Wipers, Over the Edge (side A)

1983's Over the Edge is as powerful as its reputation would suggest.  Some of the subtle diversity is more surprising.  Some songs, like the openers "Over the Edge" and "Doom Town" rely purely on power.  The guitars and vocals are harsh, bright and in-your-face, and the band plays with abandon.  By the end of side A, "Romeo" has softened, just a bit—the less-menacing vocals recall Lou Reed's narrative style, the guitars sound a bit less harsh, and the pace has even dropped slightly.  No matter the style, the Wipers' delivery is impressively consistent, and the impact never drops.  The sound's harshness is far more listenable than the digital harshness of so many of today's lo-fi recordings.  The cover is simple and iconic, with the surprising color choice of pink drawing attention and leaping out.

Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, Admonishing the Bishops (10" EP)

1993's Admonishing the Bishops is the Thinking Fellers most consistently extroverted rock release.  Where the group often includes weird asides and sound collages between songs, this 10" features only four somewhat-conventional songs.  The songs still capture much of the Fellers' weirdness, with deadpan vocals, strangely-processed guitars, and many structural surprises in what first appear to be pop songs.  While the band often grew frustrated with the challenging of capturing their incredibly dynamic arrangements on record, the guitars here nicely leap out of the mix as the songs build.  And the recordings are an interesting balance of studio clarity with some primitive sounds, especially in the vocals.  The 10" format provides a perfect length to encapsulate one side of the group's multi-faceted personality and approach.

The Fall, Live at the Witch Trials (side A)

I find it impressive that with the Fall's 1979 debut Live at the Witch Trials, the group had already established so much of its lasting identity.  While Marc Riley only played bass on the first album before moving to guitar and then leaving the group, his pulsing, repetitive basslines foreshadowed those of his successors.  Smith's dead-pan, semi-narrative vocal style has changed little in the 30+ years since the group's debut.  Drummer Karl Burns also left after Witch Trials, but returned in 1982 to double drum on the Fall's most beloved albums, and his drumming here also provides an obvious foundation for the group's future style.  Only Martin Bramah's scratchy, no wave-y guitar style would not last—future albums feature more tonal and less textural playing.  While Fall albums always sound purposely lo-fi, weird, and primitive, the mixes of Live at the Witch Trials rank among their worst, with drums especially sounding compressed and lifeless.  The red packaging of my domestic copy looks worse than the UK original, and, while I like "Various Times", I also miss having "Mother-Sister!".

Ethiopian, Everything Crash (side A)

Leonard Dillon was half of the vocal reggae duo Ethiopians.  5 years after Steven Taylor's death, he made his first solo record as Ethiopian, 1980's Everything Crash, working with Coxsone Dodd from Studio One.  I'm not so familiar with Ethiopians, but their music from what I have heard seems to have been a bit higher energy.  The tempos on Everything Crash are a bit slower, and the feel of the album is darker.  Dillon's amazing singing shines in this setting, with a series of beautiful vocal takes.  Many songs are melodic and memorable, including at least one recut of Ethiopians' "Everything Crash".  The opener "When Will be the End" also particularly stands out.  The sound of the record is present with punchy dub bass, but the midrange feels a bit weak and does not flatter Dillon's beautiful voice.  The stylized cover design stretches the Studio One style into a slightly darker terrain.

Parasites of the Western World, Parasites of the Western World (side A)

The Parasites of the Western World's self-titled 1978 debut obviously dates from a time when small-town US bands borrowed from a huge range of influences without a hint of self-consciousness.  Parts of this album have the aggressiveness of Chrome, with heavily distorted guitars, shout-y vocals, and driving beats.  Other songs sound like instrumental versions of 70s AM synth-pop.  This extreme juxtaposition reminds me a bit of Gary Wilson, though the album also seems to presage Bobb Trimble's more seamless assimilation of radio-friendly and jarring ideas.  The recording is generally competent, though it's hard to guess how the record was made—no credits indicate whether the group recorded themselves or went to a studio.  The 2010 reissue's mastering leaves the songs sounding extremely different from one another, which is likely true to the original creation, if it's also somewhat jarring to experience.  The packaging comes with nice posters and inserts.

