A "whimbrel" is a robust, large shorebird in the sandpiper family with a very long, curved bill and relatively long neck and legs which has little to do conceptually with this band. The Whimbrels are a New York City based band with an NYC pedigree, 3 guitarists, 1 bassist and 1 drummer. The pedigree comes from involvement with other projects - longtime Swans member Norm Westberg, Arad Evans (Glenn Branca Ensemble)), and Luke Schwartz (Glenn Branca, Whaton Tiers Ensemble). The lesser-knowns are bassist Matt Hunter (New Radiant Storm King, Matt Hunter and the Dusty Fates, among others) and drummer Steve Dibenedetto (downtown artist better known for his paintings than being in name bands) round out the roster. So what kind of music do we have on 'The Whimbrels' self-titled debut album? Well, they call themselves a "power art rock" band, but musicians were never spot on at genre classifications; that seems to be the domain of music writers. Then again I suppose any genre mash-up could work on the extended plan, but I see this outfit as more No Wave with touches of experimental and noise, just trying to fit them into our genre parameters somewhere. Their inclusion for review here is partly due to the persistent efforts of their publicist, sending me real product, and the roots of their music careers. Would we deny Swans a review because they don't fit into a comfortable genre nook? Hell no. Never have, never will. But this is certainly not Swans-like by any stretch of the imagination.

An album of merely seven track in about 38 minutes, the album opens with strumming guitar riffs on "She is the Leader," before it settles into a rhythmic groove. Can't help but think of Joy Division on this one, until the storytelling vocals come in. (BTW, both Arad and Matt handle vocal duties.) The song is amiable and engaging, and has anticipated break with a bit of noisy experimentalism. What's not to like here? "Monarchs" suffers from understated vocals but I though the bass lines were pretty cool. About halfway through it changes pacer and turns into something else a bit slower, but I wasn't convinced. More abstract and disjunct is "Distant Land," a change of pace from jangly rhythms with spoke-sung vocals on the verse, and a little more melodic on the chorus. The Frippish sustained guitar lines helped this one, but one again, understated vocals lacking personality don't help. Now for a crazy post-punk rocker - "That's How It Was," reminds me of the many bands I saw at Max's Kansas City, CBGB's and elsewhere in the mid-to-late '70s. Vocals on this one are very upfront and it has an absolutely raw and alive sound. Keeping up the momentum with "Scream For Me" I hear everything from the Velvets to the Stooges but again the vocal is a bit anemic. The mysteriously spooky 'Eclipse Eye" works on all levels as the subdued vocals perfectly fit the tensely atmospheric music, and just might be the surprise standout of the album. It loses a bit atmospherically when the rhythm is bolstered, but returns to the fold before the end. So with the finale, "Four Moons of Galileo," we get a big hammer-'n-strum buildup from the wall of guitars before launching into something almost completely different, jammy and improvisational. Gears are shifted rhythmically again to other riffs, and the direction is...well, elsewhere? lost?

The album sounds self-produced and I think suffers for it. These guys had some good ideas, and probably had a good time doing it, but there is just not enough standout material to capture the ears of new listeners among the gazillion choice out there. Not bad, but could have been better.

In "Reverie", Rebecca Foon and her sister Aliayta Foon-Dancoes do not simply compose music - they distill memory, collapse weather systems into harmony, and send gentle seismic waves through the emotional tectonics of post-classical chamber music. This is a record of ghosts and light, of bonds braided through time and strings. And it doesn’t so much play as it hovers - misting slowly over your listening space like a morning fog not yet burned off by despair.

Drawing from a shared DNA of bowed melancholy and decades of musical divergence, the sisters meet on common ground: Rebecca, with her Montreal-honed post-rock credentials (Esmerine, Silver Mt. Zion, Set Fire To Flames), brings the spiritual gravitas of someone who’s stared down the climate apocalypse and still believes in melody; Aliayta, from a more conservatory-rigorous path, smuggles precision and expressive depth into the folds. This reunion feels like a ritual, a rethreading of blood through bow. They touch cello, violin, and piano with equal reverence, and though producer Jace Lasek adds a cinematic sheen - his experience with Godspeed You! Black Emperor and The Besnard Lakes is evident - the sisters maintain a stubborn intimacy throughout. It’s like the soundtrack to a film where the only action is remembering how to feel again.

