Blissful drone from the tree of life.

Stephan Mathieu’s Radioland was among the best albums this year according to Wire & Boomkat.

The album takes shortwave radio signals as its starting point, meaning Mathieu instantly invites comparisons with Tod Dockstader and William Basinski, but while there’s often a grainy, hazed over murk to those works, Mathieu somehow brings a luminosity and brightness out of his sources. The opening trilogy of pieces (each named after an archangel) makes for an utterly absorbing half-hour sequence, each composition spanning an immersive ten minutes of analogue-mastered, carefully processed signals. Boomkat

Radioland has highly complex compositions, power and attention to detail yet I found the album lacking the qualities that’d keep me listening to it. It’s too fuzzy and hard to listen for a long time but it’s definitely a subjective quality. If you’re into drone/micro music you should at least listen to the first part of this album once for the tracks named after the three archangels, Michael, Gabriel and Raphael.

One of the most prolific artists, Machinefabriek had one of the better releases in 2008, Dauw. Discogs lists 28 releases in 2008, mostly CDRs and 7″s yet his full length on Dekorder was the most talked about. Made using acoustic and electric guitar, turntable, sampler, dictaphone, piano, tone generator and laptop, this is not drone but this particular song has drony qualities.

Toronto based Aidan Baker, another prolific artist, sees out-of-print tracks in his career released on 2008’s I wish too, to be absorbed. In some ways I liked this much better than his latest output by himself or as Nadja. 2CDs released on Important Records. Review on Brainwashed.

Taiga Remains is Alex Cobb of Students of Decay label. This particular one sees me going back and whenever I do that, I seem to be teleported to a Taiga forest, talk about how the name suits your music. Review on Raven sings the Blues.

Last but not least is the track that gives it’s name to today’s compilation. The Evil that never arrived by Stars of the Lid off their 2007 album, And Their Refinement Of The Decline.

image by vixen23