Ty Segall & White Fence, Hair (side A)

White Fence's 2010 self-titled debut impressed me enough that I've continued to follow his work.  Hair, which is my first exposure to Ty Segall, still captures Tim Presley's songwriting and arranging talent, but it lacks some of the ambition that made the debut special.  Presley's songwriting voice is obvious here—references to the psychedelic 60s are filtered through a more contemporary lo-fi aesthetic.  Where artists like Brother JT or Strapping Fieldhands emphasized their outsider, record-collector personae, Presley and Segall ooze fashion and slickness.  Hair loses the broad palette and range of ideas that made White Fence special—the weaker points even sound alike and interchangeable.  Some songs combine a slack aesthetic with a keen attention to detail that makes them special, but at other times the slacker persona grows overwhelming, as if they rushed to finish the album and get on tour.  The packaging captures the record's personality perfectly, to a point where it feels obsessively stylized.  The lo-fi sound quality has charms, but in some ways it can also sound bad—a professional mastering job did nothing to tame the out-of-control treble.

M.L.A. 'Blek', Blek (side A)

1981's Blek features an interesting line-up with 3 brass players plus Fred Van Hove's piano.  All four have excellent facial hair in the back cover photo.  The most surprising thing about Blek is that it still dates from an era when Radu Malfatti played audible notes on the trombone and not just pointillistic, minimal textures.  The improvisations here are incredibly diverse—each short track has a coherent idea and palette.  At its least interesting times, Blek sounds like a lot of other improv records from this era, with an emphasis on call-and-response.  Other parts sound very contemporary, with van Hove creating textures inside the piano that pull the music far from tonal references.  The piano is recorded with more space and less presence than the horns—it almost sounds like it's on a different record.  The understated cover drawing is both beautiful and appropriate.

Cleared, Breaking Day (side A)

The most surprising thing about 2012's Breaking Day is how much its personality reminds me of Holger Hiller.  He's hardly an obvious influence to reference, so I have no idea if it's on purpose.  The compositions here generally rest on a foundation of a looped drum beat—the sounds have a distinctive metallic quality that seems to come from a cheap looper pedal.  The patterns are plodding, vaguely heavy, and simple rhythmically.  Some tracks have a low-frequency drum wildly exaggerated in the loop.  Over top of these patterns are often a field of textural sounds that makes for an engaging foreground.  Sometimes there is a distorted, rock-like guitar riff that replaces the textures with a simple, vaguely melodic pattern.  For me, the textural concepts feel far more distinctive than the distorted guitar melody.  Apart from the weird metallic sheen on the drums, everything here sounds a bit compressed, the high frequencies can be slightly brittle, and the midrange frequencies are a bit scooped.  The photos on both the cover and the inner fold are particularly beautiful, and the super-thick cardboard used for the gatefold is impressively glossy on both sides.

Tim Hecker, Atlas (10" EP)

2006's Atlas is a great distillation of Hecker's approach and palette.  He nicely juxtaposes fully blown-out and distorted sounds with prettier and more natural sounds.  Even in the dynamically static sections of the two pieces (one per side), there is a lot of subtle movement.  Each piece includes unexpected and drastic dynamic shifts.  A particular highlight is in "Atlas Two", when the piece moves from full and loud to a much quieter volume—the sound surprisingly transforms from a prettier palette to a very harsh, if still quiet, timbre in the foreground.  The component sounds are consistently compressed, so that dynamics shifts are radical when sounds enter, exit, or change drastically.  The frequency distribution emphasizes high end a bit heavily, with the mid-range scooped to give this space.  The bright colors of the packaging have a very different character from the narrow palette of the music inside.

Sack und Blumm, kind kind (side A)

Sack und Blumm were a duo of German musicians who worked on the remote periphery of minimal techno.  Their music involves looped patterns that create a sense of rhythm.  On kind kind, the patterns never create a sense of a beat, so much as a feeling of constant movement.  Many of the component sounds are recognizably organic, like fret buzz or an mbira melody.  They're recorded in a dry, rigidly-compressed manner that almost makes them sound electronic.  The frequency distribution is a bit bright and modern sounding, but the low-end is not at all pronounced.  Some tracks feature deeper sounds like bass notes on the mbira, while others are fully missing low-end.  This sonic spectrum removes any hint of techno from kind kind.  The sparse, hand-drawn design on the packaging reflects the handmade sounds, not the processes used to assemble them into repeating structures.

