Profligate’s ‘Come Follow Me’ LP co-released by More Records and Hot Releases.

No wordy introduction required. Though I must explain: 2012 was such an exceptional year that it made the compiling of this list rather difficult. Any one of the titles comprising my top 10 (or so) albums could have easily snagged the no. 1 slot. This is particularly true of the Spectrum Spools-released epic Motion Sickness Of Time Travel (no. 2), a once-in-a-generation work that feels like one of the very few modern synth/ambient records that can be placed alongside the classics of the ’70s in regards to vision, execution, composition, scope, etc.

Having said that, it was Profligate’s Come Follow Me (co-released by More Records and Hot Releases) that I ultimately deigned the album of the year. Ever since my earliest exposure to Six Finger Satellite in the mid ’90s I’ve been utterly obsessed with artists and bands that can manage to straddle post-industrial groove exploration, dark art-rock vibes and true D.I.Y. ingenuity, and this is what Noah Anthony’s Profligate project is all about. What’s more, the Philadelphia-based  musician dropped two additional titles in 2012 that blew me away: the Burning’ Fast cassette released under his older Night Burger moniker (no. 21) and the Videotape 12-inch on Not Not Fun Records (no. 23).

Lastly, there exist a handful of records from 2012 that I have yet to really dig into, namely Sigha’s Living With Ghosts, Shed’s The Killer, Silent Servant’s Negative Fascination, Bee Mask’s When We Were Eating Unripe Pears, Emeralds’ Just To Feel Anything and Three Legged Race’s Persuasive Barrier. Excluding Negative Fascination and The Killer, all of these appeared in the final two months of the year, a truly hectic stretch that also saw the emergence of Container’s second full-length for Spectrum Spools (no. 10) and Lazy Magnet’s Acts Without Error on Bathetic Records (no. 12). Further gobbling up my attention in this time were several musicians whom I unexpectedly stumbled across. The most notable being Lauren Pakradooni and her work under the alias PAK. I gripped the Cast Shadows cassette (no. 35) in early December, and I’ve been playing it over and over ever since.

So yeah, early 2013 is going to be a time of playing catch up!

And now on to my lists…

ALBUMS

1. Profligate – Come Follow Me [More Records / Hot Releases]
2. Motion Sickness Of Time Travel - Motion Sickness Of Time Travel [Spectrum Spools]
3. Prostitutes – Psychedelic Black [stabUdown]
4. FORMA –  OFF / ON [Spectrum Spools]
5. Decimus – Decimus #11 [Digitalis Recordings]
6. Shackleton – Music For The Quiet Hour / The Drawbar Organ EPs [Woe To The Septic Heart!]
7. Shifted – Crossed Paths [Mote-Evolver]
8. Marshstepper – Marshstepper [Chondritic Sound]
9. Forward Strategy Group – Labour Division [Perc Trax]
10. Container – LP [Spectrum Spools]
11. Aaron Dilloway – Modern Jester [Hanson Records]
12. Lazy Magnet – Acts Without Error [Bathetic Records]
13. Christian Cosmos – Enthronement By God As The First-Born Of The Dead [Hospital Productions]
14. Upperground Orchestra - The Eupen Takes [Morphine Records]
15. Afterlife – Celestial Habitat [Hooker Vision]
16. Lightning Bolt – Oblivion Hunter [Load Records]
17. Cut Hands – Black Mamba [Very Friendly / Susan Lawly]
18. Vatican Shadow – Ornamented Walls [Modern Love]
19. Housefire – Sonic Pressure [Headway Recordings]
20. Craow – C-Bank [Nostilevo]
21. Night Burger – Burnin’ Fast [Not Not Fun Records]
22. Panabrite - Soft Terminal [Digitalis Recordings]
23. Moritz Von Oswald Trio – Fetch [Honest Jon's Records]
24. Scott Walker - Bish Bosch [4AD]
25. Villages – Theories Of Ageing [Bathetic Records]
26. Various Artists - Fake Sound Routine – Volume Two [I Just Live Here]
27. Innercity – A Lion Baptism [Further Records]
28. High Aura’d – Sanguine Futures [Bathetic Records]
29. Juju & Jordash – Techno Primitivism [Dekmantel]
30. Sawf – Flaws [Perc Trax]
31. Aaron Dilloway / Jason Lescalleet – Grapes And Snakes [Pan]
32. Drainolith – Fighting! [Spectrum Spools]
33. Andy Stott - Luxury Problems [Modern Problems]
34. Silent Harbour – Silent Harbour [Echocord]
35. PAK – Cast Shadows [Dungeon Taxis]
36. Pure Ground – Daylight [Chondritic Sound]
37. Various Artists – Total Fucking Depression [Animal Disguise]
38. Nick Edwards – Plekzationz [Editions Mego]
39. Trepaneringsritualen – Deathward, To The Womb [Black Horizons / Merz Tapes]
40. Russell Haswell - 5″ Vinyl Series LP [Downwards]
41. Frak – Muzika Electronic [Digitalis Recordings]
42. Petar Dundov - Ideas From The Pond [Music Man Records]
43. Aloonaluna – Diadem Or Halo? [Hooker Vision]
44. San Proper – Animal [Rush Hour Recordings]
45. Jason Lescalleet – Songs About Nothing [Erstwhile Records]
46. Vatican Shadow – Ghosts Of Chechnya [Hospital Productions]
47. Liable – Funeral Of The Beautiful Italian Bullfighter [Chondritic Sound]
48. Moth Cock – Moth Cock [Tusco/Embassy]
49. The Compass Rose - The Simulation District [Ekhein]
50. D’Marc Cantu – A New World [M>O>S Recordings]