What’s striking is how "Reverie" manages to be so emotionally legible without ever shouting. Tracks like “Eternal”, “Drifters And Dreamers”. or “Devotion” are modest in duration but vast in suggestion. Repeated motifs circle like moths around a flame, refracting subtly from piece to piece - phosphorescent, elusive, deeply felt. There’s a quiet environmentalism here too, not the pamphlet kind, but the kind that feels like mourning the last snowfall or the disappearance of birdsong. It’s the sound of two artists trying to process collapse with grace, the way you might try to hug someone while the ground crumbles underfoot.

Yes, "Reverie" is beautiful - achingly so - but not in the easy sense. Its beauty comes with residue: a film of regret, a film of hope, a film of salt left behind by tears, sweat, ocean. It resonates with post-apocalyptic longing, yet remains tethered to the real and the now. A subtle collapse, an ongoing prayer. Not a record that demands your attention, but one that rewards your willingness to slow down and listen. Perhaps "Reverie" isn’t just an album - it’s an attempt to remember a different way of being in the world, before it became too loud to dream.

If "AFM002" were a covert operation, its agents would wear broken sunglasses at night and speak only in syncopated kicks. The second release from Activity FM plays like a hotline straight to the pressure points of modern electro, short-circuiting nostalgia with a current that’s anything but retro.

It opens with "Out My Mind" by AMX - a Detroit-based producer who slices through the haze with surgical basslines and eerily detached vocals, a track that manages to sound both clinical and seductive, like the ghost of Drexciya flirting with your drum machine. Then Exzakt steps in with "Fvck That Sh1t", and subtlety goes out the emergency exit: this is Florida-style fire, raw, relentless, and heavier than a hard drive full of unreleased Miami bass. It’s rude in all the right ways, a track that doesn’t even pretend to shake hands before punching your subwoofers in the gut.

The B-side flips the compass to Venezuela - or at least its diaspora - with ARA-U’s "Feels Like Dancing", a grimy, analog-drenched stomper that stares you down with the swagger of a warehouse gremlin who's eaten too much acid and is now deeply in charge of the groove; the synths wheeze like vintage machinery that doesn’t want to cooperate, which is precisely what makes it so fun. Closing the EP is Phran’s "Archivo Criminal", beamed in from Barcelona with a smirk and a knowing nod to the breakbeat continuum - playful yet precise, its percussive mischief dances through the mix like a stolen cassette full of late-night pirate radio.

There’s a subtle lineage at play across the release: from the muscle memory of old-school electro to the mutated breaks currently slithering through London basements and South American studios, all filtered through a pressing urgency to make people move now. Nothing here overstays its welcome, yet each cut leaves a smear of attitude, like fresh fingerprints on a fogged mirror in a club bathroom you don’t remember entering. "AFM002" isn’t just a collection of tracks; it’s a sweaty postcard from the frontline of dance music’s most shape-shifting corners - one that makes you want to call your friends, press play, and throw your furniture out the window to clear space for the floor.

There are records that shake hips, and there are records that shake thought. Der Tanz Aller is definitively in the second camp - though its rhythms might still twitch the nervous system like a ghost limb. Felix Kubin, longtime cosmonaut of the weird and electro-futuristic, steps into historical and choreographic terrain here, composing a score for LIGNA’s participatory performance of the same name, inspired by Rudolf von Laban’s radical “Bewegungschöre” - mass movement choirs aimed at reshaping society through collective bodily expression.
But forget euphoric mass communion: this is not a call to rave. It’s a prickly dance of ideologies, a sonic archaeology of 1920s utopias, and a confrontation with the ghosts of mass politics. Kubin doesn’t offer comfort. He offers structure, fragmentation, pulses that stutter like broken machinery, brass blasts that echo through hollowed-out gymnasiums of failed dreams, and percussion that seems more concerned with organization than release. There’s Orff-Schulwerk in the bones, but it’s filtered through militant estrangement.

