Pitchfork

Curators Mark Logan and David Tibet (Current 93) assembled a sterling cast of freaks, misanthropes, and free spirits: industrial deviants (Coil, Nurse With Wound), New Weird Americans (Fursaxa, Six Organs of Admittance), Japanese noise gods (Keiji Haino, Ghost), folk legends (Linda Perhacs, Pearls Before Swine), tape-loop loons (William Basinski) and everyone ever affiliated with Michael Gira. Oh, what the hell, let's also throw in Allen Ginsberg and Teenage Fanclub. The track organization leaves something to be desired, but there's a decisive novelty to owning a disc that features both folk-revivalist Dolly Collins and bible-shredder Aube. Strangely, there's also a smattering of mundane Canadian bar bands. Logan "sequenced this set with the hope that folks will listen to each disc in its entirety," and one must stoically withstand the brief and goofy mediocrity on each disc.

Nevertheless, there's at least three hours of quality material here, and the set mostly includes original and rare compositions. For a charity comp, the highlights are numerous and stubbornly experimental: On the introductory track, irr.app.(ext.) sets the standard with singular syntheses of finespun strums, Gregorian drones, wooden clocks, and Pan-Asian woodwinds. Mirror crafts glowing sinusoids, Eric Lanzillotta melts black-ice dub, and Tom Recchion spins reverberant neon vinyl over dust-covered choirs. Personal favorites include the Hafler Trio's elegant noise, Charlemagne Palestine's withering gales, and Cyclobe's enticing intersection of drilled flatulence and photon pong.

But thoughts begin to wander somewhere around Hour 3, when the Bricoleur introduces his wind gyrations on "Prah Pip Tah". It's not a particularly dull piece, but the mind can only take outerworld spacescapes for so long. The more beat-based electronic music is also rather tepid (see Howie B.'s rote B-grade Blade noir or Edward Ka-Spel's confusing mix of glam vocals and 56k dial-up.)

Countering this series of bleeps and found-sound scratches is the awkward camp of former Belle & Sebastian member Isobel Campbell, who adds more effete absurdity to "The Beat Goes On", and Sundial, who imagine that playing a garage version of the Osmond Brothers' "Crazy Horses" is the apex of revolutionary craftsmanship. Perhaps they feel obligated to propound pop schmaltz in the spirit of benefit albums. On the other end of the spectrum, Bonnie "Prince" Billy's truly bizarre "Song for Doctors Without Borders", a sort of anti-"We Are the World", unites elements of the Bible and Faust. The other acoustic performers seem to take sides in the battle between psych-folk classics and protracted pseudo-grunge. But it's easy to simply ignore the latter in favor of Richard Buckner's ironclad rasp or Six Organs' solar-flare opium den.

The sheer variety of songs is staggering, from Jarboe's belabored breathing to L's effortless Polynesian pixie dust. Even Ginsberg's ludicrous harmonium-and-viola Blake recitation seems pertinent to the proceedings. Simply put, Not Alone compiles a tremendous wealth of magnificent material, and there's something charming about listening to a doe-eyed charity endeavor by such infamous pessimists as Nurse With Wound and Current 93. Still, between the erratic sequencing and the handful of mediocrities, Not Alone often sounds like an assortment of free CDs from The Wire, albeit with marginally better quality control.