12-INCHES (SINGLES/EPS)

1. Milton Bradley - Reality Is Wrong [Prologue]
2. Theo Parrish - Hand Made [Running Back]
3. Metasplice – Topographical Interference EP [Morphine Records]
4. Shifted – Sickness By Means Of Clairvoyance [Our Circula Sound]
5. Powell – Body Music [Diagonal]
6. Emptyset – Collapsed [Raster-Noton]
7. Go Hiyama – Arc One [Token]
8. Three Legged Race – Wrong Element [Acoustic Division]
9. Bronze Age – Antiquated Futurism [Bed Of Nails]
10. Meager Sunlight / Skeleton Warrior - Seasons Of Nudity [More Records / Hot Releases / Good God Energy Chronicles / Roofless Records]
11. Vatican Shadow - Iraqi Praetorian Guard [Blackest Ever Black]
12. Morphosis – The TEPCO Report [Morphine Records]
13. Mark Ernestus Presents Jeri-Jeri With Mbene Diatta Seck – Xale [Ndagga]
14. Skudge / San Proper ‎– Dekmantel Anniversary Series Part 4 [Dekmantel]
15. Mark Ernestus Presents Jeri-Jeri With Mbene Diatta Seck – Mbeuguel Dafa Nekh [Ndagga]
16. Samantha Vacation (Sam V) / Beeman Glow – Samantha’s Vacation / Dblorowa [Webern Arts + Industries]
17. Aardvark – Indo E.P. [Skudge Presents]
18. Vatican Shadow – September Cell [Bed Of Nails]
19. Pete Swanson – Pro Style [Type]
20. Skudge – Haste / Wonder Stories [Skudge Records]
21. Russell Haswell – Remixed [Downwards]
22. Heatsick – Déviation EP [Pan]
23. Profligate – Videotape [Not Not Fun Records]
24. Christian Cosmos – The Sharp Lines That Delineate His Robes [Bed Of Nails]
25. Ø [Phase] – Binary Opposition Reprocessed Part 1 [Token]
26. Lakker – Arc E.P. [Blueprint]
27. Regis – Ital [Downwards]
28. Opuswerk – Wired Connections EP [Plak Records]
29. Alfabet – Hell Of Samba [Rush Hour Recordings]
30. Walker & Kennedy – 3 Stacked Layers, From Macro To Meta [Inner Surface Music]

Soft Circle and performance-production duo The New Dreamz have teamed up for a hilarious video that (in my estimation, at least) pokes a stick at the dystopian gloom of the minimal wave and coldwave trends — both of which I dig, mind you. “Reaper” is a track that first appeared on the group’s 2010 album Shore Obsessed. But if I’m not mistaken, the video is a fairly recent creation. I can’t stop re-watching and re-laughing — so creative and so insanely ABSURD.

