Silvia Fassler & Billy Roisz: Skylla (Editions Mego) - CD

Viennese girl duo who craft an incredibly detailed piece of contemporary computer music. Sourcing guitar and turntable through their custom built Max patches. It being on Mego suggests exploration of extremes, but not so. Sure, there are moments where it peaks into the red ('Schwarzchild'), but on the whole this is really playful stuff. Occupying the higher end of the frequency spectrum means everything sounds crisp and close to the ear. Industrial rumblings on 'Kirre' suddenly plummet the listener into sub-bass territory, whilst the beautifully ambient 'Syne' reminds me of Ryoji Ikeda. Tense, tactile and genuinely experimental.

Annette Krebs / Toshimaru Nakamura: Siyu (SoSEditions) - CD

Beautiful, if slightly impractical (CD always manages to fall out of its cradle) packaging suckered me into getting this from the racks of Sound 323. Not familiar with Kreb's stuff at all, but Nakamura is the shit. I remember his 'Vehicle' album being an engaging, accessible and surprisingly rhythmic piece of work. Here it's much more restrained, this is the sort of Electroacoustic improvisation that barely registers on the EQ. 'Wrr' is a narratively considered series of tones, crackles and clicks all still manage to get under the skin. The second ('Bsb') of the two tracks makes more of an impact. As if the hermetically sealed vacuum that occupied track one is slowly exposed to the environment and uncontrollable external forces.