Spider Goat Canyon - Always Heavy

I'm travelling up through the midlands of England after a massive weekend in Oxford. I am suitably broken. My head wrapped in headphones, my hand shakily clasping a huge bottle of tepid water - and I am subjecting myself to brutality, because it's good and I deserve it.

Bro Fidelity Records is a Melbourne label that fossicks from a particular earthen vein of heavy rock. Most of the bands involved – Hotel Wrecking City Traders, Daggers Mid Flight, River Of Snakes, Fire Witch – all feature members from the same cloistered coven, all intent on creating dark yet rhythmic metallic rock that pummels in submission that seduces onto the rocks of despair – or just plain kills. Another band in this ilk is Spider Goat Canyon, and their album Always The Heavy fits this modus operandi from the album title down. 6 years in the making, and marking the last recordings with guitarist Steve Brick, this gargantuan release is a release of tension, a steeling of resolve, a Pyrrhic victory to those (un)lucky enough to hear it. A broiling concoction of drone, doom, 70s to 90s metal and elongated space rock, the album starts with a weird yet ominous instrumental track, ‘Rat Tooth’, with what sounds between a strangled sax and a strangled voice hovering in the middle distance, a muddied doom riff slowly coming into start focus by song’s end. ‘Needle Drivers’ brings the dronal vocals, while ‘Crunk’ takes metal with a glass-ripped vocal assault. ‘Vertigo’ is a faster, feverish trip – and all three major deviances has been laid out and flayed. Some of the music reminded me of my childhood (the aforementioned, early Metallica-aping ‘Needle Drivers’, the sinuous bass giving a Tool resonance to ‘Chadrick’) and some more recent predilections reared their heads (the droned feedback of ‘Heart Attack’; the cataclysmic instrumental breakdown the brilliantly deranged ‘Men’). By the time the mammoth punches of ‘Secret Valley’ and ‘Embryonic Gillslits’ hit (both approaching 20 minutes), the noise journey this trio take you on is tantamount to undertaking the Twelve Tasks of Hercules, a penance being paid, seemingly, just for being alive. But in many ways that is exactly what Always The Heavy is – a black mass, repenting for the sins of the past, present and future, yet with a twinkle in the eye that is upturned towards the stratosphere and beyond. All plains are crossed and conquered, all voices have been heard and silenced. A colossal album from start to finish.

Everybody's Droning On The Weekend #4 (Halloween Special, 6 Months In The Making...)

I started writing this post in April. APRIL! I remember writing up my thoughts on the first five releases on this list in June (my Blackhoods feature for my unofficial Not Not Fun Week was also written in this period), on the train to my parents' place, and the file inexplicably vanished. It may seem arbitrary or reactionary, but I did start this blog to talk about great music irrespective of timelines and trends; therefore what lies here is fragmented memories, further exacerbated from a debaucherous Halloween (I didn't dress up or go to a party or anything - just played records, watched horror movies and drank gin til 4am, because I could). I hope you enjoy this - it's good to be back droning.

This has been a regular go to release since it came out in April. Enigma German Army brought out Millerite Masai through Yerevan Tapes and has produced heaps more cassette releases since then - to the point where I shall do a German Army post every day from now to cover them all (and it shall be known as German Army Week...) Millerite Masai is a haunted prism of sounds, samples, industrial shadows, electronic phantasms, strong pulses, stronger rhythms - a voodoo tantric dance into the television horror of our times. It's incredible. I honestly don't give enough lip service to this kind of music - Ill always be a guitar noise tragic at heart - but German Army is close to my favourite artist right now. I hunker down in the dark, meditating on the slipstreams of another world, and German Army keeps mining the depths of the cerebral oceans at a frenetic pace, ready for your submersion. Listen, and see why.

Anne Guthrie is one of a few artists that is releasing material through the Students of Decay label. Guthrie’s Codiaeum variegatum is her first full-length release, a symposium of eccentric instrumentation (including French horn, contrabass and violoncello) and field recordings that knits together that dichotomy of interior and exterior sound, natural and manmade, deliberate and unplanned. It all unfurls at a slow yet deliberate pace, with slight manipulations warping the senses, so that the various divides between opposites become indistinguishable. The constant buzz of wind, water and natural ephemera underscores the seemingly halting, hiccupping compositions, as if the human element feels awkward and out of place in this world, yet the middle third (‘Unlike More Slender and Graceful’ and ‘Pendulous’) becomes a metallic trawl through undulating noise, alarms that score the night sky. By the end of the album these juxtapositions melt into one and becomes a frozen, cocooned embrace, intimating that this is a cyclical experience, eating its own tail, never to end. Tenebrous.