Nico, The End (side A)

While there was a 4 year lapse between 1970's Desertshore and 1974's The End, the two albums feel stylistically contiguous.  Both feature Nico's slow, sparse songs gently arranged by John Cale.  Some songs are built around Nico's voice and droning harmonium, while others feature a slightly more propulsive structure from Cale's piano.  Brian Eno and Phil Manzanera, who both played on Cale's album Fear at roughly the same time, both contribute layers and textures.  Nico's sad, haunting voice remains the focus, and the music barely hints at her past involvement with rock music.  The End includes covers of both the Doors' "The End" and the traditional German song "Das Lied dr Deutschen".  John Wood's engineering captures Nico's voice beautifully, and his mixes flatter the arrangements perfectly.  The blurry front cover image reflects Nico's musical personality, though the film metaphor in the layout feels far more clichéd than anything else about the album.

Anatomy of Habit, Anatomy of Habit (side A)

Anatomy of Habit's self-titled 2011 debut consists of two side-long tracks.  While the gradually-evolving builds and fades of these extended structures give a modern context that references bands like Godspeed You Black Emperor, the group's sonic palette draws from an older set of influences.  An obvious comparison to the well-executed, precise pounding might be the Birthday Party.  Blake Edwards's metallic percussion setup evokes obvious comparisons to Z'ev or Neubaten.  While Mark Solotroff presents a strong visual presence at their live shows, his consistently flat, off-key vocals reference later-80s, overtly goth styles that are less my taste than the instrumental parts alongside them.  The recordings have trouble capturing some of the harsh high-end, especially in the metal percussion, but they smoothly reflect the broad dynamic range of the evolving tracks.  The impressive packaging includes a simple die-cut cover through which a printed inner sleeve peeks through.

Art Bears, Hopes and Fears (side A)

Talented artists often try to show off their proficiency, and records that seem rough or primitive often are a result of naïveté.  As much as the Art Bears' talent is obvious on Hopes and Fears, they also made choices to conceal their talent, and other decisions that seem unflattering on the surface.  While even commercial records in 1978 did not sound as cartoon-like and huge as today's hits, Hopes and Fears often sounds particularly tiny and unimposing.  At the rare moments when rock-like textures do appear, it becomes obvious that the the restraint of most sounds was achieved very purposefully.  The songs themselves are often awkwardly constructed, with few hooks of any kind to draw in the listeners attention.  Vocal melodies are often arch and complicated, and sometimes subtle textural sections omit even these.  In his book File Under Popular, Chris Cutler emphasizes how political content should be coupled with a related form, rather than placed in a more palatable context, and the rich lyrics on Hopes and Fears follow his preferred approach.  The beautiful front and back cover are more approachable than most of the album's contents, but the inside of the gatefold, which is simple, raw, and handwritten, contrasts with these images.

The Eternals, Rawar Style (side A)

With Rawar Style, the Eternals found their creative voice.  The initial 12"s featured disparate stylized tracks, and the self-titled debut from 2000 took a step back, closer to Trenchmouth's punk rock.  With 2004's Rawar Style, Damon Locks and Wayne Montana pulled their influences together into a more coherent work.  Isaac Hayes-informed soul, Gang of Four post-punk, and bits of modern techno and dance music all manage to coexist in the same song.  Looped samples reference unknown musical styles, basslines provide a propulsive groove, and drums interweave with electronic rhythms.  Short, abstract tracks still coexist alongside structured and catchy songs, but the two styles borrow from a similar palette and flow logically together.  The sounds manage to somehow combine stark modernity with a cheaper lo-fi aesthetic, so that Rawar Style has a sonic character of its own.  While I wish the mastering job was a bit less scooped in the mids, it never sounds shrill or exaggerated.  Damon Locks''s collage on the front cover somehow looks both chaotic and simple at the same time—it's less referential than the music inside, but just as broad in its approach.

