Roberto Musci & Giovanni Venosta - Urban and Tribal Portraits (Soave, r. 2018)

Last year Soave reissued Roberto Musci's "The Loa of Music", which came out of nowhere and completely stunned me. They also reissued Giovanni Venosta's "Olympic Signals", but I missed that one. After those two debuts in the 80's, Musci and Venosta came together and made "Urban and Tribal Portraits". Similar to the only album I can use as a basis of comparison, "The Loa of Music", it continues in the vein of fourth world music, made in a time when I really can't conjure up anything remotely similar that I'm aware of. This isn't as world shaking as "Loa" for me but still really interesting, 12 tracks of occasionally psychedelic, jazzy, folky, arty, avant garde or otherwise unclassifiable genres informed by Musci and Venosta's "world music" travels. It's a little too scattershot - feels more like a compilation than a cohesive work - but I'm glad I'm getting to know these cats better.

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Corrupted - Felicific Algorithim (Cold Spring, 2018)

For whatever it means, this is the beginning of Corrupted's "Hollow" series. Maybe the clue is in the music? Unlike Corrupted's traditional ultra-slowed down, Spanish-sung, Japanese doom metal this is instrumental harsh noise. Still filthy and angry and depressive but sans vox and also more or less sans metal. Both untitled sides are meant to be played at either speed. The result? Meh. I miss Corrupted's brand of doom, this relatively anonymous harsh noise is fine and all but if I'm listening to Corrupted...well I know what I want. Skippable.

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

Grouper - Grid of Points (Kranky, 2018)

I've never really liked Grouper much, lots of other wogs go ga-ga over anything she puts out but it all leaves me cold. I wrote her off for a while, heard some hype for this new one, and I'm back to writing her off again. It's the same ghostly vocal samples/quasi religious/hymnal vibes..haunting and ethereal and...nothing that gets me all wound up. Pass.

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