Toronto artist Babel's record Rillingen is a four-part suite of outer-wave surrealist swirl, a drone harvest harbouring deep-seated feelings of loss, lust and laboured ambitions. Soaring to the furthest regions of cerebral antipathy, Rillingen is at once an awesome amalgam of space and sound, and a vessel that houses the harbinger of the End of All Things. It’s the kind of meditative composition that invokes elation and dread at the same time. Anne Guthrie may have played with opposing factions of the same febrile coin, but Babel’s transgressions are apocryphal in nature – this is the ominous calm before the storm. I think this is a great record that says so much with seemingly so little – what the best drone albums should do – and the final 37 minute opus that closes out the experience is one of gentle waves of catharsis, both transmogrifying and rendering all other thoughts meaningless.

King of the Grove is another Yerevan release, this time from Bird People. Bird People is a Viennese collective that have been knitting together foreign sounds into sonorous collages since 2011. King Of The Grove is forty minutes of glistening glissando-esque mirages, in and out of focus, sliding surreptitiously in and out of consciousness. The album is made up of two pieces – the first, ‘To Peer Into The Huntress’ Mirror’, begins with the tones of chimes in a cavernous enclave, lanterns flickering, before a rumble of beckoned wind flows through the passageways, evoking the long-dead and the never born, culminating in a squall that eventually peters out with pipes and strings in the distance, a ritualistic cleansing; whilst the second, ‘A Harvest of Birdsong And Bones’, is at once more primal and celestial, a coalescing melange of undulating tones that lulls into security before tumbling down into an amorphous ritualistic abyss in the final few minutes. The word ritualistic appears twice there for good reason, as King Of The Grove has been called forth. Only 70 copies of this was made, so harangue Yerevan to rerelease this excellent beauty.

Now bouncing back to the Students of Decay and Californian John Davis' tech-eschewing (and almost a year old) Ask The Dust. Starting with the stuttering synthetic hum of computer talk, Davis spreads his influences far and wide, weaving all oscillations, synth plateaus and sine waves into a breathing paean to humanity - lived, loved, lost - and its arresting to technological mores. It's subtle in many ways, with various passages of composition designed to touch, to awe, yet the electronic intrusions never fully disperse. The samples used are prescient in the least - the final distressed voice crackling out of closing track 'Julian Wind', answering a question of whether she liked being on another planet more than on Earth, says it best though - "I couldn't do all the things; I couldn't accomplish anything; I couldn't talk to anyone I know...I couldn't stay very long."

And to Students of Decay again. Mark Banning's Journey To The Light. Originally recorded in 1984, the album displays a sense of New Age muzak romanticism that is of its time, yet overshadows all cheesy permutations that came thereafter (and boy, are there some off ones...) Performed with processed electric guitar, zither, voice and field recordings, Journey To The Night is one of the truest transformative pieces, transferring fears and anxieties to the dark side of the moon, placing in its stead a cocooning calm. The neo-Zen floating notes is pure 80s - for some reason I see the pixellated sunsets of Sega driving classic Outrun merging with an eternal opium haze dream in Blade Runner-era Los Angeles. There is nothing kitsch about these two pieces - they are earnest, and therefore more honest than anything of its ilk before or since.

The Isle of Man's Isvisible utilises modular synthesisers to crawl into the wormhole, exploring myriad tangents of how drone and beats co-exist (usually with an emphasis on hypnotic, narcoleptic time signatures). He has a huge amount of material floating about the cosmos, but retrospective 0413-0714 serves as a great introduction to his world. This is drone that contorts emotion and tempo, while still interested in highlighting and contrasting both. I could listen to this all night - and do. How there are only 76 followers on Facebook I have no idea. This is great.

