Split 7” featuring a single electro-acoustic drone work from Campbell Kneale of Birchville Cat Motel’s new project - the kind of fluffy bell-tone/metal levitation previously the domain of Matthew Bower’s Sunroof! - while the flip features Thurston Moore and Andrew MacGregor (aka Gown) power-thinking their way through heavy feedback/rock moves.

Debut CD from this new guitar duo featuring Thurston Moore and Andrew from Gown. Tracks slowly spool from small sounds generated by the furthest reaches of the instrument - the crackle of jack sockets, strings clipped against pick-ups - through to the kind of slowly modulating chord barbs that launched a bunch of Sonic Youth songs circa Daydream Nation. Cover art by Bill Nace of Vampire Belt et al.

Torrential three way free jazz/rock pile-up that tracks all the way back to Thurston’s epochal Barefoot In The Head date with Sauter and Dietrich while instant-visioning the future via minimal, psychedelic interventions, classic Sonic Youth-sounding guitar clank and explosive sax/string bulldozing. Some of the playing here is straight-up gorgeous, with the way the group build luminous form from a bed of hovering guitars and Flaherty’s bold tenor sax form sounding like a classic late-Coltrane take on devotional hymn forms. Bill Nace (Vampire Belt/Northampton Wools et al) and Thurston’s guitars are often indistinguishable, with Nace’s up-close modified guitar style pulling Thurston into gravities of microtonal detail and subtle textural invention while Flaherty takes the lead and just bleeds all over the goddamn room. A fantastic set, way more than a mere jam, and one that feels sourced from deep inside the classic free jazz tradition. Recommended.

Most manic solo album from Thurston to date, with a grab-bag of assorted fucked-up sonic stratagems including a buncha lost noise B sides, a basement jam with John Moloney of Sunburned Hand Of The Man on drums and Mark Ibold on bass, a demo for an HSBC ad with Steve Shelley on drums, acoustic jammers, wonky percussive guitar instrumentals that sound like a No Wave take on the melodic minimalism of Kraftwerk or Harmonia, hyper-sexed porn video cut-ups and a swanky picture disc that matches a swinging chick with a porky Lou Reed. What more could you ask for? Edition of 500 copies and already completely sold out at source.

Inspired trio jams from the Sonic Youth frontline w/Yoko on vocals: this set is not what you might at first expect and it’s all the better for it. I had kinda imagined a free-form blow-out with Yoko power-screaming over the top ala Junko w/Hijokaidan but there’s a lot more subtlety, atmosphere and feeling to the recording. Kim and Thurston play in a very minimal, textural style, recalling early SY circa Evol or even Bad Moon Rising while Yoko works soft hypnotic poetics over the top. And her vocals are uniquely powerful, balance the blurring of comprehension and the breakdown of language with startling moments of personal confession, nowhere more so than on the stunning “I Never Told You, Did I?” a track that is as unnerving as her take on marriage and responsibility and the impossibilities associated with both on Fly’s “Mrs. Lennon”. A singular entry in all three players’ catalogues and highly recommended.

Edition of only 250 copies trio LP from saxophonist Joe McPhee and guitarists Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth) and Bill Nace (Body/Head): nothing like the noise/blurt fest you might have been led to believe from some of the ‘reviews’ or even a cursory look at the personnel involved, instead this is a beautiful, majestic, darkly atmospheric recording that goes deep into devotional/fire music traditions while using twelve electric strings to generate deep-field drones and eerie off-kilter melodies that are deeply meditative. It has to be said, McPhee sounds amazing on this, with a honey-thick tone that comes straight out of the Coltrane songbook while Nace and Moore’s playing is very subtle and measured, playing clanging Evol-isms and slow atonal/whammy bar ascensions that are as dramatically sustained as your favourite Sonic Youth ‘between song’ jam with an extended avant classical feel that is truly more sophisticated and more minimally crude than anything you might’ve imagined. This is one of these rare improvised sets where it feels like there isn’t a second wasted, not a stray note or tone, with the whole deal mainlining the kinda third-eye quaking atmosphere of Om, say, while simultaneously reformulating notions of avant jazz. Beautifully recorded live at Roulette NYC in 2012, this is a peerless example of avant rock/free jazz synthesis and stands tall alongside classics of the form – Borbetomagus/Blue Humans/Last Exit/Barefoot In The Head – while sounding approximately like none of them. Cover art from Joshua Burkett, immediately sold out at source, very highly recommended!

Limited edition debut 12” from the duo of Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth) and Bill Nace (Vampire Belt et al) on Nace’s own Open Mouth imprint: four extended tracks, mastered at 45rpm, that sees Kim revisit the kind of spectral guitar-isms of the more amp-damaged early Sonic Youth sound, combining railroading No Wave klang with haunting/distant sing-song vocals and moments of disembodied choral drift that comes over like Rudolph Grey plays the ghost of electricity. Nace is on similarly distended form, working slow, intricate patterns of woozy modal string-think into the kind of beautifully confusing shapes that would cross the more nod-out/zoned moments of the Dead C back catalogue with a Jandek-plays-gamelan vibe that is supremely hypnotic. Hands-down best of the ‘post-Sonic Youth’ projects, another fantastic record from these two, highly recommended!