Another good studio record from Cut Worms, which is the solo turn of Dutch percussionist Richard van Kruysdijk; we heard his Lumbar First record in 2017, and Cable Mounds (OPA LOKA RECORDS OL1707) is pretty much in the same vein – long droney assemblages, subtle and carefully-wrought details, identical instrumentation used, and two-word track titles that are tiny masterpieces of verbal mismatching and wordplay, such as ‘Frog Skirt’, ‘Iron Dingbat’, and ‘Senor Tofu’. High-quality studio craft is one of the Cut Worms hallmarks; polished surfaces burnished to perfection and great patience and care expended on eliciting gentle nuances of shade and colour from these heavyweight drones and slowly-unwinding melodies of great ambiguity. Somewhat lugubrious in tone, though not as outright supernatural as Sum Of R, nor is there any implied violence or destructive tendency to the music. (4 Dec 2017)
Homogenized Terrestrials is Phillip Klampe from Illinois, often associated with the Amalgamated combo but also prone to releasing his own rather unsettling solo albums of electronic drone – two of these previously heard by us are The Contaminist in 2014 and Shadows Think Twice in 2016. Suspension (AUBJECTS AUJX 16) is probably one of his best efforts, a strong collection of non-specific sounds arranged as ever in a puzzling, dream-logic manner; you will succumb to its mysterious ebb and flow in short order, and may find yourself powerless before its eerie undulations, bobbing helplessly on this alien ocean. Klampe doesn’t appear to be particularly interested in making plain old music, so much as weaving an enchanting and macabre atmosphere by any means possible. One strategy is evidently to conceal his tracks; you’d be hard pushed to recognise a single source sound after Klampe has strewn his magic dust. He might make a good foil for similar dark electronic musicians who are more concerned with structure and shape, such as Chester Hawkins and TL0741; a team-up like that might yield dividends. From 5th December 2017.