Hailing from Ann Arbor, Cestine are an instrumental duo who craft elongated slipstreams of lightweight elegance. The two-track cassette Other Half/Bright Encounter (out through Rok Lok Records), with each song sitting pretty at fifteen minutes each, float along in their own spaces - the former above the stratosphere, the sky devoid of colour, the world devoid of any meaning other than the thought passing through the mind at that very instant; the latter a cassette-coiled crashing of waves, samples and field recordings all corralled into a cavernous isolation before breaking through the other side, eternally cleansed.

These last two entries in this behemoth entry are SM familiars. London-based Hanetration has kept the run of EPs going, with latest Murmurist playing out like a outer-realms stand-alone score to the excellent TV show Utopia, especially opener 'Morning'. The set up too is interesting - the flow of a day (of what I take to be London), with the pinnacle - 'Fly' - lasting less than forty seconds before the sun withers away. 'Sundown' is the most intricate song Hanetration has done yet in my opinion, eschewing the tonal subterfuge that is his MO for textural percussive clashes, a pastoral closing of the day.

And finally we have fydhws from Macedonia. The Sound (four movements in the key of D) is part of his continued exploration of chord structure, stricture, adherence and expansion. This is more in the vein of dark psych drone than the no wave and ambient blasts of his oeuvre. Think White Hills crossed with Earth. So not overtly drone. But it blazes in the darkness, like Earth reimagining giallo scores.

Listening To The Heart Of The Sky Mirrored

I'm pretty sure this record came out ages ago - I THINK it scraped into 2014, but it could have been put out last year - but I only stumbled across Listening Mirror's ambient drone work The Heart Of The Sky last night and was immediately cocooned by these percolating suites of nebulous sound. It's surprising I haven't stumbled across Jeff Stonehouse's work before, seeing that one of my closet obsessions is abandoned architecture, in particular the sound mirrors of Denge in England. And just like those hulking structures, this album pervades the senses, their now lost cause for being superseding the imposing figure they cut, the uneasy impulses that permeates the soul when encountering it - this is not of this world. Particularly the opening track 'Midnight At Teques, Storm Approaching' - I played this song four times before I let the album play out. The field recordings that bleed into the sonorous melange of languid sounds are impressive and help with the teleportation into other worlds, but the tonal shifts that occur here do often denote that idea of an archaic computer bleeping in a funereal, empty warehouse, monitoring a world and a war that no longer, and maybe never did exist. Abandoned, out-of-date, doing nothing - yet its very existence holds a great deal of power due to its alienness, and its propensity to expand and come to life. The Heart Of The Sky does that to me - the fear of the unknown exists, yet is overridden by extreme titillation as I step into the abyss. Get The Heart of the Sky here.

The Age Old Perception Has Been Coined Once More

I have been meaning to do the fourth instalment of my drone explorations for months now, but to no avail. The thing is it takes so much time and effort to do those posts – hence why there haven’t been that many Hits From The Box segments either. I do love Everybody’s Droning On The Weekend though, so instead I thought I might unearth a few that I have been digging of late, just to show you drone acolytes that I still like delving into the greyzone.


Today I want to mention Perceptions, the debut release from Danes Simon Formann & Kristian Emdal (from Lower), here known as Age Coin. My favourite part about this release is that the white noise that is rolling back and forth in the first half of ‘Pt 1’ is undercut with a beat that becomes trancelike in itself – a deliberate hook that inexorably draws you closer to the abyss. ‘Pt 2’ winds this escalator grind to hell even further towards oblivion, but there is an undercurrent of a dancefloor underworld here – it’s as if Formann & Emdal surreptitiously want the listener to shuffle in time, a zombie flash mob of narcoleptic movement, the slow undulation of flesh controlled. It’s this sense of melody underneath the white noise and innocuous beats that is both the light and dark of Perceptions – at one moment an exultant exercise in zonal euphoria, at the next the exit music as the last beat pulses from your bloodstream.

You should get Perceptions from Alterstock here.

