Latest installment in the on-going Whitehouse reissue campaign sees this 1995 studio album produced by Steve Albini given the deluxe vinyl treatment. Quality Time features the Bennett/Best/Sotos line-up and it feels very much like a transition between the earlier devastated/minimal electronic style and the contemporary vocal/drum barrage. Best’s vocals are as inspired as ever, especially on the disturbing “Just Like A Cunt” while Bennett is at his most hysterical on “Once And For All”. Full colour cover art by Trevor Brown.

Deluxe double LP edition of one of the central 'modern' Whitehouse albums, 2003's Bird Seed. Bird Seed is the first fully realized album to come from the seeds of the new language-focused approach inaugurated by Cruise. It also represents the first introduction of the torrential polyrhythmic apocalypse style that would find its apex on Racket, with a pounding wall of drums that matches the insane velocity of the electronics. Bird Seed features a clutch of tracks that are easily some of the best Whitehouse creations; the insane single, "Wriggle Like A Fucking Eel"; the extreme psychological firewalk of "Cut Hands Has The Solution"; the Tracey Emin-inspired "Why You Never Became A Dancer". A classic Whitehouse album, nothing else quite like it, highly recommended.

While there’s certainly some debate about the whole point of scoring Noise music for new music ensembles – who gains, the academy or Noise music? – it’s unarguably a powerful strategy in the hands of Zeitkratzer. This is the follow-up to their striking interpretation of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music and it’s all based around orchestral re-thinks of material by William Bennett/Whitehouse. The tracks are drawn from contemporary Whitehouse albums – Cruise, Birdseed, Racket – and transposed to clarinet, trumpet, trombone, piano, harp, percussion, violin, violincello and double bass. The orchestra capture the speed-blur of the later warped Whitehouse style using dense vortices of strings and brass above overlapping pile-ups of percussion. Of course Whitehouse have always had more sonic affinity with avant classical music – the influence of Robert Ashley, Alvin Lucier, Penderecki etc – than ‘Noise’ per se and hearing the music in this context reveals Bennett as someone with a highly specific compositional voice. That this was recorded on a night when Zeitkratzer alternated between Whitehouse and Morton Feldman pieces makes it all the more remarkable. I can’t think of anyone else so committed to expanding the canon of contemporary avant garde performance as Zeitkratzer and this is another thrilling instalment. Recommended. 

Original copies of a beautifully destroyed 1994 side from this revered underground UK free/noise group with connections to Skullflower and the whole Broken Flag scene. Released on Hasan Gaylani of Jazzfinger’s long-defunct Format Supremacy imprint. Recommended.

New studio album from the Ramleh duo of Gary Mundy and Anthony Di Franco, this time out in their power electronics mode. More hi-fi and deliberately nuanced than their early Xeroxed style, Mundy’s delivery is at its most hysterical while the noise is almost technicolour in comparison. Also some great sludge bass noise/rock stylings courtesy of Di Franco. Full colour gatefold sleeve with insert.

Edition of 200 copies with ink-stamped sleeves that reissues the rarest release on the Broken Flag label. Violence was released as a cassette in 1982. It’s a solo recording by Gary Mundy that predates the beginnings of Ramleh, Mundy’s solo Kleistwahr recordings etc. Using the same equipment as on the early Ramleh recordings, Violence is a claustrophobic slice of grainy electronic excess with a murk of psychedelic electronics and tortured vocals in the style of the early BR power electronics sides. Mastered direct from cassette for maximum skin burn.

Fantastic new Japan-only CD from UK ‘power electronics’ innovators Ramleh, released to coincide with a series of live dates there. Beautifully packaged in a hard card gatefold sleeve with classic austere Broken Flag-style artwork and obi strip. There was always something particularly psychedelic about Ramleh’s vision of noise, which fed into their parallel incarnation as a rock band, and here the noise it as its most brain-arranging and oddly ‘beautiful’. Pulsing and drilling electronics complete with mangled shortwave sonorities are bathed in distant ghostly/choral vocals, giving the first track “Guidelines” the feel of an unholy ascension cut w/aspects of radical 20^th century composition. The second piece, “Memories Of Empire”, is a little more blunt, with harsh walls of feedback and the kind of dense microtonal minimalism of Phill Niblock set to stunning effect. Hands-down some of the best of the revived Ramleh material from the duo of Gary Mundy and Anthony Di Franco. Highly recommended.