Twelve months compiled into just twenty albums. From the thousands of records released each year, it is difficult to get even a handful on the site, and even more difficult to decide which ones were the best of the lot. This is however the twenty albums that have marked 2009 for themilkfactory.

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STRINGS OF CONSCIOUSNESS & ANGEL
Strings Of Consciousness & Angel
IMPREC227
Important Records 2009
02 Tracks. 40mins43secs

Buy: CD | LP | MP3 | iTunes

Strings Of Consciousness, the collective of musicians led by French music activist Philippe Petit, who also heads the excellent Bip-Hop imprint, and Angel, originally a project consisting of Pan Sonic’s Ilpo Väisänen and Dirk Dresselhaus, better known as SchneiderTM, now also comprising Hildur Guðnadóttir of Múm, have teamed up for a project combining the various acoustic, electric and electronic inputs of these formations.

The two tracks making up this album, one clocking at twenty two minutes, the other at just under nineteen, and simply labelled #1 and #2, are the result of improvisation sessions between the two ensembles. Continue Reading »

ANGEL
Kalmukia
EMEGO 087CD
Editions Mego 2008
04 Tracks. 57mins47secs

As though emerging from a pirate airwave, the deep wobbly bass and stabs of twilight noise that open Kalmukia shadow the dirty, chaotic dynamism of so much present-day metal rock. It makes for a disconcerting moment, but at the very least, the rest of the album is an oftentimes disorienting, disjointed experience.

Ilpo Vaisanen (Pan Sonic), Hildur Guonadottir (Lost In Hildurness), and Dirk Dresselhaus (Schneider TM) tie together all of their loose, flying ends, but a great deal of curiosity and tact isn’t shown in the process. Continue Reading »