Curtains - 'Flybys' (Thin Wrist)

Curtains' second album continues the rampant short-attention span post-Beefheart pyrotechnics of Fast Talks, though with a bit more keyboards, a bit more space, and even some singing! ('Saga' is a weird, broken a capella plea to Spider-Man which is wonderfully off-key and distant and somehow just fits amongst all the instrumental malarkey).  Everything is brighter than before and the songs are both more deconstructed and more accessible at the same time  There's 22 of em, and it goes by pretty quickly, so the term 'song' isn't exactly a great description.  Atmospheric moments begin to appear in Curtains work now, even if they are sometimes fragmentary linking tracks.  These merge with the biting anti-rock, often transitioning from track to track quite nicely.  'Blink, Professor' is just a lumbering beast that keeps stopping as soon as it starts, and then fades into 'Asterisks by Moonlight', a great title if I've ever heard one.  'Asterisks' is brief but warm, with synthesised spacefuzz coming as a nice coda.  'Moment with Plankton', as the title suggests, could be interstitial background music for an educational science film from the 1950s - but while there's been plenty of synth bubbles documented already in these pages, it sounds unique and integrated with the more rock moments.   The guitar lines on Flybys are like a biting, attenuated version of Zoot Horn Rollo; the structured songs sometimes get into call-and-response hysterics ('Bummer with Cakes') or snake-eating-its-own-tail meanderings ('Telegraph Victories').  A few moments are actually tender, with the guitar having glimpses of bluesy pain before the unnatural setting takes over.  It's occasionally a cacophony but more often a willing, controlled holding back that seems to go against everything rock music should be.  Carducci probably hates this, but I think the rewards are vast.

Burning Star Core - 'Let's Play Wild Like Wildcats Do' (Hospital/RRR)

Two tracks here, both long-form explorations separated into their identifying parts - rhythm on 'Mes Soldats Stupides (demo)' and density on 'Clouds in My Coffee'. Both are richly textural, with 'Stupides' taking some chances with the introduction of MIDI instruments - drums and horns, combining into a relatively danceable bit of Burning Star Core sound. This was 2003-2004, and Yeh's prolific tape output at the time spat this out, originally on his own Dronedisco imprint. The CD reissue puts these tracks into a clear plateau, though the murky organ/synth on 'Clouds' sounds unfairly compressed. When the whirring stormclouds take over, they bury the menacing, circular tone at the centre of the track -- but then recede. And then reappear. It's a nice detail in a fairly minimal composition. Across both tracks, there's a fairly limited palette at play here, given the diversity of Yeh's regular work, but the mid-range synth feels like some sort of statement-straitjacket. There's a bit of 'You Really Got Me' in the 'Stupides' bass riff, but ten minutes in, it's replaced by some haunting drones, a good transition before 'Clouds'. A minor release moreso than an experiment, but not a bad one at all -- and showing a rarely-explored side of Burning Star Core with the sequenced beat. Disc face is a lovely Pantone blue that suggests a brighter sky than any of the sounds do.

Amps for Christ - 'Circuits' (Vermiform)

The "British Isles trad meets the Terminator" sound of Amps for Christ was like a burning meteor hitting my crust, especially as my introduction to them was their first LP Thorny Path which was all homebuilt electronic buzzing sounds. Combining these schematics with beautiful classic vocal melodies was a stroke of genius and this album is one of their finest efforts. There's some non-traditional covers as well -AFC's take on Nico's 'Janitor of Lunacy' shatters it's haggard precedent (blasphemy?  then start your own alphabetical blog!!) - and Donovan's 'Colours' gives the yin to Van Dyke's yang. There aren't any credits but I think a few of these are originals. The male vocals remind me of a teenage argument with oneself and the female voice soars over the groaning instrumentation. Beautiful and traditional can be new and strange. Even more awesome is that I first came to Amps for Christ because they were a Man is the Bastard side project. You can hear it certainly in the pulsing murk, with all the sticks and twigs and Cornish pies slowly turning grey.  So it's the soundtrack to grindcore kids cashing in their Spazz records for Maddy Prior; ain't nothing wrong with that, cause there's a vicious side to lots of these tunes too.

Alva - 'Fair-Haired Guillotine' (Avant)

Source: Bought from Paul's in the late 90's for (I think) around $20, new (Japanese import)

Some records exist outside of any conceivable time-space continuum and Alva's two compact discs are as magnificent as a 7-11 Slurpee overturned on the saddle of a racehorse. Those weirdo Czech Tom and Jerry cartoons might have done better with Fair-Haired Guillotine's bouncier moments insteada whatever freejazz they had. But it's not all animated: there's some amateurish guitar strum, tin whistle and church organ that would creep out any impressionable tyke. These gals could be compared to any number of precedents: LAFMS, Futura records, Ralph label, Very Good Records -- but the comparison would be imperfect. Cause Alva's music is more baroque, more constructed, and recorded with more panâche than most others. For tracks as simply constructed as this - the instruments are clear, there are few mysteries as to what is generating the sounds - there is a world of strangeness in every second. They weren't the first band to paint a sky of looped mumbled vocals, renaissance violin, and melting honkytonk fumes but this is both hi-brow and no-brow at the same time. Obviously these ladies made quite an impression on me so maybe I've put them on some sort of pedestal, but the sounds can speak for themselves.