghossian
Peter Rehberg
Nexus 21
DMZ
Icarus
Nettle

+ others