Countdown to ATP: 14 days

Sunburned Hand Of The Man
Listen to: 'A Soft Bed for Jagel' on When the Shit Hits the Jazz
They often call them forest magicians, woody experimentalists, tree huggers, wood bangers. Aligning SHOTM with the forest seems to be the easiest way of putting them in a context, all of this while they keep it ghetto pretty much all the time in their Loft in Massachusets, nothing woody there except the floors maybe. But whatever, fact is that they're the most ambigious freefolk unit today. My first realisation of their utter greatness came with the voodoo grooves of No Magic Man while they were enticing me with The Trickle Down Theory of God Knows What and Rare Wood before that but those albums were a little jagged, too unstructured for my tastes back then. I'm PUMPED to finally see them live.
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Richard Youngs
Listen to: 'Part I' on Advent
One of the earlier cats to rise from the ashes of postpunk's experimental side was Richard Youngs. His debut album, Advent, remains one of his best and one of the best neo-minimalist works out there. Sapphie is great as well, that's the thing with Youngs, he has multiple persona's he simultaneously developed. Don't know exactly what he released this year, a split with Alex Neilson and Alastair Galbraith I believe. Anything else worthwhile?
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Wolf Eyes
Listen to: 'Untitled 4' on Post Civilization Muzak tour only cd-r
Human Animal is not only a highlight of the year, it's the definite Wolf Eyes album. It packs it's punches in short but extremely powerful hits, listening to Human Animal makes me proud I'm a noise fanatic. And that's just one album, they released another slayer this year, River Slaughter. A more abstract, freeform type of album but equal in it's quality. If Human Animal is the aural equivalent of The Rumble In The Jungle, River Slaughter is The Thrilla In Manilla. I saw them live once, before the release of Burned Mind and I was completely blown away by the sheer loudness of it all. Dudes was leaving while I was trying to keep a straight face, it left an impression, yeah.
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Negative Approach
Hardcore kingpins? Ok.
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