Head to Spruance's Web of Mimicry site to order the record, which includes a revamped and Italian-westernized version of the Chiefs' "The Exile" (now "The Western Exile") as the B-side.

Mike Patton: Music from the Film and Inspired by the Book The Solitude of Prime Numbers (La Solitudine Dei Numeri Primi) (Ipecac)

Mike Patton: "Twin Primes"

Still known first and foremost as a vocal aberration, Mike Patton (Faith No More, Mr. Bungle, Tomahawk, Fantômas) has amassed more and more compositional credits in recent years. The musical Renaissance man already has scored a few films — the schizophrenic alt-metal soundtrack to Crank 2 and the genre-hopping theme-and-variation of A Perfect Place. For the Italian film The Solitude of Prime Numbers, however, Patton has drawn on a much more traditional film aesthetic.

Minimalism carries this material, whether melodic, moody, or dissonant. Accents and flourishes are found throughout, but often as strict atmosphere, building a feel of giallo-esque horror. A track such as “Radius of Convergence” — one of the few with drums — is a rarity, offering a pounding crescendo.

Notably, outside of the first track, vocals are almost completely absent. That’s not a surprise given their secondary roles on Patton’s other scores, but it further cements his transition to being a composer first and a singer second.

- Text by Scott Morrow.

Krisiun: The Great Execution (Century Media)

Krisiun: "The Will to Potency"

Brazilian death-metal trio Krisiun comprises tattooed brethren Alex Carmargo (bass, vocals), Moyses Kolesne (guitar), and Max Kolesne (drums), and with a name that translates from ancient Latin to “the seers of abomination,” the band makes a case for being among the most brutal of its subgenre.

The Great Execution, Krisiun’s third album with prolific German producer Andy Classen and eighth overall, takes the band’s signature speed and tempers it with a string of mid-tempo intervals. These nuances signal sonic progression, as do a handful of interspersed classical-guitar flourishes — making appearances as the album intro and then layered over the full-metal assault in the final few minutes of "The Sword of Orion." A bit of the classical influence spills over into the brutality, as evidenced by the rapid-fire arpeggios on the following track, "Violentia Gladiatore," but by and large, Krisiun is giving listeners exactly what they should expect: searing brutality from those peering into the depths of humanity.

- Text by Kyle Gilkeson and Scott Morrow.

Phantogram: Nightlife EP (Barsuk)

Phantogram: "Don't Move"

- Text by Lauren Zens.

3:33: Live from the Grove (Parallel Thought Ltd.)

3:33: "LFTG-2"

Surfacing in 2011 with a pair of shadowy EPs, 3:33 is a yet-unmasked project that deals in brooding, instrumental hip hop. Tactile yet amorphous — and at times ominous — the music is set apart by a rawness of texture.

For this proper full-length debut — the group’s third release in seven months — much of the source material is a collection of “field/wood” recordings taken from outside the Bohemian Grove. This adds another layer of mystery and foreboding to the 3:33 sound, given the history of the setting — a mysterious, cult-like campground for the Bohemian Club, which has hosted famous guests such as Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon for pagan-esque rituals. The plodding and pulsating results are a disturbing success, backed again by head-nodding boom-bap beats.

- Text by Kyle Gilkeson and Scott Morrow.

Honorable Mentions

Circle Takes the Square: Decompositions: Volume 1 (Gatepost)

Idle Warship: Habits of the Heart (Element 9)

Locrian: The Clearing (Fan Death)

King Midas Sound: Without You (Hyperdub)

Pianos Become the Teeth: The Lack Long After (Topshelf)

Rapper Big Pooh: Dirty Pretty Things (For Members Only)

Sick of it All: Nonstop (Century Media)

The Soft Moon: Total Decay EP (Captured Tracks)

[Chromatic, our 400-page exploration of musicians and color, is out now. Order here!]

