A Short Review: If you can make it past the slightly corny status of its first couple heart-on-sleeve songs, the self-titled debut of Cat’s Eyes proves to be a promising Lee & Nancy session from Horrors frontman Faris Badwan and his lady friend Rachel Zeffira. The classically trained opera singer seizes every moment she’s given, letting her lithe melodies float atop lots of “Be My Baby” beats and a string-and-horn-heavy backdrop that reminds us of the Roaring Twenties and golden age film scores. A side project worth exploring no matter how you cut it.

Available At: Amazon · Insound · iTunes · Spotify

A Short Review: We’re not sure what’s more painlessly cool about Fripp & Eno’s first ambient LP: the space age coke den cover—complete with mirrored cubicles and pinup playing cards—or the fact that it sounds like a Growing album from the early ’00s. And while Fripp’s guitar parts are wankier on this record than they were on Evening Star two years later, the “Frippertronics” fusion of his widescreen solos and Eno’s tape loop tactics are both timeless and telling, marking just how far ahead of the curve the duo was in the ’70s.

So far, in fact, that Island Records—fresh off releasing Eno’s much more accessible Here Come the Warm Jets—and Fripp’s King Crimson bandmates both despised the disc’s hypnotic hooks and dovetailing riffs.

Available At: Amazon

A Short Review: Like a fog slowly wrapping its tendrils around a slow-moving car, Nurse With Wound’s surgically enhanced version of Sunn O)))’s ØØ Void record takes its sweet time building a creeping, pervasive sense of dread before bursting into flames three tracks, and more than 35 minutes, in. Scream/Goatsnake vocalist Pete Stahl also enters the proceedings around this point, muttering something about “ash on the trees” as om-chanting monks close a circle around him and the ravaged riffs of Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley.

A masterful piece of macerated minimalism, rounded out by brief, cloud-parting glimpses of hope.

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A Short Review: By largely sidsteeping the nihilistic noise and wry serial killer references that Whitehouse is notorious for, William Bennett’s Cut Hands project delivers on the hypnotic and heavy promise of his self-proclaimed “Afro noise” aesthetics. So while “Stabbers Conspiracy” and “Who No Know Go Knows” relish ravenous polyrhythms in the most visceral manner possible, things get downright ambient on “++++ (Four Crosses)” and “Rain Washes Away Every Thing,” cleansing one’s sonic palette until the mercury and chalkboard scrapings settle in.

Available At: Amazon · Insound

A Short Review: We haven’t read the bird-watching J.A. Baker book that Lawrence English’s latest solo LP is based on, but judging by the producer’s sweeping, painterly ambient pieces, it must be the one of the deepest, darkest nature narratives ever written. Or are the very least, a slow-burning survey of what it’s like out there in the wild, whether you’re hovering above it all ever so peacefully or in the very heat of the hunt.

Available At: Experimedia

Watch a video from this album below…

The Reason(s) We Can’t Stop Listening: Never mind bickering over the Beatles and the Stones; or Lennon and McCartney, for that matter. How about a more contemporary question: Kurt Vile or his old band the War On Drugs? The correct answer here may be the safe one—both, with Vile providing a proper soundtrack to lazy Sundays and comedown sessions and the War on Drugs erring more on the mildly psychedelic side of things (the road trip riffage of “Come To the City,” the kaleidoscopic chords of “Your Love Is Calling My Name”).

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The Reason(s) Why We Can’t Stop Listening: Like Prurient without the post-hardcore howling and blood-stained poetry, Pete Swanson’s first wide release since Yellow Swans’ 2008 split is aimed at post-apocalyptic dance floors. Look past the producer’s avalanche of crumbled samples and arrhythmic wreckage, however, and you’ll find that Man With Potential isn’t just techno that terrifies. It’s actually quite melodic, like a malfunctioning arcade machine that can’t help but split out bit-crushed symphonies.

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The Reason(s) We Can’t Stop Listening: With a sound that’s surprisingly warm and welcoming given its sleek, austere sleeve—designed by Olaf Bender himself; he’s Raster Noton’s label manager and head graphic designer—SyMeta is rooted in minimal techno, yet coated in enough sticky grooves and grimy noise loops to keep things from sounding restrained or removed. In anything, it’s a testament to the live settings Byetone developed each track in, right down to such “oh shit!” moments as the dance-pop drop in “Black Peace” and the scary German man who brings things home in “Golden Elegy.”

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The Reason(s) We Can’t Stop Listening: As infrequent as our jazz intake is, we savored this three-disc collection like a series of swiftly-pulled espressos. It’s certainly that caffeinated—leaping from your speakers with what can only be described as modal madness, as led by a kid (vibraphonist/composer P.E. Hewitt) too young to legally drain the whiskey drinks his music deserves. If you must cherry pick only the finest cuts digitally, Hewitt’s third LP (1970’s Winter Winds) is utterly flawless, the kind of painlessly cool listen that makes you feel like you’re living in a Fellini film.

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The Reason(s) We Can’t Stop Listening: As crucial as her collaborations with the Velvet Underground are—including this solo debut—Nico’s Chelsea Girl LP revolves around her otherworldly voice and presence, an oft-imitated, rarely replicated mix of effortless cool and pure melancholy that’s epitomized on instant classics like “The Fairest of the Seasons,” “These Days” and that old Elliott Smith favorite “Chelsea Girls.” Or as the singer puts it on the album’s back cover, “I like sad songs, tragic ones…I like to improvise with the notes, with the feeling I have at the time about the song.”

Available At: Amazon · Insound · iTunes · Spotify