Limited edition LP in a run of only 200 copies from New Zealand’s greatest axe-strangler, Bruce Russell of The Dead C. The playing here is more overtly euphoric than many of Bruce’s earlier sides, his grip tight around the neck, tearing clusters of squeal from conveyor belts of fuzz. The opening duo with Australian noise/guitarist Marco Fusinato is fairly epic but it’s the all solo “West Space One” that best documents Russell at his most Hendrix/amp-destroying. Playing with a machine gun style that comes over like Band Of Gypsies jamming the outro to “Bury”, it’s hard not to anticipate Robbie Yeats staggering in and pushing the whole thing over the cliff. Russell’s solo sides often have a whole bunch of fascinating conceptual/hermetic weight to them but Antikythera Mechanism succeeds because of its status as ‘simply’ a solo guitar record and in its own way it feels as definitive as Donald Miller’s A Little Treatise On Morals, Jandek’s Interstellar Discussion or Keiji Haino’s Affection. Bruce does a lot of actual playing here – as opposed to just letting the guitar sing - and on the third side-long track his guitar sounds closest to Nicholas from Love Cry Want’s guitar synthesizer’, albeit with the dials set to “Iron Man”. But in the end it all boils down to this: Bruce Russell was in The Dead C and you weren’t. That’s why he can pull off fringed leather jackets when you would just look like a dope. And that’s why in his hands an all-improvised guitar album sounds like the goddamn keys to the kingdom. So listen up. Pressed on ultra thick white vinyl.  Highly recommended.

Fantastic art edition LP in a run of only 250 copies on 200g virgin clear vinyl from the duo of ex-Coil/Psychic TV Drew McDowall and Tres Warren of Psychic Ills/Messages (whose LP on De Stijl blew a whole bunch of minds). This one sort of takes off on a post-Time Machines/Eternal Music vibe but with an exacting minimalist logic that would locate distant Morse Code tones and blurry EVP sightings on the very fringes of liminality. There are vague, nagging melodies that could almost come out of the Goblin/Suspiria song book alongside long passages of single tone narcosis that feel like transports to the other side. The label describes them as using “automatic composition, drone and concrete music to create subterranean explorations on the nature of signals and time” and the whole recording has that indefinable/occult atmosphere that marked out the more exploratory Coil sides. A beautifully spooked modern minimalist classic, highly recommended.

Explosive set of noise guitar that effectively re-thinks the instrument as a conductor of pure electricity: elements of Merzbow, Ray Russell and Keiji Haino combine in a hi-fi overload that just keeps on keeping on, with the front cover image of Caravaggio’s The Lute Player paired with a back cover shot of a controlled demolition of modern tower blocks in order to indicate the aesthetic space explored here, with a stringed instrument all but completely alienated from its traditional signifiers and sound, now having more to do with Industrial violence than bucolic fantasies of youth. Ambianxe lines up alongside the recent Peter Kolovos and Gary Smith/Ninni Morgia/Silvia Kastel sides as some of the most far-reaching investigations of the culturally-usurping potential of six singing strings. Edition of only 250 copies on 180g vinyl.