Zu: "Carbon"

As Carboniferous begins, it’s unclear as to what instruments are communicating through the speakers. A pulsing, low-toned beast hums over an adaptable backbeat, awaiting an indecipherable but universally understood high-pitched howl. By all accounts, this could be a gritty synthesizer and a warped guitar exchanging musical thoughts, but primarily, the instruments at play are the usual armaments of Italian sludge-jazz trio Zu: electric bass, baritone sax, and drums.

Previously, this decade-old group offered ornate free-jazz creations, often unrestrained from convention and always bucking pop structure. Its newest album and Ipecac debut, Carboniferous, filters Zu through a lens of alt-metal, anchored by the behemoth distorted bass riffs of bassist Massimo Pupillo and the demolishing thuds of drummer Jacopo Battaglia. Saxophonist Luca T. Mai is free to freak out atop the mountainous cadences, but his squealing leads and frenetic solos refrain from creating impenetrable walls of counterpoint.

Undoubtedly, Carboniferous is the heaviest creation of Zu’s prolific career. Through the band’s 14 releases and its members’ countless other collaborations, a maelstrom of musicality has rained upon listeners’ ears. As Zu, the three have summoned styles that include noise, math rock, punk, metal, experimental, improvisational, and no wave, and other projects have stretched into hip hop, traditional Roman murder ballads, and radically revised Beatles songs.

Carboniferous is heavier than all of it. For the first time, Battaglia’s kick drum plays a higher pitch than the bass. Everything other than drums is distorted, including the master recording of the album’s first two tracks, “Ostia” and “Chthonian.” And even the drums get distorted for Zu’s punishing live performance, one that has included the effected vocals and samples of luminous singer Mike Patton.

As one might imagine, finding the proper pedals is imperative to this massive sound, and thankfully, the band has a friend in Milan who runs a music shop with homemade pedals from all over the world.

“It’s difficult to find good stuff, especially for the bass, because you lose a lot of attack and bass frequencies with the commercial crap,” Pupillo says. “It’s good to find something that you can use, is powerful, and keeps the low end of the instrument.”
 

“Looking at our discography, it’s really one road that brings us to this record — every time getting a little bit closer to the center of what you want to say."

Indeed, Pupillo’s bass is never lost in a wash of fuzz. His instrument, tuned down to a low B, anchors the album with math grooves and powerfully low tones. And to solve the acoustic problems of losing the baritone sax in the bass frequencies, Mai performs with a multi-effect bass pedal that Pupillo says is perfect for the saxophone. This bends the saxophone’s tone nearly to one of an echo-effected guitar, making it difficult at times to discern the sax from the few spots of guest guitar on Carboniferous (the Melvins’ Buzz Osborne appears on “Chthonian”). When everything is combined, it seems that Zu has arrived at a stark new sonic destination. The band, however, feels that its path to this point was instinctive.

“Looking at our discography,” Pupillo says, “it’s really one road that brings us to this record — every time getting a little bit closer to the center of what you want to say. For us, it takes a lot of time; it’s really digesting a lot of ideas and influences. It’s very organic. It’s not something like post-modern composition, where you say, ‘Okay, let’s play one bar country, two bars hardcore, and one bar contemporary.’"

When asked about the world’s shrinking musical boundaries, Pupillo agrees that the Internet has had a vast impact, acting as a catalyst for cultural fusion, and he credits it for turning Zu’s members onto other great groups from around the globe.

“We are so omnivorous,” he says. “I think that a lot of people today are not listening to one kind of music anymore. It’s really hard to find somebody who only listens to metal, punk, ethnic music, or whatever is out there. There are so many great things. You get inspired by so many things that you hear or see, and in some way, you don’t want to cut that from you.”

