Skullflower C-100 on Cathartic Process - approving this test tape that reissues "The Paris Working" and "La Noche de Walpurgis" on a single tape. It sounds incredible on the hi-bias cobalt master, dubbed a little hot for nice saturation. This material is blistering. The A-side ("The Paris Working") is a live track that takes a few minutes to get going, but develops nicely into a really intense performance. The other side will remind people of "Vile Veil" and the material on the 3xCD box released last year. These CDr's were self-released, so not many copies were available and certainly not across the pond.
Lou Reed - Metal Machine Music CD - I forgot how amazing this CD is. I also forgot how much Sunroof! sounds like this album!
Aidan Baker - Book of Nods CD - I really love his solo work and most of the Nadja albums, but this is absolutely a highlight in his discography.
Tangerine Dream - Green Desert CD - don't be confused by its mid-80s release date. This was pre-Phaedra, and is at home among their early releases. Not as minimal as "Zeit," but a similar vibe.
V/A "Anthology 1: Come Organization Archives 1979-1981" 2CD - I picked this up to get the original version of the 150 Murderous Passions. I have the Stapleton mix on the United Dairies CD and the (what I believe is) the Ron Lessard remix tape that he put out on RRR. I was told by a friend that I was wrong when I said I had heard the album, referring to my UD CD. He was right.
Voice Of Eye - The Portland Improvisations CD - I was listening to this a couple weeks ago really loud in my office and my old lady said my daughter was really enjoying it, so she ripped it to play on her computer for her when she's putting her down for a nap. The play count on her iTunes for this album is in the 40s and rising. Needless to say, we've heard this one a lot around here. The same can be said for the next couple...
Circular - Shaping the Unknown CD - Kind of like what you could imagine a Klaus Schulze + Inade collaboration sounding like. This has been left on repeat at the house, listening to it several times a day for the past few weeks. The whole family jams to this one regularly.
Haare - Doomsday Sunrise CS - coming out soon on Cathartic Process, the master was on constantly. I left it in the position in my disc changer right after the one I remove to put on other discs, so this always followed whatever I was listening to for about 4 months. I have probably listened to this more than anything in the last decade. It's definitely my favorite Haare recording, so I'm really happy to be putting it out.
Soisong - xAj3x CD - I can only listen to this in the living room on my old lady's computer because of the octagon shaped CD. All my other players are slot-loading. Thankfully, she has good speakers so we can jam this one loud. I was very pleasantly surprised by this disc. I had read reviews (even raving reviews) that made me hesitate to pick it up. It's certainly like nothing else I listen to (is anything like Soisong?), but it's really stunning. "Paer Tahm," which has a particular magical quality to it. In fact, when my baby girl is fussy, I can put this track on and when the female vocals kick in toward the middle, she'll stop everything and really focus on the music. I checked out the website that you can access with a code from the CD and it was really cool to see that the pulsations of the images match the rhythm of "T-Hu Ri Toh" which just happened to be playing when I was going through the photos on the site.
Monks of the Dip Tse Chok Ling Monastery - Sacred Ceremonies: Ritual Music of Tibetan Buddhism, Vol. 1-3 3xCD box set - There are tracks on here that sound like Wolf Eyes playing Tibetan ritual music! There's some serious morphogenetic connections between this ancient music and the stuff that influence what we all listen to and talk about on this board. The horns! The bells! and the metal junk noise?! Yup, that's here too. I decided to pick this up after a friend sent me this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdBSTAw_cKY This is good stuff. I could live the ascetic life to daily perform ritual music like this alongside hundreds of monks!
Nurse With Wound - The Surveillance Lounge CD - After many years of fairly average releases, this one shows that Stapleton can still put out material that stands alongside anything in the discography. Brilliant!