Each track is a thematic node: DÄmonen der Zerstreuung stalks the psyche of a distracted public, Masse Mensch trudges through the ambiguous territory of social cohesion, Kreuzzug der Maschine channels industrial-age hubris into militarized motion, and Der Tanz Aller - the title track - feels like a ritual for the vanished possibility of utopia. Not coincidentally, several tracks originally accompanied pre-recorded texts and instructions, further underlining their function as performative tools rather than mere listening experiences.

What Kubin does here is subtle and methodical. His approach resists spectacle. He offers space - both literal and conceptual - for collective movement, for reflection, for ambiguity. In this space, choreography becomes ideology made flesh. And while some might be tempted to draw connections to club music’s collectivism, Der Tanz Aller reminds us that not all dancing is escapism, and not all rhythm is liberation.
Ultimately, this record is a monument - not to nostalgia, but to tension. It remembers a time when bodies moving together were imagined as blueprints for new societies. And it asks: what happens when those blueprints are misread, co-opted, or abandoned?

File this under sonic architecture, anti-fascist resonance, and the ongoing struggle to imagine a world beyond performance. You won’t dance to it - but you might move differently after hearing it.

Simonel doesn’t play music. He exhales it.

In "Cartographies of Silence", his second release for Richard Chartier’s LINE imprint, the Mexican tape-wrangler otherwise known as Joan Obed Márquez doesn’t offer a narrative, a theme, or even much of a pulse. What he does offer is a set of immaculately corroded inner landscapes - places where memory warps like magnetic tape left too long in the sun, and time folds gently in on itself like a crumpled, softly glowing map you forgot you were drawing.

This isn’t ambient music in the background-scented-candle sense. It’s ambient as in amniotic, ambient as in the quiet hum of thinking too hard while staring at your childhood bedroom ceiling. Every piece here feels like it was rescued from some dusty drawer inside the psyche - faint, half-lucid field recordings of the soul at rest or maybe just catching its breath.

From the opener, "Drowned Tape Loop", we’re submerged in a world where analog hiss becomes a kind of narrator. There are no sharp turns here - no choruses, no climaxes - just shifting textures, trembling overtones, and an intimacy that often feels like eavesdropping on the silence between thoughts. It's music that disappears into your bones if you let it. And you should.

Each title acts like a compass rose on an emotional map - "Hidden Path", "Frozen Lake", "Memory of a Piano". You get the sense that these aren’t just metaphors but literal sonic snapshots, impressions gathered in solitude from Tijuana alleyways, foggy dawns, and echo-chambers disguised as bedrooms. "The Fizzing Drone of a Streetlight" is exactly that: urban ambient noir with its hair slightly static-charged, a soundtrack for walking home too late under the sodium glow of existential doubt. It’s beautiful. And just a little spooky.

What Simonel has done here is remind us that silence isn’t the absence of sound, but a terrain of its own - uneven, cavernous, warm in spots and chilling in others. His weapons of choice - four-track tape machines, field recordings, wounded synthesizers - are deployed like brushes rather than tools. The fidelity fluctuates between cloudy and radiant, like peering into a dream through a scratched windowpane.
On "Overwhelmed by Heaviness", the closing track, he doesn’t go out with a bang but with a long, slow sigh that lingers in the room like a memory you didn’t realize you were holding onto.

Simonel walks the tightrope between signal and decay, control and surrender, clarity and fog. This release isn't for casual background streaming or playlist-padding. It demands presence, not attention. It’s a collection of quiet places for those who can still find beauty in the in-between spaces - between words, between events, between selves.