And for as much ground as Zu has covered in its discography, its members join forces elsewhere for different sounds. A full-length collaboration with noisy hip-hop duo Dälek is in the works; the aforementioned Roman murder ballads were recorded for two Ardecore albums with Karate’s Geoff Farina; a project called Black Engine found Zu with electro-experimental guitarist Eraldo Bernocchi; a collaboration called Garden of Evil, whose album is due this year, will have Zu’s rendering of works by composer Bernard Herrmann.

Zu’s members also spend down time — what little they have outside of the band’s immense touring schedule — playing improvisational jazz gigs, often with members of Chicago’s thriving jazz scene. But for their innumerable collaborations, none may be more exciting than that with Patton. After a handful of performances with Zu, the incomparable vocalist recorded vocals for “Soulympics” and “Orc,” two of the ten outstanding tracks on Carboniferous.

Patton’s contributions on “Orc,” the album’s dark, final track, are wordless but ominous, appearing as throat singing and voice manipulation that sounds like a Tibetan singing bowl. On “Soulympics,” Patton builds steam with deep pitches and whispers before erupting in screeches akin to those that he uses in “Cuckoo for Caca” by Faith No More. A harmonized call of “Superman” then dances with a distant, high-pitched, reverberated overdub, leaving “Soulympics” as, arguably, the album’s best offering.

The tracks without Patton, however, are no less impressive. “Carbon” is built around an infectious count-chant rhythm, interspersing one-beat rests and a two-beat sustain as the group “counts” to six, pounding listeners with relentless force. The song wails with a swirling harmony, created as Mai’s sax reaches a virtual crescendo. “Chthonian,” the preceding track, features Pupillo playing distorted natural harmonics as Battaglia joins to create a polymeter. The song gets extraordinarily heavy while retaining two independent rhythms, lurching between ambience and fury before Osborne’s presence is felt in a wild outro.

Following what should be a laudatory response to Carboniferous, the trio will return to the US in August to travel through the East Coast and to Chicago; in October, the group will again be stateside to tour the West Coast with influential punk/jazz trio NOmeansno. That’s part of a nonstop international itinerary for a group that was in the US just last November.

“All the people who try to live off the music are in the same situation,” Pupillo says. “You do it and it’s great, but at the same time, it takes your whole life. You don’t have any spare moments anymore.”

Pinky Blaster: Child Bite album packaging

Shawn Knight, a.k.a. designer and illustrator Pinky Blaster, has created art and music since an early age. Followers of the Detroit music scene may recognize his name – previously of the band New Grenada, Knight now performs in the high-energy punk band Child Bite. The band is notorious for its wide range of instruments, humorous live performances, and its members’ impressive facial hair.

While in high school, Knight began playing in punk and metal bands.  These two genres influenced him heavily while he was growing up; he notes both Black Flag and The Dead Kennedys as significant influences. Knight got his start designing local band fliers and posters, and he continues to use live music as an opportunity to expose his artistic skills — though now at a national level.

Pinky Blaster: Faith No More

His impressive list of music clients includes bands such as Faith No More, Ween, The Dead Weather, Jimmy Eat World, Dan Deacon, The Jesus Lizard, Russian Circles, Lightning Bolt, and Of Montreal. Beyond his uniquely designed rock posters, Knight also creates indie movie posters, album artwork, packaging, typography, and various other web-design and illustration work. His artwork for Make History by Thunderbirds Are Now! made it onto Rolling Stone’s top-50 album-artwork list in 2006. Knight also recently designed the vibrantly colored T-shirts for Faith No More’s 2010 reunion tour dates in Australia and New Zealand.

Pinky Blaster: Of Montreal

Knight creates a decent amount of work by hand – generally, in the form of drawing out type with Sharpies, or cutting up old magazine images for collages. These basic sketches then find their way to a scanner and are tweaked in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. Knight graduated from Detroit’s College for Creative Studies in 2000, and he says simply of his design process, “Working rough ideas out really fast was what I was taught in school — and it works.”

