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...

Sunburned Hand of the Man - Get Wet with the Animal (Manhand, 2018)

I keep up with Sunburned only intermittently these days, they seem to be taking a more rock-ist approach lately. Like this one. Each track is about 4-5 minutes of pretty ramshackle, jammy, funky, boogie rock...almost spoiled by the throaty, beery vocals shouted over the top of each one of these tunes with nonsensical platitudes. I almost shut it off after a couple tracks but I stuck it out and kinda came around on some level. I was oddly reminded of My War era Black Flag sludge punk. The band sez "these Holy Grail fueled recordings are a mix of iphone and zoom recordings run through garageband, reaper and some plug-ins. We're still working on the much more listener-friendly Black Dirt session..." and point taken, listener friendly this ain't.

Thou - Inconsolable (Community, 2018)

Thou have taken a lot of departures from being the doom metal band they're Supposed to Be, and Inconsolable may be the wildest departure yet. It's an all-acoustic EP, the 2nd of three leading up to their new full-length Magus later this year, and supposedly inspired by Nirvana's MTV Unplugged album. Vocalist Bryan Funck is absent - rather, he's written the lyrics and given them over to a cast of women to sing in his stead. The Nirvana album was evoked only intermittently with me - the first track, "The Unspeakable Oath", sounded more like Mogwai and I was preparing myself for a really interesting album. The rest of the album scores only so-so for me. Like "The Unspeakable Oath", "Come Home, You Are Missed" has a downtempo Thou feel (remarkable given there's no metal to be found here) and sonically could slot alongside Nirvana, Alice in Chains, or similar downtrodden alt/metal fare. "The Hammer" is a longer, more prog-ish piec...

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