My lil' list.

buy ...and farewell to hightide instead

Holy shit! I just realized there's three bands named Air out there, two of them (the less famous ones) having released eponymous albums.

The one I mean is...

Pete Namlook : Air

>Cluster : Sowiesoso
redundant if you already have Zuckerzeit. redundant otherwise

>Arovane : Tides
redundant. am i the only one who finds Arovane tedious and overrated?

>Certain Beyond All Reasonable Doubt : Live Berlin 98
somewhere between the C/R poles. nice and bleak, but i expected more from a Surgeon + Mick Harris collaboration. seek out some Contrastate or Delphium instead.

Current 93 : In a Foreign Town, in a Foreign Land
Ligotti's stories and C93 music both utterly classic. be sure to read along with the music at least onece!

>Current 93 / Nurse with Wound : Bright Yellow Moon
redundant. found this one disappointing, with Purtle or without.

>Final : First Millionth of a Second
i'd pick '2' or the Solaris CD over this, but it's very good. classic, with reservations.

>Manuel Göttsching : Inventions for Electric Guitar
stone infinite-guitar classic. and track down Günter Schickert's 'Uberfallig' as well.

>Hafler Trio : Walk Gently through the Gates of Joy
skip. save your pennies for the Mastery of Money/Kill the King/How to Reform Mankind trilogy.

>David Kristian : Beneath the Valley of the Modulars
>David Kristian : Room Tone
good, but you want 'Cricklewood' first.

>Nurse with Wound : Acts of Senseless Beauty
>Nurse with Wound : A Missing Sense
>Nurse with Wound : Homotopy to Marie

Homotopy is the must-have. Missing Sense a close second, since it has the incredible "Swansong." but the title track pales beside its classic inspiration (Ashley's "Automatic Writing"). Acts... is more R than C. Aranos' violin adds a few new wrinkles - and there's a seriously weird elfin dub track hidden at the end of the disc. but you could live well enough without it.

>Omit : Interior Desolation
if you don't have 'Quad.' it's good - damn good - but Quad is still the Omit cornerstone.

>PGR : A Hole of Unknown Depth
classic pre-digital Kim Cascone. all the PGR material is excellent.

>Phoenecia : Brownout
>Senking : Silencer
>Silo : Alloy

all redundant. nothing new here. first Silo track's nice, rest of the album's a snooze.

>Stars of the Lid : Avec Laudenum
neither C nor R. 'Tired Sounds...' is the classic. AL's wonderful, but how much nebulous, glacial drone does a body need?

>This Heat : Deceit
should we dignify this with a response?

>Volcano the Bear : Five Hundred Boy Piano
redundant. go for the reissues of the early CD-Rs first, even if it means putting $$$ in Beta-Lactam Ring's pockets. at least this series was as cheap as it looks.

>Zoviet France : Mort Aux Vaches - Feedback
>Zoviet France : What Is Not True

IMHO, no :z*f: is anything less than classic. and they're all pieces of some great, pataphysical puzzle. neither of these is essential, though. if you already have Monhomishe, Shouting at the Ground, and Shadow, Thief of the Sun...

hope that helps!

gg/

But for some reason I can't listen to Zuckerzeit. It's widely available around here, so I know it, and it's the aural equivalent of biting on tin foil to me. Same thing goes for ISAN's Lucky Cat, which is grating beyond belief; Beautronics is lovely though.

m.