The successfully rendered collage work in Knight’s art is by far one of its most compelling and eye-catching attributes. However, Knight recognizes the importance of using found imagery in an appropriate manner.  “I try to mess with the found stuff enough to make it my own…which was a moral dilemma of mine for a long time," he says.  "As long as it’s old, unrecognizable, and manipulated beyond the original intent for the image, I’m good with incorporating it.”

Pinky Blaster: Women

Knight’s work incorporates hand-rendered typography with humorous and often ironic imagery. His posters tend to include thick, black, Xerox-quality outlines in contrast with large blocks of neon hues. The dark outlines surround playful, thought-provoking collages, and the text is often reminiscent of vintage newspaper headings or advertisements.

As far as poster art versus album art, Knight prefers poster art – partially due to the lack of involvement that the musicians usually have.  “I think a lot of the process happens inside of the artist’s head without [him or her] really being that aware of it," he says.  "When it’s time to work with someone else, it can be jarring.”

Pinky Blaster: Girl Talk

Currently, Knight works as a freelance designer in Ferndale, Michigan (a suburb of Detroit).  He delved into the process of screen-printing roughly a year ago and is by no means bored with the technique yet.  He recently finished working on a rock poster for The Thermals, but soon, those outside of indie-rock circles will better know his work; Knight landed a gig doing movie posters for the new Tron film.

Mike Patton: "Deep Down" (Ennio Morricone)

In 1994, the musical aberration known as Mike Patton prepared for a pair of life-altering experiences. The anomalous vocalist married Italy native Titi Zuccatosta, and the two purchased a home in Bologna — a city that Patton has since described as the “place where you want to die.”

Putting the personal ties aside, his infatuation with the city is easy to understand. At one time the “second city” of Italy, Bologna holds a rich and deep history. It is home to the oldest university in the West and an abundance of monuments that span the past two millennia. Visitors flock to Piazza Maggiore and the San Petronio Basilica, two symbols of a city renowned for its expansive porticos and the red roofs of its historic center. Its humid climate makes seasonal swings feel more extreme, but given Bologna’s location in Northern Italy, its inhabitants aren’t as hard hit by heat waves as the south of the country. And Bologna is, naturally, a culinary hotspot thanks to its famous Bolognese sauce.

Though the couple separated in 2001, Patton had, by that time, immersed himself in the country and its culture, refusing to speak English while abroad in order to become fluent in Italian. Every day was a learning experience, he says, and his most important education came in linguistics.

“Being ‘invisible’ or in disguise helped me learn the language,” Patton says. “The great thing about Italy [is that] if you just say two words, like ‘ciao bello,’ [they say], ‘Wow, that’s amazing! You sound just like an Italian!’ It really boosts your confidence. The whole attitude [in Italy is] toward acceptance and tolerance. The reason that I learned the language and did it so fast…is because the people were so amazing.”

"In the early stages [of working with the orchestra], I’d fly off the handle and go crazy, and it got me nowhere. Orchestra people don’t want to see that, don’t want to hear that. They already think you’re a freak for doing this."

The thought of Patton concealing himself, however, seems like a non sequitur. His voice, after all, is one of the preeminent and most recognizable in independent music. It has been involved in dozens of personal projects, invited on scores of guest spots, and heard on more than a hundred studio recordings. His malleable voice is known for any combination of dramatic cries, harrowing screams, smooth croons, lilting falsettos, and otherworldly chants.

Patton’s days fronting alt-rock favorites Faith No More were a gateway drug for many, leading first to the mind-altering, genre-demolishing tastes of Mr. Bungle. Then came dalliances with John Zorn, arrangements for Fantômas, time in Tomahawk, pop adventures as Peeping Tom, and copious collaborations. His time on the radio all but ended after Faith No More’s breakup, but his distinct sounds and diverse palette — coupled with a reputation for stage antics and off-the-cuff interviews — cemented his place in modern music lore.

So given these identifiable attributes, the words “Patton” and “incognito” don’t seem to follow each other. But his newest project, Mondo Cane, stems from just such a union — with Patton disguising his American accent and assimilating to a new culture.

