In the past I’ve reviewed work that found Philip Gayle collaborating with others such as "BERP," which was a collaboration with Ben Lind, Ernesto Diaz-Infante, and Barbara Rose Lange, but I believe this is the first thing I’ve reviewed from Gayle solo. The label states that "Philip Gayle’s 'reject. defect.' is his 10th solo album and last release before becoming an American expatriate and relocating to Japan. On these 11-tracks Gayle, again expands on his own personal free improv orbit of acoustic guitars, mandolins, waterphone and who-the-hell-knows what else. A massive wallop of sound." Sounds like a good time, so let's get into it.

There’s an old joke about free jazz music that states that the way to do it is to simply throw all of your instruments down the stairs and record that. Philip Gayle has, in this disc, assembled a whole host of people to join into the cacophony and from the very start, we have a whole lot of chaos. This can be expected when the notes say that Philip Gayle plays guitars, mandolins, water phone, and other things. But it’s not all complete chaos on "Gowanus Spittoon, Part 1," "Gowanus Spittoon, Part 2," and "Third Doctor Miracle Box" we have stories of sorts with Shelly Hirsch. "Gowanus Spittoon, Part 1" is kind of like strange poetry, where on Part 2 we have a tale that revolves around the connection between belts and borscht. "Third Doctor Miracle Box" gives us a story about Brylcreem and the swimmer Esther Williams. It’s difficult to find a thread throughout because it’s all stream of consciousness, which works well with the music itself. But this is not all completely in your face cacaphony. The last three tracks are actually kind of peaceful. At almost 12 minutes, "Gotham Spleen" is the longest disc on the track and has a kind of spacey ambience to it that is almost mournful. "Müßiggang" has a minimal feel to it and at the conclusion we keep this feeling going with the brief track "Le Mal Aimé."

This is not going to be everybody’s cup of tea, and I’m certain that Gayle understands this. On the other hand, there are times where you just want to hear a whole lot of racket and this disc would certainly scratch that itch. Gayle brings in a whole lot of other guests including Lauren Connors on guitar, Michael Evans on percussion, Emilie-Anne Gendron on violin, Stephanie Griffin on viola, Charles Waters on bass clarinet, and the aforementioned Shelley Hirsch on voice. Overall, this was a fun ride and would certainly appeal to fans of improvisational music. This album weighs in at around 70 minutes.

I was unfamiliar with Allen Ravenstine when this series of four discs showed up in my mailbox, but he was a member of Pere Ubu and is also a commercial pilot. These discs together form the collection "The Tyranny of Fiction." The first of these is called "Electron Music." One would expect based on the cover art that this would be kind of a throwback to the 60s and the height of the nuclear race and you would be correct. Ravenstine has assembled a host of other people to help him with this with synthesizers, theremin, Ondes Martenot (an electronic instrument from the 1920s), prepared guitar, and mellotron.

The disc gets off to a kind of shaky start as it's kind of standard synth-based ambience with a simple melody, but then we move into "Firefly," which starts off with some synthesized strings but then turns into an interesting mix of metal, chimes, and analog synth weirdness. There is a lot of crackling and hiss, which I suspect is intended to evoke the idea of a Geiger Counter. "Going Upriver" is a spacey ambient track with lots and lots of synths and more sawtooth wave than you can shake a stick at. "110 in the Underpass" keeps the spaciness going with a nice mixture of synth washes and analog blips and crackles. The disc gets more experimental as it goes along until we reach "5@28," which is the longest track on the disk at almost 10 minutes and seems to be broken up into two movements. This is what a mad scientist's lab sounds like when he's left for the day and still left his machines running. We have theremin and feedback washes and plenty of analog bleeps and blips that would be right at home in the background of a 1950 sci-fi movie. It maintains the kind of clattering noisy ambience that gives it a retro space-age music feel until halfway through, when it takes a more whimsical turn with the theremin. This is by far the strongest track on the disc. Overall, this is an interesting beginning to the "Tyranny of Fiction" collection and leaves me interested to see what disc number two has in store. This disc weighs in at around 25 minutes.