Dissolving Constructed Symbols Online

This one has been a long time coming too – again, written into the hitherto unfinished fourth instalment of Everybody’s Droning On The Weekend, but seeing as Ill be seeing Christopher Royal King in his “day band” mode tonight as This Will Destroy You play London’s Scala, it’s high time this gets its airtime. Excellently intriguing label Holodeck Records put out Online Architecture earlier this year. The unpacking process has meant I have stumbled over “lost” albums – this is one of them. King’s electronic project Symbol focuses primarily on tape erasure and looped manipulations, a transmogrification from epochal sound systems to a more amorphous entity, evoking the stillness of euphoria and the devastation of a world irrevocably changed – a post-apocalyptic ecstasy where the human limit for emotional capacity is reached and overrun, and all that is left is to sit in the tranquillity of the End and marvel at its wondrous completeness. For Online Architecture is all about finding traction in decay – something that seminal Basinski tract The Disintegration Loops manifested – as King creates pieces using instruments (such as guitar, dulcimer and harmonium) that he systematically frays by processing through a myriad of modular patch-bays and therefore patchworking new, chimeric soundscapes. Some of the tape reels that these songs were recorded to were specifically chosen due to their disintegration levels, thus giving a warm, fragile and tenebrous filter (a couple disintegrated entirely during the final transfer). It’s a stunning contemplation of Man on the precipice of its own devising (much of Online Architecture comes from King’s travails through China and his growing horror and sense of dissipating Self as he witnessed first-hand the country’s yet-to-be-inhabited ghost cities and the overflowing mega-metropolises). Seriously – I cannot think of ‘Lineage’, the album’s closer, without Malick-esque pastiche images of crystalline humanism swell around me, often of men falling from buildings whilst the sun shone through the smallest gaps that the buildings allowed, as if the building could hold no more. It’s a haunting and evocative piece that swells to the point of spiritual implosion, yet also holds a great degree of dexterity and light within its machinations. It’s a fantastic suite of ambient permutations and I'm glad I finally fell into its embrace.

You can purchase Online Architecture here – and if you are a fan of this sort of thing, this is essential.

Everybody's Droning On The Weekend #4

It's bright and sunny in Brisbane today, but I don't feel like venturing out into the "real world" today - lets draw the blinds, batten the hatches, and let the drone wash over us... well, there is a bit of "variety" of drone today (IE there are some releases that show elements of drone in what is otherwise music that is aiming for other sonic climes), and I've doubled the size of this piece to twelve artists. I'm also ordering in food and drink - let the games begin.

I have been a massive fan of (now ex) Eternal Tapestry guitarist Dewey Mahood's solo excursions as Plankton Wat for a long time now, yet it's taken me a long time to getting around to talking about his latest album on Thrill Jockey, Drifter's Temple. Whilst more pastoral and languid than the likes of Expo 70, Plankton Wat shares the same exhilaration from pushing the boundaries of guitar as hymnal, as storyteller, as the forger of new worlds, and Drifter's Temple is a perfect example of Mahood's influences manifesting into a wholly different creative drive. The fact that Mahood changed his approach for this album from cutting-and-pasting compositions together from live to tape improvisations to incessant live performance jams and rehearsals has meant that there is a honed sense of purpose here, and whilst that isn't always a good thing (the looseness that made some of his earlier releases so exciting is sadly absent here) it instead allows Mahood to provide a childhood narrative in the mix, which further emphasises his love of Appalachian folk, cosmic psych, and astral phased malaise. Mahood is such a great guitarist, he inhabits styles and makes them his own, and every Plankton Wat release is a delight. Get this great album here.

Portland's Boyscout Discovery has a new LP on its way (called LP), and its another cheeky look at melding quirky samples, ambient field recordings and simple yet evocative melodies to gel it all together in a warm, glowing whole. There is retro-futurism in tracks like the excellent 'Coyotes In The Bronx', yet even it is a ruse as 8-bit blips cascade down the sonic walls in the background; the groove-laden 'Fuxong' also plays with form. Only a handful of tracks break a three-minute sweat, but the conciseness adds to the allure. You'll find yourself listening over and over just to get a handle on all the samples, yet LP is a mesmerising listen as a whole.

Brisbane artist Eugene Carchesio's 32 Days is a finely delineated microcosm of minimalist fury and menace, a dystopian netherworld of emptiness, of fatigue, of space. The 32 tracks, each number from 'Day 1' up until the thirty-second day, coalesce into some sort of cryptic radio signal from another race, its hypnotic mantras haunting yet only perpetuating the sense of isolation that this piece emotes onto the listener. It's quite foreboding, incredibly clinical, and not for everyone - but give it a shot, because it really is something that has a mind of its own. 32 Days is out through Room 40 in digital form - get it here.