“I did have a lot of friends there,” he says of Italy. “Most of them spoke English, but my whole deal was ‘don’t speak to me in English; I have to learn.’ I’m not doing any DVD Rosetta Stone bullshit. Trial by fire, you know?”

Yet Patton learned more than Italian. His interest in Italian counterculture led him to figures like Demetrio Stratos, a 1970s prog-rock revolutionary who explored the limits of the human voice. He later met, befriended, and collaborated with modern musicians, including Zu, a Roman avant-garde trio whose recent sludge-jazz album was released via Patton’s Ipecac Recordings.

But despite his affinity for these kindred artists, Patton found himself drawn to the lavish, layered Italian pop music of the 1960s that he had encountered through friends and the radio. (He is, in the end, an artist whose catalog appeals as much to casual listeners as to ardent experimentalists — an artist as likely to sing with Norah Jones as Melt-Banana.) At some point, it became obvious to him that he’d pay tribute to these expansive orchestrations, and the Mondo Cane project was born.

In the years after World War II, American pop influence began permeating the globe, and the Italian Republic quickly embraced bebop, big band, and rock and roll. By the late 1950s, Italian singer-songwriters — known as cantautori — had come to prominence, at first influenced by Italian folk but then drawing inspiration from traditional American pop singers. As the ’60s progressed, cantautori appropriated bits of rock, psychedelia, and film-score dramatics, culminating in a heavily layered style that just as readily embraced guitars as string sections.

It was this dense, intelligent take on pop that attracted Patton. Legendary composers of the time, both in Europe and the USA, had begun writing and arranging for singer-songwriters, either out of artistic interest or for financial gain (or both). Prominent cantautori such as Gianni Mecca, Gino Paoli, and Luigi Tenco were working with names like Ennio Morricone, Nino Rota, and Tony De Vita.

Others recorded their own Italian-language renditions of famous pieces by American or European composers such as Elmer Bernstein or Bert Kaempfert, who worked with some of the most recognized singers of the time.

One such tune, originally titled “The World We Knew (Over and Over),” exemplifies the cultural difference and the impact that it had on Patton. Renamed “Ore D’Amore,” this selection — which would be appropriated by Mondo Cane — was first sung by a vocal giant.

“Sinatra did that song!” Patton says. “But it’s completely different. It’s much more lush and big bandy and orchestral. For whatever reason, the Italian version was much more fuzzed out and ’70s and psychedelic — totally different words, totally different everything. Somehow, I feel, a lot of these [reinterpreted] tunes were given an Italian soul. They’re much more tragic, much more romantic, and much more exaggerated, and that’s definitely something that interested me.”

With a growing catalog of tunes in mind, Patton contemplated a few one-off cover performances with a quartet. However, when a festival promoter called and offered access to an orchestra for three concerts, he couldn’t say no. He began sifting through hundreds of pop songs — many that perched atop the charts but some with more obscure origins — and the wheels were in motion for Mondo Cane.

Loosely translating to “dog’s world,” Mondo Cane was a massive undertaking, consuming months and months just to prepare for the initial three performances. Patton had his selections transcribed and began working with a 10-piece band, while a conductor was put in charge of a 40-piece orchestra.

There were no initial plans for the dozens of concerts that would follow, nor plans to record an album — but at some point, Patton figured that this effort warranted documentation. Italian producer/composer Daniele Luppi came on board for arrangements, and over three new concerts in 2008, the group took part in live recordings that would be assembled into the first of two Mondo Cane albums, released in May of 2010.

“That led me down, let’s just say, another vortex of getting it perfect,” Patton says. “Hey, it’s a live concert, and I hate live-concert recordings. I just can’t listen to them; I can’t deal with it. It took me a long time to correct all the mistakes and redo the arrangements, maybe the way I really wanted them and heard them in my head from the beginning but didn’t have time to execute for the concerts.”

