Alvin Lucier - Criss-Cross/Hanover (Black Truffle, 2018)

Major late-career entry for the legend Alvin Lucier here, released on Oren Ambarchi's Black Truffle. "Criss-Cross" is Lucier's first composition for guitar and written for performers Ambarchi and Stephen O'Malley. Ambarchi in the left channel, O'Malley on the right, and they "improvise on a single semitone" producing a woozy and pulverizing tone falling in and out of sync, increasing and decreasing speeds, I hate to say stuff like this but you can almost hear other sounds being conjured up by the thick drone, just around the edges, although at least one of them is the disorienting sound of e-bows on strings. Quite something; to be played loud. "Hanover" features Ambarchi and O'Malley on guitars again, joined by a variety of players on alto and tenor sax, violin, piano and bowed vibraphone. The piece is inspired by Lucier's father (appearing on the cover) and a reimagining of that ghostly departed band. It's slow, heavy on spectral tones. Very haunting and beautiful.

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Playboi Carti - Die Lit (AWGE/Interscope, 2018)

Playboi Carti has never really been on my radar too much, but then Pfork gave this one a rave review, and I figured I was sleeping...but man, this album didn't do anything for me. Barely any song made any kind of impact. The production is interesting at times but Carti himself gets lost in both that and the whole mass of features all over the album. Nothing gelled for me, so I guess for me I wasn't missing much after all. Oh well.

Eartheater - IRISIRI (Pan, 2018)

Eartheater first came on my radar (and many others) with 2 Hausu Mountain tapes in 2015. She makes glitchy, disorienting music, combining electronics and synthesized percussion with voice, guitars and who knows what else. The whole thing is a confusing stew, kind of reminiscent of Inga Copeland but I would say even more detached from "song". Didn't do much for me.

Abstracter - Cinerous Incarnate (I, Voidhanger, 2018)

I was not aware of these guys, who formed in 2010 as a noise duo, and slowly evolved and added more members and turned into a kind of death/blackened doom metal project. They've got ties to other noise acts I don't know (Sutekh Hexen) and other industrial acts I don't know (Only Now). Quite a stew and the band pulls of something that sounds truly different. It's got a tentacle in each of the aforementioned genres but blends them really well. It's quite hard to pin them down in fact. Big, heavy riffs with a production level along the lines of a sludge/black metal record but sharp instrumentation and just a dirty atmosphere...ambient noise passages separate a couple tracks as a nice diversion...very cool

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