Ekkehard Ehlers / Paul Wirkus, Ballads
Scientific order and detail abounds, but it is balanced by both members’ free-jazz passion for chaos (in, for one, the lost-in-space tumult of “Ruchy”) and drift (perfected in the soothing tremolo of “Wiem”). This constant motion between precise blitzkrieg and restorative détente sums up the partnership of Ehlers and Wirkus.

Harlem, Free Drugs;-)
Even without clever language or arrangements, their elemental yearning for teenage kicks makes up for that. They may not be adding much to the neo-Nuggets formula, but their channeling of those fuzzed-out relics of rock history is so painstakingly slipshod, so studiedly aggressive, and so exuberantly ominous, that listeners won’t give a fig about the lack of novelty

Isis, Wavering Radiant
For more than a decade, the Los Angeles five-piece has maneuvered between cries and whispers, dirt and polish, bruising noise and narcotic subtlety, repeatedly redrawing the borders of the one genre that accommodates them, metal, as they annex more sonic territory beyond it. This means trading metal’s usual symphony of downtuned riffs for a broader set of digressions and moods

B.J.