I shouldn’t be surprised: one-half of The New Dreamz is Andrew Jeffrey Wright. The super-talented artist emerged from the same Providence, Rhode Island bubble that unleashed upon the world Fort Thunder and Load Records. A radical embrace of humor, silliness and riotous fun has always been a central component to both entities.

This might be a rather obscure reference, but I think “Reaper” (both song and video) echoes Danse Asshole’s oddball parodies of industrial dance culture. Active in the early 2000s, they were Rhode Island exports as well. Definitely try tracking down a copy of their I Want To Danse CD on the Breathmint label — pure fun.

QuantumNoise — on hiatus for the time being — was a web-radio program I hosted every Monday, 10:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. (eastern), on killer Asheville Free Media.

This evening’s program is truly a special one. My good pal John Cellura — owner of Cleveland’s Bent Crayon, far and away the best specialty record store for underground sounds in all of the United States – joins me in-studio to play jams and chat about all kinds of stuff. Together, we unleash a fairly schizoid set.

Cellura and I open with a piece from Jonas Broberg’s Kling Klang Salad cassette, a bizarre slice of DIY electronics originally released on Konduktör Rekords back in 1985. After that come two creepily punishing tracks courtesy of Failing Lights (a.k.a. Mike Connelly of Hair Police / Wolf Eyes) and the Bristol, U.K. duo Emptyset, respectively. Released last spring on the Subtext imprint, Emptyset’s Demiurge album is an absolutely brutal marriage of neo-dubstep bass wallop and hyper-minimal rhythmic noise.

Towards the end of the evening, we shift from electronic beats to hard-raging rockers. These include new cuts each from The Men (the toast of the Sacred Bones scene) and Baltimore art-punks Ed Shrader’s Music Beat (who put on one hell of a live show). We then close out with some dirty-ass Aussie punk by way of Fungus Brains (Load Records having recently reissued their 1983 full-length Ron Pistos Real World) and Sick Things. Both groups, by the way, were co-founded by legendary guitarist Mick Turner, who would go onto to form the Dirty Three.

Here’s the playlist for 08.01.2011.

QuantumNoise — on hiatus for the time being — was a web-radio program I hosted every Monday, 10:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. (eastern), on killer Asheville Free Media.

On this week’s show we phone up Mark Morgan, ace guitarist for noise-rock explorers Sightings, as well as one half of power-done outfit Key Of Shame (the other being Pat “Decimus” Murano). The dude is, in my opinion, one of the most important six-stringers of the last 35 years. Combining elements No Wave maximalism, psychedelia, classic industrial, fire music and shoegaze, he has forged an utterly unique sonic language, one that violently expands the boundaries of feedback and distortion and how they relate to rock-action propulsion. Spin named Morgan one of their 100 Greatest Guitarists Of All Time, and that’s dead on the mark.

In addition to a fat stack of jams from his myriad projects, I play a few of Morgan’s personal favorites, including tracks from Steaming Coils, Chain Gang and Emptyset.

Here’s the playlist for 07.25.2011.

QuantumNoise — on hiatus for the time being — was a web-radio program I hosted every Monday, 10:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. (eastern), on killer Asheville Free Media.

A little unfinished business tonight. Last week I interviewed John Fell Ryan of Excepter. We played a stack of jams he selected, but we didn’t get to all of them. Thus, I devote a little time to mop-up operations. These include tracks from Washed Out and Salem.