Allen Ravenstine is best known for his work in the band Pere Ubu. He is also, like Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson, a commercial pilot. This is disc two in the "Tyranny of Fiction" series. The liner note say "90 miles to the Spanish harbor. Good night for it. You motor passed the point palms rustling the breeze shifting pulling the scent of shore out to you. Motoring off toward the thin line of the horizon toward the end of the world." This gives you a sense of the feel that Ravenstine is going for.

We open up with "Shore Leave," which is a calm piano number with water field recordings. It's pretty, but there isn't much to it other than the piano composition. "In Search of Memory" comes next with a lot of different percussion; we have bells, marimba, cabasa, and rainstick. It's peaceful and interesting, and perhaps I’m biased because I’m a percussionist, but this was to me the most enjoyable track on the disc. "Pink Dusk at the Point" and "Ninety Miles to the Spanish Harbor" are more piano compositions. They're nice, but nothing that really pushes the envelope. "Fleche D'Or (Golden Arrow)" concludes the disc with an announcer at a train station in some foreign language with field recordings of trains and the sounds of children playing that gives you a cinematic feel to it giving you the feeling of actually being somewhere. He sneaks in themes from "Ninety Miles to the Spanish Harbor" and "Shore Leave" into the piece, which gives a sense of continuity.

Overall, this is a pleasant listen and you get a sense of being somewhere. The feeling overall is sentimental and the piano playing has a sense of emotion to it that keeps it interesting. But for Chain D.L.K., this is kind of a mixed bag, as it's not quite as experimental as the first in this series ("Electron Music"). Still, one could think of this series as Ravenstine's calling card that gives a sense of his depth of musical ability. This disc weighs in at around 25 minutes.

New York-based musician Shane Lavers is the main responsible for Chanel Beads' music and for his first album "Your Day Will Come" he's been aided by his live bandmates: Maya McGrory (vocals) and experimental instrumentalist Zachary Paul (strings). After his 2022 singles “Ef” and “True Altruism” were shared on the band's Bandcamp page for free, Lavers found a home at Jagjaguwar, record label that is part of the Secretly Group along with Dead Oceans, Friends Of, Ghostly International Company, etc. "Your Day Will Come" is the first Chanel Beads album and it will be released on April 19th. It contains nine tracks for less than 29' of music and despite the short length, you'll have a good example of the band's music palette made of experimental sounds, orchestrations, catchy melodies, and jangly guitar sounds. Most of the time the atmosphere created is the main aim and the album contains also really short tracks that under three or two minutes succeed in capturing the audience and taking it through a voyage made of dream-pop atmospheres, catchy melodies, scarce syncopated rhythm lines, and experimentation (check the six minutes of "Coffee Culture" with its dissonant strings arrangement coupled to a choir). Try to imagine My Bloody Valentine with less guitar noise, more orchestrations, and a bit of synth sounds. A nice debut, for real!

La Machine, the duo formed by Eric U0 and Pierre Pi, is really good at picking up a song from the past and turning it into something new. If the track is a French hit from the past, the result is even more interesting, because of the electronic arrangement and because they are just good at giving to their covers a fresh touch. For this new EP "W454", they picked up a song sung by Michel Sardou in 1976. The original one had a rich orchestration and sounded like a mix of rock opera, confidential and disco: now it sounds like a mix of e.b.m. and synthpop but it didn't lose its original pathos and this is just remarkable. This is a particular release because it shouldn't exist: don't get me wrong, this isn't what I was wishing for but this MCD/10" shouldn't have existed because La Machine was about to release their first album but because of manufacturing delays they decided to give birth to this nice EP. Along with "W454" and a new track "Invasion Humanoide" (a new really nice track that will be included along with the title track on the incoming album) and their remixes, we have another surprise: a cover of "Psyche Rock", a single that Pierre Henry, one of the fathers of French electronic music, released back in 1970. If you love Matt Groening work you already know this tune, because a version of it is the main title of the Futurama cartoon.