Christian Wolff & Antoine Beuger - Where Are We Going, Today (Erstwhile, 2018)

Two monsters of the avant-garde. Founder of the Wandelweiser collective Beuger and co-conspirator Wolff. You knew it was going to be long and slow but wow. There's two pieces here, 10-minute one and a 60-minute one, and I'm not really sure what justifies the two since they're virtually identical. The set up is something like this: Wolff contributes "piano, objects, charango, flute" while Beuger reads out truncated lines, sentences, stanzas at seemingly random. Beuger also plays Christian Wolff's Stones recording from 1995. Confused? I was too until I read this. Essentially Wolff's version of his composition Stones runs throughout the background as a kind of barely-there hum, like a radiator in a room. And to make the whole thing even more absurdly self-referential, Beuger himself plays on that version of Stones. So long stretches of silence are broken up by either Beuger's recitations (Cageian in tone, I find), Wolff's improvisations on the aforementioned instruments, or both. It's an absolute head-spinner of a record. Difficult yes, but also incredibly immersive. Deep Listening is required but hopefully you have the patience because it's really quite something.

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Nachtmystium/Leviathan - In the Valley of Death, Where Black Metal is King: An Homage to the Roots (Ascension Monuments Media, 2018)

What the fuck is that title. Okay I get the first part is a Judas Iscariot tribute, but did we really need "an homage to the roots" in there? Hey wouldn't it be funny if these were actually covers of the band The Roots? Anyway. This album was supposed to come out 10 years ago, but it was blocked by the bands' respective labels. Now I guess they've figured out a way, or Blake Judd needs money for drugs so he's figured out a way, to put this out. The Bandcamp version has 8 tracks, 5 from Nachtmystium and 3 from Leviathan, but I've seen a 10-track tracklisting elsewhere. On the version I have, we have Nachtmystium covering Judas Iscariot, Ildjarn (twice), Von and Burzum. Leviathan tackles Ildjarn (twice) and Von once. I seem to be missing Leviathan's Judas Iscariot cover ("Where the Winter Beats Incessant") and one of Nachtmystium's Von covers ("Von"). Weird. Wonder if there were some licensing issues or something. All four Ildjar...

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.

Legend of the Seagullmen - Legend of the Seagullmen (Caroline/Dine Alone, 2018)

You may be familiar with the hype surrounding Legend of the Seagullmen, mostly because of the involvement of Danny Carey (Tool) and Brent Hinds (Mastodon). I wasn't expecting much but these were key bands of my youth, so I gave it a whirl, and it's whatever. It sounds kind of like a more rock/less metal version of Mastodon, maybe a less punk-y Turbonegro, a touch of Melvins (minus all the inventiveness), with horribly stupid lyrics and power rock moves like anthemic choruses and extreme guitar soloing. It's not as bad as the first track "We Are the Seagullmen", a real piece of shit, threatens, but it's not much better. It's a concept album that takes itself only semi-seriously...with the marriage of technical skill and tongue in cheek humor it's along the lines of a Green Jello, Tenacious D or a Les Claypool sideproject. But musically there's nothing here of interest, give it a skip.

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