#406

Wadada Leo Smith - Najwa (TUM)



On Najwa Smith explores as he consolidates, always ready to acknowledge indebtedness, always stretching beyond his own horizon, under the influence of comparably questing and restless spirits. — Julian Cowley

#405

Melaine Dalibert - Ressac (Another Timbre)



En Abyme, constructed from three-note permutations that stretch towards infinity, appears simultaneously to rise and fall in a paradoxical manner reminiscent of the graphic conundrums of MC Escher. — Julian Cowley

#404

Myra Melford Trio - Alive in the House of Saints (hatART)



The intensely bluesy “Evening Might Still” (...) is a stomping opener, with shades of Keith Jarrett. “Frank Lloyd Wright Goes West To Rest” recalls Don Pullen’s take on Cecil Taylor, with the funky attack of Horace Silver. In time, I reckon, these individual influences have melded into a totally coherent style. — Andy Hamilton

#403

Maggi Payne - Crystal (Aguirre)



Flute, voice and synthesizer are processed beyond recognition into tense, fluttering signals that Payne escalates into stark crescendos of noise, interspersed with abrupt silences and cold wastelands of eerie, harrowing frequencies. — Britt Brown

#402

Bill Orcutt - Bill Orcutt (Palilalia)



Orcutt’s ‘nude stumbling down a staircase’ fingerwork will land upon a note within a phrase, linger on it, repeat it, shove it down and open it up into the next portion of the melody that he finds worthy of extrapolating, the ring of the amplifier deepening each moment. — Matt Krefting

#401

Sarah Angliss - Ealing Feeder (Bandcamp)



In an era when London is increasingly open only for business, it is refreshing to feel the city made strange again, to see its weird old ghosts brought out into the light to dance in the sodium glare of the modern city, to hear its history fed through a Max patch. — Robert Barry

#400

Dead Neanderthals - Craters (Consouling Sounds)



This single 36 minute track rolls over your skull like a tank, leaving you breathless and unsettled but weirdly euphoric when it finally ends. — Phil Freeman

#399

Dopplereffekt - Cellular Automata (Leisure System)



Dopplereffekt is now said to be based somewhere in the Alps. (...) it’s reassuring to imagine one of Detroit’s most singular artists toiling wordlessly in his lab coat in the shadow of those peaks, perhaps imagining himself as an invisible assistant to the particle-blasting laboratory just down the mountain range. — Chal Ravens

#398

Various - Total Reggae: Special Request (VP)



Belying its mystifyingly prosaic title, this selection of dancehall mayhem from Greensleeves’ Chris O’Brien is an absolute scorcher, a collection of sound boy killers dating from the time dancehall revivified reggae in the early 1980s by returning to its sound system roots. — Steve Barker

#397

Harriet Tubman - Araminta (Sunnyside)



The music is a sort of atmospheric post-metal, with a strong dub element and drumming that shifts seamlessly between rock and funk rhythms and improvisatory pulse time. — Phil Freeman