Valgeir Sigurðsson, Draumalandið; Daníel Bjarnason, Processions (both Bedroom Community)

I’m impressed by the way that the Bedroom Community label operates in a manner akin to a co-operative, with its resident artists making best use of each others’ talents. The end results, as I saw recently at the Barbican when Nico Muhly, Sam Amidon and Valgeir Sigurðsson came together, blur lines between electronic, classical and folk musical forms. This collaborative tradition continues on a new album by Sigurðsson, which features all of the above plus Ben Frost and new recruit Daniel Bjarnason. With Sigurðsson on production duties, Bjarnason has also turned in an excellent contemporary classical debut for the label.

Machinefabriek, De Jonge Jaren

Machinefabriek tends to be somewhat on the prolific side, so much so that you imagine there must be limited edition releases the existence of which even he has forgotten about. Maybe he stumbled across a batch of old CD-Rs in his basement recently, for De Jonge Jaren is an 18 track compilation of self-distributed material from “the old days”, the period from 2001-2004 when Rutger Zuyderfelt was still finding his feet as an artist. Within this collection you’ll hear him trying out more overtly melodic and rhythmic ideas, incorporating playful electronica, hip-hop drumming and even horns. If you didn’t know better, you’d be hard pressed to identify much of this as Machinefabriek at all; it sounds like something that could have been released on the Leaf label in the early part of last decade. It would certainly have been good enough. And what makes it even better is that De Jonge Jaren is available to download for free from the Machinefabriek website. The enjoyability/cost ratio therefore tends to the infinite.

Konntinent, Opal Island (Home Normal)

I’ve enjoyed the previous efforts from Anthony Harrison’s Konntinent project very much indeed, but Opal Island feels like a step up in class. While it has always been a part of the Konntinent sound, the electronic element is now much more refined and significant. I caught him live last year supporting Machinefabriek and it seems that that artist, amongst certain others, has been a big influence on the Konntinent sound. For on Opal Island, glitch mingles amongst guitar experimentation, microscopic rhythms fitting in perfectly amongst the more familiar shoegaze textures.

Roll The Dice, Roll The Dice (Digitalis)

Having been fairly bemused by the plaudits afforded to The Knife’s 2006 debut Silent Shout, I must confess that I let the Fever Ray album pass me by last year. When they started touring with the Touch-approved cellist Hildur Gudnadottir in support, and when some of my friends starting raving about their live shows, I started to have some doubts as to the position I’d taken. The quality of this new album by Roll The Dice, featuring Fever Ray’s Peder Mannerfelt (whose remarkable beard is pictured above) along with film/TV composer Malcolm Pardon, suggested to me that the self-titled Fever Ray debut may have been more than just another Pitchfork 8.1 rated album by some hipster electro-pop outfit.

Peter Brötzmann, John Edwards and Steve Noble at Cafe Oto, 30/01/10

Just look at a partial section of the list of people that Peter Brötzmann has played with over the course of his career to date: Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton, Don Cherry, Derek Bailey, Sonny Sharrock, Andrew Cyrille, Keiji Haino, Rashied Ali, John Zorn, Evan Parker…the very best of the very best. To that list can now be added the London-based rhythm engine of John Edwards and Steve Noble. Edwards was the fulcrum of the first two nights of Brötzmann’s three day residency at Cafe Oto, which also saw Tony Marsh, Pat Thomas and Roland Ramanan sharing the stage with the legendary German saxophonist. He must be one of the most in-demand bass players in the world, and he seems to relish the challenge of being dropped in against absolutely anyone, but Edwards’s long-standing partnership with Noble really seems to bring out the best in their respective games. That was to be the case tonight, with even the fiery Brötzmann at times having to stand back and admire the quality of their work.

Marina Rosenfeld; Plastic Materials, Eric La Casa, Zone Sensible 2 / Dundee 2

Room 40 was the name given to the old Navy cryptological unit in World War 1, charged with turning the fragments of sound picked up from German warships into something that made sense. The artists on the Room 40 label do, er, likewise, taking some noises that many would consider unpromising at best, and turning them into something much more listenable. These two latest releases are a case in point: Marina Rosenfeld’s Plastic Materials (from late 2009) and the new album from Eric La Casa, which has the somewhat cumbersome title of Zone Sensible 2 / Dundee 2.

Borealis at Out Hear, Kings Place, 25/01/10

I’ve got to take my hat off to Kings Place for the audacious set of events they are using to encourage people to visit their glass palace on Monday nights. The Out Hear series hands over the curatorial reins to artists and composers from the more experimental end of the musical spectrum, taking in contemporary classical, free improvisation and electronic composition. Tonight’s lineup was in the hands of the equally free-thinking organisers of Norway’s Borealis festival (9-13 March in Bergen), resulting in an eclectic selection showcasing some of that country’s musical mavericks, headlined by the mighty MoHa.

Nico Muhly and the Britten Sinfonia at the Roundhouse, 24/01/10

A couple of days ago Nico Muhly posted a rant on his blog about how London was a complete logistical nightmare, how Londoners were too accepting of this fact, and how they just shouldn’t take it any more, god damn it. What a load of rubbish, I thought. How dare these New Yorkers come over to London and traduce our fine city just because they don’t happen to know the best places to eat/drink/get free wi-fi within 100 metres of every tube station in Zone 1. However, as I stood in the pissing rain waiting for a rail replacement bus service to ferry me up to the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm (the Northern Line having been crudely disembowelled at Camden Town), glancing anxiously at my watch as the scheduled 7.30 start time loomed ever nearer, I began to think he may have had a point. Revolutionary thoughts began to foment in my mind, imagining myself marching on city hall with a flaming pitchfork and an Evening Standard-sponsored “TF-HELL” placard, desperately trying not to set one on fire with the other. But then the bus came, and I forgot all about it.

Chicago Underground Duo, Boca Negra (Thrill Jockey)

I must admit that while I attended a respectable number of concerts, I didn’t do terribly well at keeping up with jazz records last year. Only a trickle of new releases reached my ears, and most of those right towards the year’s end; impressive albums by young artists like Steve Lehman, Tyshawn Sorey and Vijay Iyer, along with new landmarks posted by some of the old pioneers like Henry Threadgill and Bill Dixon. Perhaps I should view this thrilling early 2010 missive from the Chicago Underground collective as a reminder to do better this year.

Richard Skelton, Landings (Type)

“Hill and bone. Skin and heather. A memory is nothing more than this. Nothing more than touch. Pressed forms in the cold, grey earth, and the river, ever yielding”

Albums by Richard Skelton are so bound up with context and circumstance that the act of writing about them as mere musical artefacts seems somehow to diminish them. And nothing I’ve written about to this point has ever felt less like a mere musical artefact than his new album. Landings is the long awaited culmination of an extensive exploration of Anglezarke on the West Pennine moors, in which he accumulated scraps of music, poetry and history – as well as bones and barbed wire. It is released on CD and double LP, but the accompanying limited-run book (a fragmented diary of the process, of personal reminiscences, of census data and associated trove) is an equal part. Whereas the background to Skelton’s work has previously been unsaid and implied, here it is set upfront, as we are made to participate in this powerful, at times almost ritualistic, study of death and decay, of grief and letting go, of rebirth and transformation, of landscapes and lifetimes and- above all – of the (im)permanence of the collective memory.