reviews of contemporary underground psych, drone, sound art, and electronic/experimental music from the fringes
The Humble Bee, “Morning Music” (Cotton Goods (2010)/Dauw (2025)
Newly remastered and reissued for the first time ever, Morning Music was the second handmade release from Craig Tattersall’s solo tape music project. Notably, Tattersall had already been involved in […]
Skullflower, “Draconis” (Cold Spring, 2014)
It is hardly newsworthy to report that a Skullflower album is a blackened, face-melting fusillade of gnarled guitar noise or that it sounds like shoegaze turned occult and murderous, but […]
Roméo Poirier, “Off The Record” (Faitiche, 2025)
This fourth solo album from the reliably fascinating French collage artist is billed as “an amusing romp through the discarded history of recording studios.” That claim probably wildly oversells this […]
The Shadow Ring, “Hold Onto I.D.” (Siltbreeze (1997) / Blank Forms (2025))
Newly reissued, this singular 1998 album is billed as arguably being The Shadow Ring’s best-known and most accessible album, but there are a couple of important caveats to that claim. […]
The Shadow Ring, “Wax-Work Echoes” (Corpus Hermeticum (1996) / Blank Forms (2025))
Amusingly, The Shadow Ring’s third album was originally intended to be a collection of outtakes and live recordings for Bruce Russell’s new Corpus Hermeticum label, but a crucial recording from […]
Eli Keszler (LuckyMe, 2025)
Notably, the first Eli Keszler album that I ever heard was 2011’s Cold Pin, which was centered around a complex percussion installation that used motors and microcontrollers to attack strings […]
Anadol, “Uzun Havalar” (Kinship (2018)/Pingipung (2019))
This 2018 album was not Anadol’s debut, but it was definitely the first album from the project that actually managed to reach a wide audience (quite deservedly, since it is […]
ssabæ, “azurescens” (Few Crackles, 2022)
This is the third album from an enigmatic and self-described “nebula of friends gathering in studios, meadows and tiny apartments all over France” and fittingly borrows its name from a […]