Outside of that the show is mind-deep in dark (techno) matter : Tropic Of Cancer, Sandwell District, Function and Anworth Kirk’s excellent Avonwaith LP (pictured above). Down with the Modern Love scene, Kirk doesn’t create mutant grooves, more like side-long suites constructed from heavily manipulated library-music samples. They’re dense, subtle, uneasy and at times macabre. I hear echoes of the early Residents, from Meet The Residents to Eskimo zone. But I also detect a kind of electronic Occultism, modern technology running smack dab into homespun, folksy, archaic, rural England. Daphne Oram would be proud for sure.

Nearing the end of tonight’s program I spin a double shot of Sun-Ra: “Legend,” from The Solar-Myth Approach (Vol 1) LP, and “The Antique Blacks (Mike Huckaby Reel-To-Reel Edit).” This latter piece is taken from The Mike Huckaby Reel-To-Reel Edits Vol. 1. This twelve-inch is phenomenal. Rather than radically rework the material, the producer performs some minor nipping and tucking so that the tracks’ natural rhythmic propulsion is allowed to move to the forefront.

Here’s the playlist for 07.18.2011.

QuantumNoise — on hiatus for the time being — was a web-radio program I hosted every Monday, 10:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. (eastern), on killer Asheville Free Media.

This week’s show is an awesome one. I’m beyond proud to interview John Fell Ryan of the fabulous Excepter. I’ve been a big fan for a long time now. In fact, Ryan himself might even say I was more of an obsessed stalker at one point in my turbulent life. Since coming together in the 2001-02 zone, the group has cut a singular path through a style of free-improv electronics that contains elements of industrial, hip-hop, psychedelia, fusion and electronica. To these ears, a huge bulk of modern underground weirdness — neo-Kosmische musik, chillwave, witch-house, hauntology, et al. — owes it existence to Excepter (as well as its fellow New Yorkers Animal Collective, Sightings, the Black Dice extended family, Gang Gang Dance, No-Neck Blues Band, Telepathe and a few others).

In addition to chatting with Ryan via telephone, I spin a stack of tracks he handpicked. These include several sneak previews of Excepter’s forthcoming album Streams 02, as well as some of his personal faves: The Fall, Lee “Scratch” Perry, C Cat Trance, Chris & Cosey and more.

Here’s the playlist for 07.11.2011.

More on Excepter:

My review of the group’s 2005 album Throne for the SF Weekly.

A sprawling essay I penned for Dusted back in 2004 on the band’s debut album KA.

QuantumNoise — on hiatus for the time being — was a web-radio program I hosted every Monday, 10:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. (eastern), on killer Asheville Free Media.

Ah, Independence Day. Wave upon wave of fireworks whiz through the nighttime sky as tonight’s installment of QuantumNoise kicks off. Those listeners wondering where the electronic funk has disappeared to over the last few weeks will be happy to know I spin a bunch this evening, including hard tracks from Q.N. faves Delta Funktionen, Mike Dehnert, Cosmin TRG, Rolando and Mark E. If you haven’t heard Mark E’s new full length, Stone Breaker, on Spectral Sound, definitely track down a copy. It’s a lot of fun. The track I play, “Belvide Beat,” has one of the most propulsive basslines of 2011 — very post-punk.

For those of you who have very much enjoyed all the drone, noise and underground rock I’ve been spinning the last few weeks, no worries. I open the program with a wonderful triple shot:

(1) Jean-Luc Ponty’s progressive-electronics classic “Echoes Of The Future.” This song is from the album Upon The Wings Of Music; sadly, nothing else on the record sounds even remotely like it.

(2) A synth-laced prog number from the band (from) the sky, Tom Hohmann’s new project. For the uninitiated, Hohmann was co-founder of the mighty USA Is A Monster. (from) the sky takes The Monster’s later sound and filters it through shamanic New Age weirdness. So cool.

(3) Didier Bonin’s “Son Of The Sun,” a piece that can be found on L’air lumière, an album from the early 1980s I know next-to-nothing about. I also know jack about Bonin save the fact that he’s a talented French musician who was deeply inspired by Popul Vuh. Great track for sure.

