LP from Sonic Youth that makes a necessary survey of rare and hard to locate tracks from the recent past that includes bonus tracks and out-takes from Sonic Nurse, Experimental Jet Set, Trash And No Star, Murray Street and the Noho Furniture Sessions as well as stray single tracks etc. The sonics here focus more on the pursuit of extended horizons that best characterises the group's live shows and it ends with a totally mesmeric unedited version of sometime showstopper "The Diamond Sea". Comes in a full-colour gatefold sleeve with tons of liners and the best ever snap of Sonic Youth on the back.

Split 7” featuring a single electro-acoustic drone work from Campbell Kneale of Birchville Cat Motel’s new project - the kind of fluffy bell-tone/metal levitation previously the domain of Matthew Bower’s Sunroof! - while the flip features Thurston Moore and Andrew MacGregor (aka Gown) power-thinking their way through heavy feedback/rock moves.

Debut CD from this new guitar duo featuring Thurston Moore and Andrew from Gown. Tracks slowly spool from small sounds generated by the furthest reaches of the instrument - the crackle of jack sockets, strings clipped against pick-ups - through to the kind of slowly modulating chord barbs that launched a bunch of Sonic Youth songs circa Daydream Nation. Cover art by Bill Nace of Vampire Belt et al.

Torrential three way free jazz/rock pile-up that tracks all the way back to Thurston’s epochal Barefoot In The Head date with Sauter and Dietrich while instant-visioning the future via minimal, psychedelic interventions, classic Sonic Youth-sounding guitar clank and explosive sax/string bulldozing. Some of the playing here is straight-up gorgeous, with the way the group build luminous form from a bed of hovering guitars and Flaherty’s bold tenor sax form sounding like a classic late-Coltrane take on devotional hymn forms. Bill Nace (Vampire Belt/Northampton Wools et al) and Thurston’s guitars are often indistinguishable, with Nace’s up-close modified guitar style pulling Thurston into gravities of microtonal detail and subtle textural invention while Flaherty takes the lead and just bleeds all over the goddamn room. A fantastic set, way more than a mere jam, and one that feels sourced from deep inside the classic free jazz tradition. Recommended.

Limited edition split LP from two of the most regularly interrogating modern avantists. Ankersmit's side is a fuzz-encrusted investigation of non-linear routes through the solo saxophone, with wildly dislocated sounds modulated by computer, serge and EMS synths. O'Rourke's side is an absolute beauty, a monolithic 1992 recording that matches massive cycles of minimally-repeating fuzz guitar with the brain-bombing chatter of rapid-firing oscillators. Sounds somewhere between Sunroof, Folke Rabe and Faust. Edition of 750 copies, recommended.

Massive double disc set that pairs legendary Japanese free jazz saxophonist Akira Sakata with Jim O’Rourke on guitar, harmonica and electronics alongside the duo of drummer Chris Corsano and bassist Darin Gray. Akira Sakata has long been one of the key players on the Japanese free jazz underground, playing as a part of Yamashita Yosuke’s trio and forging alliances with players like Peter Brotzmann and Sonny Sharrock, who he played with as part of Last Exit. And That’s The Story Of Jazz... gathers a bunch of recordings from the group’s 2008 Japanese tour and it’s an absolute revelation. Sakata’s style bridges classic post-Fire Music Japanese freedoms with a wild mystic/psychedelic edge and the combined backgrounds of his three collaborators push the whole deal into some kind of post-improvised underground psych zone. Sure, there are raging multi-limbed blow-outs that worship at the altar of Church Number 9 where you can barely make out who is doing what but there’s a whole deal more, picked guitar and droning strings over weird acid folk meditations that cross Holy Mountain-era Don Cherry with Mark Fry and Yatha Sidhra, the kind of raggedy folk/punk euphoria more associated with Finnish tribes like Paivansade and Rauhan Orkesteri, rich Om-ing Coltrane-isms, spiky No Wave blats that reinvent Rudolph Grey and Von Lmo’s vision of free heavy metal... this record throws a spanner in any conception of what a collaboration with a first generation Japanese free saxophonist and three avant punks might sound like. And this is the sound. Highly recommended.