contributors

Over the past 15 years, Phil Todd's Leeds UK-based Ashtray Navigations has pretty clearly led the world in the production of psychedelic noise freakout rock transcendental electrification drone music. Quoting myself here, describing the Ashtray sound: "free improvisation, lo-fi psychedelia, noise and found sounds, the raw power (though rarely the form) of rock, and the tonalities of various drone and ethnic musics. Pure underground sound, basically." Todd's ability to chart infinite variations within this ever-expanding musical universe, plus the seemingly endless flow of releases on his own and other labels, don't really have a lot of parallels in "rock" (Sun Ra might be a kindred spirit), and perhaps for that reason remain heard by far too few.

Zelienople is a Chicago trio that takes their favorite bits of atmospheric sound from the last four decades and places them in one big pot of simmering ambience. Their music glides elegantly through cinematic dreamscapes, urban fog, stretched-out tone clusters, free-flowing improvisations, corrosive string ceremonies and detailed mantras of fragmentized noise. Given their sonic focus, most of their output is surprisingly moody and melancholic; never letting things to slip away too far from the organic base they refer to as home.

What they do is to construct stunningly delicate and convincingly toned down sound sculptures, slow building, trance inducing improv and texturally challenging drone music that is packed with so much emotion and darkly seducing beauty that it sucks the listener in time after time. We got in touch with Mike Weis and Matt Christensen to learn how they're capable of turning blurry shots of empty city streets or natural landscapes into immortal music.

One-man folk/psych/drone ensemble The Goner AKA Daniel Westerlund is unquestionably one of my favorite sonic discoveries of 2008. He delivers spiritual music that accompanies dreams, as it organically flows across the sky when you're walking to work and creeps up on you when you least expect it to. It's tempting to place his work along the lines of Hush Arbors and Six Organs of Admittance and although that's true you can also hear his background in the lo-fi scene. We got in touch with Westerlund to learn more about where he's coming from and what's next.