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.