The performances, many of them in public squares, were a success by all accounts, but the entire process proved overwhelming at times.

”There were times when I wanted to tear my hair out,” Patton says, “because you feel like, ‘Who’s helping me? Who’s got my back?’ I thought of this [project]; Jesus Christ, I guess it’s all my responsibility! It was definitely a huge learning period for me, and you have to learn where to pick your battles, when to be a politician, and all that kind of stuff. In the early stages, I’d fly off the handle and go crazy, and it got me nowhere. Orchestra people don’t want to see that, don’t want to hear that. They already think you’re a freak for doing this.”

A few “offbeat” inclusions made Patton unsure of how the project would be received in Italy, particularly in front of mixed crowds at the piazza performances. But despite the unconventionality of the project, the selections on Mondo Cane are, by and large, approachable, appealing to Patton lovers as well as their parents.

“I remember one sound-checking [when] we were playing one of these gigs in an outdoor square,” Patton says. “We were sound checking between songs, and an old lady comes up toward the stage. [She said], ‘Excuse me; excuse me. You know, you have a fabulous voice, son. Is there anywhere that I can buy your cassette?’ I was just so touched. That was total validation for me.”

Faith No More has an official new website, replacing one that was mired in the mid-1990s.

Following next month's release of Wavering Radiant on May 5, Isis will be on the road for a six-week US tour.  Head to the band's MySpace page or the newly redesigned Ipecac website for tour dates.

For writing/recording purposes and short tours, extreme metal outfit Arsis has been rejoined by original drummer and founding member Michael Van Dyne.

A second video teaser has been posted for Cryptomnesia, the upcoming album from El Grupo Nuevo de Omar Rodriguez Lopez.

Yesterday, percussive groove outfit The Dead Kenny Gs — multi-instrumentalist Mike Dillon, saxophonist Skerik, and bassist Brad Houser — began a short tour through the southern Midwest.  The group's members represent 3/4 of Critters Buggin.

Quirky math-rock trio Tera Melos will begin a three-week US tour (with a stop in Montreal) in late April.

By-, the debut album from Bygones, will be released June 23 on Sargent House.  Specializing in a spastic/melodic guitar/drums dichotomy, the duo consists of drummer Zach Hill and guitarist Nick Reinhart (of the aforementioned Tera Melos).

Bastard Noise has released a five-disc CD set called Our Earth's Blood Pt. IV, which is now available through the band.

On April 28, Ben Folds will release an album that consists of collegiate a cappella groups around the US recording his material.  Appropriately titled University A Cappella and to be released by Sony, the album will also feature Folds doing solo a cappella overdubs on two songs.

One Day as a Lion, the hip-hop/rock duo of Zach de la Rocha and Jon Theodore, has posted a video for its successful single, "Wild International."

The inexhaustible Zach Hill has another new project, this one with Zac Nelson.  The duo's harmonic weirdness is called Chll Pll and will be released this year on Porter Records.

Omar Rodriguez Lopez, a musician as tireless as Zach Hill (and also a collaborator with him), has finished another new album for The Mars Volta.  The album, titled Octahedron, will be released on June 19.

Hardcore punks Trash Talk have a new EP, East of Eden, that can be heard here.  The band recently began a month-long US tour with The Bronx.

Kayo Dot will record a new album this summer with engineer Randall Dunn (Secret Chiefs 3, Grails).  The group will tour in June and July and later release the album on Hydra Head.

On Tuesday in Seattle, as part of Tom Morello's Justice Tour, three-quarters of Soundgarden — Kim Thayil, Matt Cameron, and Ben Shepherd — played three Soundgarden songs with Morello as the second guitarist and Tad Doyle (of TAD) handling the vocals.  The vocals aren't pretty and the footage isn't great…but the whole thing is pretty awesome.