I haven't spoken much about the Sonorous Circle collective for a while, yet at least one of the crew has put out a fine release recently. Eyeholes' First Airplane EP is a cut-and-paste mashup of hip-hop instrumentation, hiccupping deluges of orchestral and piano plinks scattered amongst drifting samples and spectral effects to deliver an effect like a barely-tuned-in radio station from the 50s, manned by an LSD addict with a predilection for subversive pop and with the first appearances of dementia. Its a wild ride to be sure, albeit one that lurches more than stutters along - a weirdly beautiful beast.

London dude Gyratory System have released their third album in the form of Utility Music, and its one electronic bliss bomb of a ride. At times like a lysergic Holy Fuck, at others like a motorik hallucinogen, Utility Music is a perfectly calibrated album, filled with myriad warm tones and multilayered beats, culminating in a glistening, evocative, yet inviting listen. There are moments where others enter his world (Katherine Blake on violins and vocals on tracks like 'AAA' or 'Lackland') and rather than feel like an intrusion, it's a welcome melding of minds. And listen to the saxophone on 'Thorney Island' - is that live instrumentation or digital? It doesn't matter - analog and digital are one and the same in this world - all that matters is that you dive in and dream away. Excellent stuff - you can (and really should) get Utility Music (through Soft Bodies) from here.

Woollongong-based Catman is in the Mark McGuire/Black Eagle Child vein of artist, delivering spectral guitar-driven meditations, sparse and austere. The Singapore Demos offers eighteen tracks of delights in this mould, each track garnering the name of a location that means something to him, especially wrapped around his sojourn throughout the titular country last year. The results are sublime - I want to live in Catman's sense of existential flux forever. He has signed onto Why Don't You Believe Me? (who are also featuring a single a month all year long from Snowy Nasdaq - read about that here). Grab it here.

I've been meaning to write about this record for MONTHS - my bad. Shores brought out Open-Ended back in August, so I've had this on my horizon for about six months - but it's a great little psych swirler of an album. The sheer abundance of instruments at the SF band's disposal alone is mind melting - drums, saw, acoustic bow, gong, lots and LOTS of percussion... And yes, that is truly a didgeridoo you here there on tracks like 'Excursions' (my favourite song on the album)! I don't know if there are physical versions of Open-Ended out there, but this album has many of the hallmarks of a fantastic psych rock record. The more people listening to these guys, the better/

Taketi Uloomu has up until last year been a duo, yet on upcoming LP The Fifth Season Kyo is going it alone. The shimmering soundscapes that make up The Fifth Season certainly show that there is no divergences from the band MO, the apparent lack of guitar the only true arbiter of a change in tack. The way these tracks ebb and flow, floating on ethereal synth lines that are nebulous, makes it nigh on impossible to walk away from Taketi Uloomu without being under her spell - if you can leave her sonorous world at all. Trestle Records will be releasing The Fifth Estate in February - you can pick it up here.

Another Room40 alum, Chris Herbert brought out Wintex-Cimex 83, a mini album containing four suites of sound that are offcuts from the same recordings that will constitute his next album, Constants. The four tracks meander, taking in various tonal shifts and sounds, attempting to find the commonality in these environments. Herbert has intimated that there was such a glut of material that he has amassed from his sonic experiments over the past seven years that it took the discerning ear of Lawrence English to help collate it into some sort of form. Wintex-Cimex 83 then is a moodscape of collated experiences, unintentionally creating a half-hour of melancholia through white noise, tonal discrepancies, static stasis and strange discoveries. Grab it here as a free download. A much better review of this from an avowed Herbert disciple is here - makes for good reading.

Live At The Surplus Of Options is the live-recorded improvisation/collaboration between Chicago composer Jim Baker and sonic explorer Sarah J Ritch. As individuals they have surfed to the outer edges of improv jazz, noise and metal (Ritch, as well as an amazing cellist, has performed in punk and metal bands over the past fifteen years); together this is something special. Ritch plays guitar and cello; Baker wrestles with the electronics. All and all this is an enthralling listen, more abrasive than I expected, which I love, but its the simmering energy between the two that in turn energises the listener. I strongly suggest you listen to this post haste.

