American Music Club, Mercury (CD)

Mercury was a strange record for a major label to release in 1993, starting with Tom Recchion's excellent cover art. It's low on flash, glamour, and style—it's even mastered quietly and subtly (by Bob Ludwig). The musicianship is particularly amazing, and it sounds great. Mark Eitzel's songwriting is obviously self-effacing with a hint of melodrama. When it works, the album is remarkably powerful, but it times it falls into a dangerously mopey territory. Mercury is inconsistent with its long running time (49 minutes) but the highlights have aged nicely.

Kyle Bruckmann, Entymology [solo improvisations] (CD)

Disclaimer once again that Kyle is an old friend and occasional collaborator. His first solo album Entymology came out in 2000. It's more diverse than the later Gasps and Fissures, with the intense extended technique double-reed workouts juxtaposed with more conventional playing. I can't always distinguish oboe/English horn/suona, but there's a bit of everything here. The short pieces range from Coltrane-ish sheets of arpeggios (light years removed from any jazz context) to abstract textures to harmonic development. It's a bit primitive and quiet technically, but the music can be beautiful and striking, and the elaborately folded packaging is impressive.

Marsen Jules, Golden (CD)

2007's Golden is Marsen Jules's most acoustic record, and also his busiest. There are pianos and acoustic guitars here playing recognizable patterns, presumably loops. These instruments create a sense of movement where his earlier records sometimes relied on more stasis. Electronics still poke out, sometimes prominently, and the music is hardly driving or propulsive. Golden is a really diverse, interesting album, that retains Marsen Jules's approach (down to the flowers on the cover) while stretching it into surprising territory.

Ab Baars, Verderame (CD)

Dutch reed player Ab Baars gives a cross section of his playing on 1997's Verderame. It's more chromatic than textural or melodic, with less frequent nods to jazz than his work with ICP and less aggression than his collaborations with the Ex. His clarinet work shows a bit more breadth than the sax pieces, but he's an expressive player all around. Dick Lucas's competent engineering captures the subtlety in Baars's playing, while the cover painting is a bit non-descript.

Stuart Dempster, Underground Overlays from the Cistern Chapel (CD)

Stuart Dempster is 1/3 of Deep Listening Band. On 1995's Underground Overlays from the Cistern Chapel, he's playing trombone with many of his students in a cistern. As a whole, it's a big cavernous, reverb-laden drone, which is hardly a surprise. There are brief moments of strangeness and pulsing that provide surprising interruptions to the ongoing wash. The packaging, which funnily superimposes the Sistine Chapel on a photo of graffiti in the cistern, is weakened by the other design elements around the image.

Mass, Labour of Love (side A)

The English band Mass came between Rema-Rema and the Wolfgang Press, and they released their sole album, Labour of Love, in 1981. It's sonically a bit ahead of its time, with airy high-end and lots of fast compression. The vocals have an obviously dark and Goth-y quality, and the heavy use of chorus and analog delay match this quality as well. While the songs aren't particularly melodic or catchy, there's a strange underlying kinship between Labour of Love and bands like the Swell Maps or the Clean. The splattery, textual parts sound particularly reminiscent of the Swell Maps more abstract pieces. The overtly dark packaging (which was not preserved for the CD reissue?!) reflects the Goth side of the album far more than its punk/indie side, and there's no clear recording or mastering credit for the fine sound quality (perhaps producer Ian Little was also an engineer?).

Pink Floyd, Soundtrack from the film More (side A)

While Pink Floyd's records in the early 70s tended to be awkwardly sequenced, none was as diverse and irregular as 1969's soundtrack to More. It contains a bit of everything Pink Floyd could produce at the time, from heavy guitar angst to an organ freakout to a pretty folk song. Each style is performed well, so the album really shows off the group's ability to execute within so many idioms. While the individual tracks sound great, the relative levels are sometimes quite jarring—the mastering engineer could have created a better flow. The blurry cover design (by Hipgnosis) is cool and captures the style of Pink Floyd in that era.