Kid Koala's Slew album is finished and looking at a late summer release.  In the meantime, he's producing an album for songwriter Terence Bernardo.

Tool will tour the US this summer, though dates are unannounced at this point.  Chicago Tribune rock critic Greg Kot has reported rumors of the band headlining Lollapalooza.

Pressing forward for another album with its original lineup, Dinosaur Jr. will release Farm on June 23 via Jagjaguwar.

Yoshida Brothers, a Japanese shamisen duo, will tour the US West Coast for a spell in May before playing a pair of dates in British Columbia.

Busdriver and Tim Fite, both peculiar performers, will perform at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County on April 3.

Looking for constant updates about the Faith No More reunion?  Check out this handy blog.

Greenleaf Music is now streaming its entire front-line catalog at its online store.

Meanwhile, Mike Patton has kept busy with yet another project — scoring his first feature film, Crank 2: High Voltage (out April 17).  His soundtrack for A Perfect Place, a short film noir, was one of last year's best albums.

In an interview with BBC, Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys describes the group's next album, Tadlock's Glasses, as being a combination of live playing and obscure samples.  The album is expected to be out later this year.

Rapping virtuoso Doom — dropping the "MF" — has a new album, Born Like This, that will be out March 23 on Lex Records.

After a six-year hiatus, Anticon hip-hop duo Themselves (Doseone and Jel) has returned and will issue a third full-length album, CrownsDown, in August.

Definitive Jux rapper Cage has a new album, Depart From Me, that will be out June 30.  In the coming months, he'll also release a free EP, I Never Knew You, available through Def Jux and Adult Swim.

Mogwai has announced a new North American tour, running from April 20 to May 16.

Dinosaur Jr. has signed to Jagjaguwar and announced a five-week US tour that runs through April.  For these "intimate" shows, concertgoers will receive either a limited-edition 7" or a free digital download.

Atmosphere has announced a lengthy North American tour that runs from April 9 to May 22. The hip-hop duo gets great direct support from P.O.S. from April 9-24.

Psychedelic Cambodian pop-rock group Dengue Fever will provide musical accompaniment to the 1925 silent adaptation of The Lost World during the San Francisco International Film Festival on May 5.

Grizzly Bear's new album, Veckatimest, will be released May 26 on Warp.

One-man grind project Toxic Holocaust has announced a North American tour with Napalm Death that runs from early April to mid-May.

Zu

Combining sludgy alt-metal with complex repeated rhythms and free-jazz freakouts, this experimental Italian trio delivers what could be one of the year's best albums with its latest effort, a debut for Ipecac that focuses on rock much more than its predecessors.

The album’s best songs include “Carbon” and “Soulympics,” the latter of which features Ipecac co-owner Mike Patton busting out ape-shit screeches akin to those from “Cuckoo for Caca” by Faith No More. "Carbon" is built around an infectious 1-2-3-4-5-6 rhythm (with one-note pauses between counts), pounding listeners with its relentless force.

Patton, who also guests on another song, joins Zu as the Zu / Mike Patton Quartet for a pair of shows (San Francisco, Mexico City) in March. If we're lucky, this will plant the seeds for a future full-length collaboration.

Zu: "Ostia"
Zu: \"Ostia\"

William Elliott Whitmore: Animals in the Dark (Anti-)

With his raspy, soulful, trademark voice in tow, minimalist folk banjo player William Elliot Whitmore moves to Anti- with the release of this new full-length.  New-found accents are present, expanding his blues-infused creations with touches of pedal steel, organs, strings, and drums.

"Mutiny" opens Animals in the Dark with a raucous tune of political metaphor.  "Who Stole the Soul" scales it back a notch, and the album continues through peaks and valleys of emotion, hitting its stride in the contemptuous "Old Devils."

Animals in the Dark is, without a doubt, Whitmore's best and most diverse creation to date.  Currently, you can stream the entire album at his MySpace page.