Vancouver's Amir Abbey performs under the pseudonym Secret Pyramid, and has released an album through Students Of Decay called Movements Of Night. Its a darkly sonorous affair, the white mist rolling over a rich night landscape, disappearing into the earth, cocooned by a weightless sleep, apocryphal dreams - above all its a tragic yet infinitely beautiful, awe-inspiring ride into the unconscious. I could write a lot more here, but all I can say is buy Movements of Light here and drift away. Secret Pyramid is currently looking for help to do a European tour in the summer - head to his Facebook page if you'd like to help out.

We'll finish today with Studio Noir, the solo meanderings of Eddie Palmer (The Fucked Up Beat), creating a collage of Golden Age cinematic scores into a looped menagerie of swirled aural logic, condensing the periods of the 20s to the 40s into a sultry mantra. Sunset Boulevard is sixteen tracks named after actresses of the era who died suddenly, mysteriously and tragically, and each track holds within it an eerie elegance, like wandering through an empty house that has seen history, celebrity, success, avarice and tragedy over the decades, yet all that is left is the vapour, the lingering feeling that such decadence will never be experienced again. It's quite gorgeous all told, the glossy images from the classic films of the era flicking though your mind, even as the muted tones of the tracks belie more sombre experiences. Palmer has hinted that this will not be a one-off, so delve into Sunset Boulevard now before the next wave of film score beguilement begins.

Everybody's Droning On The Weekend #3

As you huddle in the confines of your den, either being battered by freak storms, baking under pedestal fans and intermittent showers, or freezing your bollocks off, you probably wish you were somewhere else. These next ten acts will take you there - but "there" is objective, and you may be kicking and screaming...

First up is Shortwave Broadcaster. A US native now residing in Copenhagen, Denmark, Shortwave Broadcaster brought out Everything You Do Is Deja Vu through Saint Marie Records the other month. An exercise in reverb-heavy guitar minimalism, a soothing loop (ahhhh, I see what's been done there!) whirlpool of glacial majesty and grace. I was swept away when I first heard this, and now it's my go to record for when I have a headache, or am tired, and want to float away to a place far from here. When I do this, I'm rewarded with rejuvenation and a virile imagination, waking up refreshed and with vivid memories of my dreams. It's pretty incredible - I suggest you grab a copy and see for yourself.

I loved the two tracks New York-based sound artist Ajnabi did based on his time in the West Bank - I wrote about it here - and now he has a self-titled album out. It's darker stuff, more errant and experimental, and the fact that each song is given a specific date had me searching the internet for events that took place on those dates that I could connect with. Because that is what Ajnabi is all about - deep, core emotional connection, the draining kind, the cathartic kind. Boris Pugo, the USSR Minister of the Interior committed suicide on August 22 1991 - and its sonic counterpart does sound apocalyptic, the moment when you realise everything you ever fought for, no matter how awful and ill-conceived it may have been, has been all for naught; everything has caught up with you; your soul is officially bankrupt. Standing on the building's edge...man, I AM Boris Pugo. Ajnabi is that powerful. Amazing.

Let's head to Oakland now, and to self-proclaimed "psych-beat minstrel of the Left Coast" Daring Ear. His latest release Afterflash came out on Magnetic South earlier this year - you can still get copies of it here - it toys with Eastern drone mantras, kosmiche cycles, opaque paisley undulations, noise meltdowns, some warbled r'n'b, even a lick of northern soul. It's a warped little number, and well worth a listen.

Scottish wanderer Matthew Collings has impressed me a lot this year, and he has presented me with another track that is a marching kettle tin of otherworldly mystery. 'They Meet On The Subway' plays quite like a Sigur Ros symphony actually - and there is never anything wrong with that - until it ends in splintered noise, ala Sigur Ros' darker moments - again, happy days. Its a studied progression in emotion through burbling manipulation, the quiet/loud dynamic exactly that - dynamic. Collings just did a live soundtrack to a screening of Berberian Sound Studio, and his constant explorations of sound can only mean greater things are in store.

