Initially formed only by Aidan Baker (and then I reviewed his "Skin turns to Glass") Nadja turned the initial Sunn O))) approach into something more varied (remaining always into the doom metal realm) thanks to the help of the new member Leah Buckareff. RADIANCE OF SHADOWS is their fourth studio album (without counting the Cd-r releases which they are re-recording and reissuing) and it contains three tracks (two new ones and I think a new version of "I have tasted the fire inside your mouth", previously available as a 3" CD-r). The album opens with the 23' of "Now I become death the destroyer of worlds", a track which slowly leads you toward a path made of guitar drones, cripple drum rhythms and tiny melodies which sound like brush hits on a black canvas. The track has different moments where the sound hit a high level of saturation just to drop down and start again to grow, reaching an higher level. The aforementioned "I have tasted the fire inside your mouth", instead is based more on a song structure that you can compare to a slowed down and distorted version of Codeine. Here you can find also some lyrics about the effect of an involving love. The song, after about 15' of slow noisy introspection, pushes the speed/distortion pedal by becoming a roller coaster of emotions/sounds with wall of sounds and stops and go. Maybe this is the one I appreciated most... The closing "Radiance of shadows" has lyrics which seems to talk again about total love where men burned down to ashes by the intensity of passion, penetrate into the lover's skin and causes the melting of the two turning them into a shadow. The track starts with a minimal guitar riff and the voice of Aidan and then it blasts off after nine minutes (maybe when it reaches the meltdown point) just to burn everything down during the remaining twenty minutes.

Sikhara (not Shakira) is a nomad tribal percussion band that performed in 26 countries and three continents. "Bardos State" (their second release, collectively put out by Radon, Soopa and Urck records) is a collection of live recordings that took place between 2003 and 2005 in Osaka (Japan), Brooklyn, NY and Linz (Austria).
Expect thundering rhythms on different type of drums and bells, mixed in with, and interleaved by, noise, electronic vocal processing and occasional chants. If you need references think of a sonicly maximized blend of Les Tambours Du Bronx, Merzbow, SRL, Neurosis, Einsturzende Neubauten, Dive and stuff like that.
The men behind all of this are founder Scott Nydegger and french drummer Yann Geoffriaud (from George Bitch Jr.). Sikhara is part of the Radon Collective (an international community of touring experimental artists) and often play with ex-Can frontman Dam Suzuki. Very interesting record I urck you to check out!

Sidereal space never gave me the idea of a calm place where you can hang out sticking your country flags into planets' ground. According to Gerry Anderson's tv show "Space 1999" (you should know it if you were kids in the'70s), space is a place where you lose your hopes and the sense of yourself. Is like you returned into your mother's womb but you aren't feeling that it is your place. You know that space is over there but you never wanted to get there to know how it is. Well, the fist Tholen release titled STERNKLANG can give you that sort of sensation: losing hope and senses into an unknown place. Divided into four movements, "Sternklang", slowly explore the sidereal space creating a minimal suite based on long synth pads, little melodies and noises. I must admit that sometimes I lost my attention because of the nature of sounds and also because the whole atmosphere is based on a constant growing of the structure but Tholen is able to create well this sort of ambience. You can check some sound excerpts at the Cyclic Law website.

Formed by a Swedish guy called Marcus Lönebrink, Sinke Dus is releasing for the Canadian label Cyclic Law its first full length titled AKRASIA. Behind this term there's a philosophic question: the problem goes back at least as far as Plato; Socrates (in Plato's "Protagoras") asks precisely how this is possible - if one judges action A to be the best course of action, why would one do anything other than A? [from Wikipedia]. Under the light of such dilemma saw the light the seven tracks of this album. We have: "The Premonition", "Acedia", "Remnants", "That which was lost", "The abyss", "That which lies beyond" and "Fortitude". I found intriguing and important to link a concept to sounds/ambience because it make you focus on a direction and it characterize a project. In this case Sinke Dus, presents 45 minutes of dark ambient made with synth patterns and light noises. The suites span from calm ambient moments to mix of ambient and dark minimal industrialism (see "Remnants" or the following "That which was lost"). This is a nice release, a little minimal but if listened into the right mood, it has really good moments (like the dark opus titled "The abyss").

Dark, atmospheric, symphonic, industrial, neo-classic music with a lot of power and beautiful melodies = ELEGY.
Synthetic music with bombastic music far exeeding bands such as Arditi and other bands that are one-diemensional. Across The Rubicon is not one-diemensional and were acts like Puissance fail in atmosphere Across The Rubicon with this album succeed!
The album is very well executed and for those into this kind of style I really recommend it. Sometimes the noise takes over just a little bit but that´s really nothing to complain about. I am really looking forward to hearing more from this promising act.