Irepress: Sol Eye Sea I (Translation Loss)

Following its debut full-length in 2007, this melodic math-chug group from Boston takes a decidedly epic turn on its sophomore release.

"Cyette Phiur," the fifth of the album's tracks, accents the band's crushing sound with soothing female guest vocals, bursts of gang vocals, fluttering saxophone, and possible bagpipes or accordion. Distant echoes and reverberated speed picking, a pair of previously established tools, surround the palm muting and clean-channel melodies to create a majestic atmosphere.

Irepress: "Cyette Phiur"
Irepress: \"Cyette Phiur\"

Tombs: Winter Hours (Relapse)

Hailing from Brooklyn, this droning doom-rock trio makes its Relapse debut with Winter Hours. Pummeling mid-tempo riffs package with heavily reverberated harmonies; dissonant ambiance separates the sonic punishment before guitarist Mike Hill bellows his abusing vocals, akin to those of 1990s sludgecore group His Hero is Gone.

Tombs: "Gossamer"
Tombs: \"Gossamer\"

Odd Nosdam: T.I.M.E. Soundtrack (Anticon)

Sample-based instrumental hip-hopper Odd Nosdam presents another blend of beats, melodies, and atmospherics, this time for the soundtrack to skateboard film This is My Element.

Applying each song to a different highlight reel, the tunes take different tones for each skater. Without being particularly sunny, the material refrains from being too down-tempo or dark. The result is a strong complement to the film's acrobatic highlights.

Odd Nosdam: "Fly Mode"
Odd Nosdam: \"Fly Mode\"

Madlib

With 42 snippet-length tracks, the latest installment of Madlib's Beat Konducta series serves as a tribute to friend and collaborator J Dilla, who passed away in 2006. The two shared a love of mix-tape-style, crate-digging hip hop, and that's apparent as ever in Madlib's samples.

Though billed as "instrumental," Vol. 5-6 may contain the most (sampled) vocals of any Beat Konducta disc. It works better as background music than cruising tunes, and with many tracks less than two minutes in length, much of it runs together.

Madlib: "For My Mans (Prelude)"
Madlib: \"For My Mans (Prelude)\"

Dex Romweber Duo: Ruins of Berlin (Bloodshot)

As the former frontman of the rockabilly outfit Flat Duo Jets, Dex Romweber has some serious roots-rock credentials.

With this, his fifth solo album, Romweber is joined by sister Sara. The straightforward rock ballads don't work as well as the surf-heavy instrumental "Lookout" — featuring Rick Miller of Southern Culture on the Skids — but the siblings do exhibit vocal chemistry. Ruins of Berlin also features guest appearances by Neko Case, Cat Power, and Exene Cervenka.

Dex Romweber Duo: "Lookout"
Dex Romweber Duo: \"Lookout\"

Alex Cline: Continuation (Cryptogramophone)

As one half of another pair of prolific siblings, Alex Cline isn't as well known as his twin brother, Nels (thanks to his inclusion in Wilco). But both are, first and foremost, forward-pressing musicians that balance melody with avant-garde tendencies.

A percussionist by trade, Alex assembles a cast to provide the other instrumentation on Continuation, which worms between semi-conventional forms (film scores, jazz) and seemingly endless atmospherics. A pair of 18-minute songs make this seven-track album even longer — and better for getting lost in sound — than previously anticipated.

Alex Cline: "Clearing Our Streams"
Alex Cline: \"Clearing Our Streams\"

Nels Cline: Coward (Cryptogramophone)

Nels' new solo effort, as one might predict, is centered on his instrument of choice, the guitar. He passes through a number of genres, lending his dexterous fingers to an acoustic-based album that doesn't hurt for electric drones or noisy effects.

Coward is more accessible than the improv-heavy, free-jazz Nels Cline Singers, but hardcore fans of Wilco may be put off. Nevertheless, Cline's songwriting and technical skills are on full display, and fans would do well to pick it up.