Its been a while since I'd heard new tunes from my Macedonian friend FYDHWS. His latest unsettler - 9. Eschewing the more psychy jams and Branca squalls, what we have here is the undulating wails of despair, an industrial viral scream of muted metallics and ever-shifting shadows. All I can think of whilst listening to this is that this should score the most fucked-up psychological horror movie we are yet to lay eyes on. Something like very early Dario Argento but crossed with a baser, more unhinged Nicolas Roeg - baroque body horror Giallo, anyone? This is European music, thinking of post-Soviet urbanscapes left behind, concrete ghost towns of macabre architecture, perennial grey skies and a distant church bell tolls... Creepy, and amazing. A must - get it here.

Chicagoe ambient/drone artist Cinchel has been doing his thing for over a decade now, trying to recreate the sounds in his head. That sounds kinda daunting and borderline scary - not when these voices are the arbiters of soundscapes far, far away (although he does have a song called 'I Think I'm Hearing Voices', so...hedge your bets), no harm can be done to you, now come sit and listen. He sent me two of his releases, Stereo Stasis and Sometimes You See Yourself (Through the Cosmos). The recordings are vastly different in some ways - Sometimes... revolves around the glass harp/wine glass cyclical sonics with guitars looped in, whilst Stereo Stasis is more standard guitar/loops/laptop deal - but these extrapolations of experiments in space and time converge into a likeminded aesthetic - that of entrapment in the nether glow between waking and sleeping. Not a bad place to be...

Hailing from Providence, the same burgh that spawned one of Sonic Masala's all time favourite bands Lightning Bolt, drone-ite Matthew Kattman AKA The Rainbow Body has released a lovely spiralling squall in the form of Magnetic Highway. Kattman is crafting some celestial sprawl here, his electric guitar expanding out in all directions to create a sonorous noise that feels both invasive and effusive at the same time - immersion through the pores, through osmosis. It's hypnotic light shining forth, rising and falling like synthetic breaths - its majesty incarnate. With earplugs.

Coming off the excellent Wood & Wire assembly line is Domestic Cinema, the new release from Melbourne drummer-cum-sonic jigsaw artist David Evans. The subtle tinkerings and intricacies inherent across the breadth of this album belies Evans' predilection for the vernacular of the mundane; but rather than stand idly by whilst the minutiae of life drives him into an early grave, he has harnessed the manmade sounds that echo as a metronomic constant in the back of the mind's eye and brings it to the forefront. Therefore the coalescing unease that a song like 'Telco House' brings about is the inverse of malaise - it's rife with nervous energy. Mouse clicks, whirring machines, brooms, typewriters, whipper snippers - everything is ripe for creating impending doom. The sheer tenacity of Evans to work these "found sounds" into his incestuous beats and explorations is commendable - the fact that Domestic Cinema is so captivating is a minor triumph. You can get the album here.

New Zealand dreamer Sleeper brought out his debut record From Beyond on A Guide To Saints, Room40's cassette label, earlier this year. Apart from sharing the same name as the pretty good (in a batshit crazy, Jeffery Combs kinda way) Stuart Gordon sexual horror movie from the 80s, these meanderings are ripe for dissection as they coalesce over you - the sounds of sinewaves when in a cryogenic coma. It'd be frightening if it wasn't so beautiful. Incredible stuff - you can grab From Beyond here.

Let's close out with the ethereal bedroom schematics of Melbourne's The Galaxy Folk. The dude, Angus Bell, insists that this is all electronic, not live instrumentation of any kind. Jesus. Don't tell the next generation that - the guitar shops will go out of business. His Honeygarden EP is one of spectral elegance, and whilst it doesn't fit with most of the previous molds of sonic deviations, it suits the fade out mood that dusk brings, and that is where I'm at right now - and because he has a song called Down Under, it's awesome, and Australia just won the 1st Ashes Test. You can buy Honeygarden on 10" lathe-cut vinyl (only 50 made) here.

Everybody's Droning On The Weekend #2

This weekend, pull the curtains over the windows, shut everything intrusive about the world out, and come on a journey as Sonic Masala and eight global artists take you into the wonderful world of experiental noise, clatter and drone... If like me you've burnt the candle at both ends this week/weekend, you may need it.

