BEST NOISE BAND: RAGLANI

In the Riverfront Times Best of Saint Louis issue

Referring to Raglani's patient instrumentals as "ambient" demeans the complexity of his compositions in the same way that calling them "noise" downplays their overarching beauty. Dense, stacked layers of synthesized sound result in a vast sonic landscape that owes much more to Krautrock and minimalist composer Terry Riley than to Eno's airport soundtracks or the raucous pounding of Wolf Eyes. Raglani uses many of the same devices of his noisemaking contemporaries — analog synths, wave generators, recordings of found sounds — but few can extract such warm swirling tides from the same cold metal boxes. The gorgeous textures Raglani creates are further proof that, with any good experiment, the result is more important than the process by which it was created.

BEST RECORD LABEL PACKAGING: PEGASUS FARMS RECORDS

The advent of the CD killed album art — and yet nobody bothered to tell the mysterious life force behind Pegasus Farms Records. In the true spirit of the avant-garde, these CD-Rs are limited-run, handmade objects that are beautiful simply because — well, simply because they can be beautiful. Blood Piece 2/For A.O., an album of lucid dreams mined from the depths of night by Raglani, comes in a thin-line, transparent plastic DVD case, an elegant tiger picked out in black on the front. Another tiger on the CD-R itself peers out from behind its mate, the plastic clouding its visage. Is it cheating to work in a larger-than-standard CD-size package? Maybe — but maybe the major labels should consider aesthetics as part of the package. Even when PFR "plays by the rules," the label does a better job implying the beauty that's contained in its artists' music by creating an appealing, unique format to package it in. Heavy card-stock covers, hand-screened lettering, a clean sense of design — all of it works together to tell you that this music matters, that it's worth caring about. The fact that the music lives up to the imagery isn't a surprise; PFR seduces your eyes before the recording artist makes love to your ears.