I want to mention two other highlights: Dva Damas’ “Time Dilation,” a Goth-stained psychobilly number (sort of) from the group’s killer ten-inch on Downwards; and Vatican Shadow’s “Archbishop 911.” I’ve never been a big Prurient guy, Dominick Fernow’s other project, but I really dig his work under the Vatican Shadow moniker, which specializes in dubby, minimal industro-electronics.

Here’s the playlist for 07.04.2011.

QuantumNoise — on hiatus for the time being — was a web-radio program I hosted every Monday, 10:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. (eastern), on killer Asheville Free Media.

Tonight’s show is one of my most succinct and focused in terms of merging two of the bigger loves in my life: industrialized noise-rock and industrialized hard techno. The former includes tracks from Sightings, one of my all-time favorite bands; Sodom, Birthday Party-inspired freaks from Japan; Six Finger Satellite, a group’s that’s as pivotal as Chrome when it comes to the electro-rock interface; and Storm Bugs, a wonderful DIY tape project from the U.K. that I first heard on the massively influential bootleg compilation I Hate The Pop Group.

As for the techno jams, the big standout is Tommy Four Seven’s  “CH4,” off his new album for the CLR imprint, Primate. Although I speak of purity rarely, the German producer’s brand of dark, menacing techno is most certainly as pure as it comes. But it’s also rather subtle in terms of texture, atmosphere and space. As writer James Glazebrook points-out in his review for Resident Advisor, “Primate throws away the traditional techno toolkit, rejecting generic drum sounds like snares and kicks and refusing synthesisers altogether. It relies instead on field recordings of suitably metallic sounds — underground trains rolling over tracks, crunched-up foil — treated beyond recognition. The results are a distorted hybrid of the pummelling schranz of Tommy’s label manager Chris Liebing and the blank minimalism of Richie Hawtin’s Plastikman output.”

Equally intense is “Apparition,” a track from Orphx’s latest twelve-inch, the Traces EP (Sonic Groove). A good portion of the duo’s output falls under what is called rhythmic noise, but hell, it’s all techno to these damaged ears. Orphx, much like Tommy Four Seven, is concerned with using quality sound sources. This helps explain why their dystopian vibes never devolve into rivithead-n-leather silliness.

Here’s the playlist for 06.20.2011.

QuantumNoise — on hiatus for the time being — was a web-radio program I hosted every Monday, 10:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. (eastern), on killer Asheville Free Media.

QuantumNoise has been in the loner zone for most of 2011. Between-song chatting has taken a back seat to tons and tons of jams. It’s been fun, but I’m tinkering with the style in the coming months. Listeners should expect more guests, exclusive interviews and the sound of my voice yapping about music every now and then. I suppose it’s time for me to pull back from the continuous playlist / mix approach and inject my music journalism and criticism into the show.

On today’s installment of QuantumNoise I’m excited to have two special guests: Asheville sound artists Liz Lang, a.k.a. Auracene of Secret Orange Star Studio, and John Brinker, a multi-faceted musician who has explored drone, free improv, techno, dubstep and more under a host of guises, including Lifestyle Interiors (who released the Nyquist twelve-inch on the 240 Volts imprint).

Lang and Brinker stop by to discuss 8 Channel Seance. Taking place Saturday, June 18, from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m., the event is an opportunity for “Asheville’s finest electronic musicians [to] tackle a 12-speaker, 8-channel system with original compositions taking advantage of the possibilities of 3D sound design.” In addition to Lang and Brinker, 8 Channel Seance includes contributions from Kimathir, Elisa Faires, Lux Vestra, Aetherael and Miss Interpret. One of the coolest aspects about the happening / performance is its locale: the Scottish Rite Cathedral in Asheville’s Mount Hermon Masonic Lodge.

In addition ot chatting, the pair play a bunch of music, a nice mixture of drone, ambient, industrial and avant-garde classical. The one piece that really, truly sticks out for me is English composer Jonathan Harvey’s “Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco,” which appeared on several compilation albums in the 1980. If you’re a fan of early computer manipulation of sound recordings, then Harvey’s work is right up your alley.

Here’s the playlist for 06.13.2011.