I'm going to tee off with what could argued to be the most rock-oriented group on this list. Locust Of The Dead Earth is Marcio da Cunha, a Portuguese artist more known for folk/blues transgressions than dronework. Mithridate is nine exquisite songs of dense noise, sun-scorched Morricone-on-acid squalls, languid psyched-out jams and electronic space-highway meanderings with the occasional vocal whispering over the top. It's a fantastic release, and you can get it through Nostril Records now. The perfect high point of terra firma before we let go and spiral into the abyss of the unknown.

I was a fan of Portland artist Charlie Salas-Humara AKA Grapefruit's self titled release on Field Hymns Records last year, and it seems they have continued to ramp up the seductive synth/guitar madness on new release Stolen Highway (out on cassette through Constellation Tatsu - you can grab it here). There is a motorik pulse beating at the core of these songs (especially on the coalescing title track and 'King Felix II') that reads like a beating heart, albeit one encase in metal and electrodes. It's an intense listen that transports into a prism of refracted disco and classroom mainframes, crushing down from above until a sonic black hole leaves nothing left but heady ruminations and dilated pupils.

Greenhouse is Canadian artist Curran Faris. Tired Forever (out on Prairie Fire Tapes) is eighty minutes of guitar drone, feedback and manipulation stretched to the outer limits. It requires more patience than most artists of its kind - but therein lies the genius. On twenty-minute track 'Early Mornings & Late Nights' alone, Faris keeps things sparse and incredibly foreboding without any true catharsis - such a level of composure lures you in, then when the slightest shift in effect or tone comes about it's like striking gold. 'Glissed' harnesses looped feedback into a glorious orchestral orgasm in the synthetic light of an artificial sun; 'Accept This' takes a more guitar-obvious route, something akin to Black Eagle Child or Mark McGuire; then reaches back into the dronal hole for the apt 'Drop-Off'. Such a great release - get it here. You'll thank me later.

It feels unfair to have anything follow that up, but Perth's Cycle ~440 is just the band for the job. The duo's 17843+ release (out on the inimitable Wood & Wire) is semi-improvised crystalline sound sculptures of fragility and sepulchral grace, building gently on piano flutters and moments of stasis, a staccato pulse always emanating from somewhere in the ether... It all adds up to a haunting, expansive experience that is as frightening as it strikes awe into the soul. These guys won this year's WAM Song of the Year (Experimental) award, which is amazing news. Come to Brisbane soon, yeah?

Another release to come out of the Constellation Tatsu stable, Panabrite's Cortex Meridian is a fun, frenetic synapse burner that somehow manages to get atmospheres, emotions and places out of synthesised manipulations that you would think would be nigh on impossible. The undulating pulses and kosmiche rhythms are made for headphones, moreso than any other release on this list - listen to 'Night Sweat' and you will know what I mean. Panabrite (AKA Seattle's Norm Chambers) has crafted a suite of sounds that are synonymous with nocturnal reflexes, atonal weightlessness and fried 8-bit hypnosis. In short, it's a enthralling piece worthy of your time. Grab it here.

UK artist Sunset Graves describes his musical tangents as his life as a ghost. Listening to Variants, artist Andy Fosberry's debut isn't as drone-centric as most others on this list, incorporating trip-hop seduction ('Safe & Empty') and post rock nihilism ('Sixty Minutes Sixty Seconds') into his productions. He even endeavours to merge the two together on 'Cala Fia' - Variants is the right word for it. Much more likely to make you dance than anything else on this list - even if it's in a somewhat sunkissed, drugged state - but also to rock out to.

And you thought Sunset Graves took us off course? Francesco Giannico & Zac Nelson's intriguing collaboration Les Nomades Paysages is an exercise in marrying improv drumming with ambient soundscapes, which leaves the effect of being on a tumultuous expedition across unfettered environments, whipped by the elements at their most beautiful and dangerous. You can almost smell the rain and burnt ozone on the title track. The field recordings enmeshed in these meditative studies are perfect also. Buy it here.

Finally we have Geometrie Variabili, an Italian free jazz improve band and their album The Breath. The quartet take a minute element and tinker with it, play with it, dissect and reassemble in various forms, in a fragmented staccato style that often takes my breath away. This type of music isn't always my thing, but The Breath really rewards, its technical intricacies not just marvels but hugely rewarding listens. You can buy it through Netlabel here.