David Bedford, Star's End (side A)

1974's Star's End contains one continuous, 45 minute piece, that is divided in the middle between the two album sides.  The piece consists of a series of swells with quiet sections between them.  The palette of sounds does not emphasize an intricate or subtle set of textures, but at the same time, the piece focuses more on the shifting groups of sound than on tonality.  Sounds with tonal notes are used to create a shifting field, which draws attention to the dynamic shifts over time.  The piece is performed by a symphony orchestra augmented by Mike Oldfield and Chris Cutler.  Bedford seems to exploit Oldfield's personality as a guitarist more than Cutler's idiosyncratic approach to percussion.  Both soloists are featured prominently in the mix, with a more rock-like recording approach used to emphasize their contributions.  The packaging of my US copy is non-descript, but the original UK album had a more interesting cover image.

Hauschka, Snowflakes & Car Wrecks (side A)

In his project Hauschka, Vokler Bertelmänn approaches the prepared piano in a fairly novel context.  While the instrument is typically used in overtly jazz and classical contexts, Bertelmänn brings ambient and electronic influences to his pieces.  While the piano has been prepared, it is used here to play notes, and tonality of these pieces is consistently simple, at times recalling Eno's Ambient series in its narrow choice of notes.  The preparations are heard as the pieces build, in a style that borrows from contemporary electronic and techno music.  Subtly propulsive rhythms appear in most of the pieces, gradually adding drive using a repeating pattern.  The piano preparations often play a more prominent role through the build.  The music never approaches any real beat, but the driving movement recalls electronic artists even as it is created acoustically.  The recording also sounds modern and almost synthetic—heavy compression and limiting with fast attacks detach even the most organic piano sounds from their source of origin.  While artists like Sack & Blumm bring acoustic instruments into their arrangements, Hauschka is distinctive within the genre for working solely acoustically.  Several pieces on 2009's Snowflakes & Car Wrecks add sustaining string arrangements behind his now-recognizable approach to the piano.  The cover's simple geometric designs on reverse-stock paper fit Bertelmänn's melding of influences nicely.

The Red Krayola, Coconut Hotel (side A)

Coconut Hotel is of course a bit legendary—in 1967, it was too weird for International Artists, who were putting out plenty of weird records.  When it got reissued in 1995, the sources of the Red Krayola's inspiration were not exactly clear.  Coconut Hotel consists solely of abstract sounds, some in pointillistic arrangements and others more sustained.  Some sounds have a clear source of origin (including ones with titles like "Piano" and "Guitar") where others are harder to discern.  While the music has little to do with the group's rock background, it seems most logical to try to understand Coconut Hotel in this context.  As the Red Krayola collaborated with John Fahey at this time, they must have been aware of his tape-music experiments on Requia.  Founder Mayo Thompson seems unfavorably disposed to hippies, so its creation in the same year as Jefferson Airplane's sometimes-chaotic After Bathing at Baxter's might be coincidence.  An obvious reference point, with only tangential rock connections, AMM's first album came out a year earlier, but there's no way to know if it reached Texas.  Searching for references or influences proves difficult, and Coconut Hotel really can't be judged in any context but its own, which is how Thompson clearly intended it.  The blurry cover photo is funny.  To the extent that sound quality can be discerned on such an abstract release, the reissue seems to have been transferred respectfully.

Elklink, The Rise of Elklink (side A)

The 2010 reissue The Rise of Elklink adds a song to the original 1999 cassette.  The band consisted of Graham Lambkin from the Shadow Ring and Adris Hoyos from Harry Pussy.  The Rise of Elklink sounds like a cross between an Alga-Marghen sound-poetry LPs and Lindus-era Shadow Ring.  It's interesting that these recordings, which were made 3 years before Lindus, resemble it stylistically.  The primary sound source is heavily processed vocals, with occasional purely electronic sounds overdubbed to add color.  Occasional words interrupt the purely abstract vocal sounds, and these words often help to identify the distinct pieces.  For example, the title of opening track "Tension Tec" is audible at times.  The glossy cover is a startling pink color, with an unflattering photo of Lambkin in its center.  The recordings are raw, but at the same time they clearly capture the processed sounds—the mastering job for the vinyl reissue nicely emphasizes the clarity without drawing attention to itself.

Cristal, Re-Ups (side A)

2008's Re-Ups is an incredibly sparse, slight listen.  The simple textures exist often in isolation.  Sounds often evolve slowly over an extended period of time before being replaced.  Most of the sounds fall in the noise side of the palette, with little tonal information or reference, though a high-pitched tone does occasionally emerge.  These tones stand out from the midrange frequencies that the noisier sounds occupy.  While the palette and style remains relatively consistent, there are separate tracks spread across the two sides, with titles that are identified in black-on-black print inside the nice gatefold and also on the back of the obi-strip.  The music seems to have been carefully composed—while the palette resembles the quiet improvised music of recent years, the structure feels much more purposeful.  Labradford bassist Bobby Donne is a member of Cristal, but the music here is far more extreme in its austerity than even Labradford's quietest moments.

Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Dead Death, Death Dead (side A)

Apart from having a funny and creative name, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer don't particularly differentiate themselves from other noise bands of the mid-'00s.  Their heaviness reminds me of Sunn O))), as does their use of death metal-influenced fonts and a lot of black in the packaging.  The dark, layered drones with noise and vocals peeking out owe a debt to groups like Double Leopards and Yellow Swans, though Blue Sabbath Black Cheer are definitely more aggressive and willfully punishing than either.  The screaming hardcore-like vocals come to the foreground more than many of the group's contemporaries would have placed them.  While 2006's Dead Death, Death Dead does not feel particularly innovative for its era, it is tasteful and well-executed.  The bass-heavy mastering job is quite competent, if obviously stylized, and the black-on-black printing of the cover taxidermy photograph came out great.

Ash Ra Tempel, Join Inn (side A)

In 1973 when Ash Ra Tempel recorded Join Inn, founding member Klaus Schulze had re-joined the group.  Join Inn includes two side-long tracks that sound like two different bands.  Side B, "Jeseits" features Schulze on organ, and his personality comes to the foreground.  While Rosi Mueller contributes vocals here, they play a secondary role to the ongoing drones.  Surprisingly, Schulze drums on side A's "Freak'n'Roll".  Coupled with Göttsching's guitar, the extended instrumental borrows more actively from the palette and vocabulary of rock music.  The trashy-sounding drums provide propulsion that's unexpected for Schulze, and Göttsching's guitar weaves in and out of their rhythm.  The prominent dynamic shifts are preserved nicely and give the piece a sense of structure.  The mastering of my 1997 reissue is a bit treble-heavy and weak in midrange, but sounds good overall and captures the dynamics of "Freak'n'Roll" nicely.  The packaging looks good too, though I'm assuming the glossy cover is a departure from the original texture.

This Kind of Punishment, In the Same Room / 5 by 4 (sides C and D)

This double vinyl reissue, from 1993, combines the final two This Kind of Punishment releases.  1985's 5 by 4 was an EP, followed by the full-length In the Same Room in 1987.  5 by 4, which fills sides C and D at 45 RPM, is the group's most diverse and least representative work.  This Kind of Punishment focused on songs that coupled raw, slightly noisy arrangements with dark, post-punk melodies.  The music generally had a bit of a sad feel, especially from the Jefferies brothers' rich baritone vocals.  5 by 4 stretches the group's ideas out to extremes, as opposed to their usual experiments with combining them.  One song feels like recited poetry over a soundscape—it reminds me of the Shadow Ring's work a decade later.  The opening "Mr. Tic Toc" is far more aggressive than the group's usual fare, so it bears a closer resemblance to contemporaries like Australia's SPK.  Other songs feature more 60s informed melodies that Graham Jefferies relied on more when he started the Cakekitchen.  Little attention was paid to the mastering of these lo-fi recordings, so the track volumes vary drastically.  The packaging of the reissue is impressive, with a gatefold of really thick cardboard that's glossy on all sides (including the back that only faces the record).

The Temptations, Cloud Nine (side A)

I thoroughly enjoy the story of this record.  While, for example, the Monkees sought creative control to write their own songs, the Temptations merely asked Norman Whitfield to change the group's style.  Otis Williams apparently suggested Sly & the Family Stone as a reference, and Whitfield reluctantly came back with the classics "Cloud Nine" and "Runaway Child, Running Wild".  The story feels almost as implausible as the songs are memorable.  Side B of the album is unfortunately a last gasp at the old formula, and not a particularly effective one, especially with David Ruffin gone.  1969's Cloud Nine reflects a group in transition, but the startling arrangements hint at the lush psychedelic soul that would carry the Temptations for several years to follow.  Its cover design too feels a bit forced, with the group superimposed upon an oil projection reminiscent of rock bands' light shows, but it again hints at the distinctive fusion of styles that first appears here.