Joe Colley | Psychic Stress SoundtracksMisanthropic Agenda (LP/DL) Joe Colley is a superlative composer, yet few refer to his output often enough. One of his “faults” is the use of untrendy instrumentation to delineate the themes of interest: essentially, “activate a consciousness set apart from a rational understanding in a different way from visual or verbal means” as […]
Kajsa Lindgren | Everyone Is HereWarm Winters Ltd (DL/CD/CS) In the (not necessarily) experimental music ambit, a recent surge of political correctness in regard to gender equality has generated mixed results. If on the one hand a few interesting talents were indeed brought to light, and old pioneers were rescued from unmerited anonymity (Else Marie Pade just […]
Joaquín Gutiérrez Hadid | SûrLine (DL) Nothing is more frustrating for this reviewer than being aware of a release’s historical and technical details, yet finding the content inscrutable despite the reiteration of the listening experience. But this is exactly what is happening with Joaquín Gutiérrez Hadid’s Sûr, which I have been absorbing throughout the last days. The […]
Jon Rose & Alvin Curran | Café Grand AbyssRer Megacorp (CD/DL) Musicians operating in the realm of instant synthesis (this usually translates as “finest improvisers”) are defined by the ability to exploit the elusive qualities of information overload. What appears as a chaotic, and ultimately insufferable cacophony to idle ears and brains transmits instead a refreshing sensation […]
Gareth Davis + Duane Pitre | Nótt Midira (CD/DL) Not too long ago we had sung the virtues of clarinettist Gareth Davis while talking about Elliott Sharp’s Plastový Hrad. That bass clarinet is now thrown in a totally different context, one created by a continuous electronic drone. The engenderer of the latter – Duane Pitre […]
Pinkcourtesyphone + Gwyneth WentinkWhen She Had No Mirror… She Watched Her Shadow Line (DL) Pinkcourtesyphone is the sonic alter ego of Richard Chartier. His abilities in redesigning a listening space to enhance its characteristics have impressed time and again, either in solitude or across disparate partnerships. For instance, the one with analogue synth specialist Eleh: […]
Todd Anderson-Kunert | ConjecturesRoom40 (LP/DL) Starting from its very title, the previous album by Todd Anderson-Kunert I had a chance to scrutinize – 2017’s When There Is Nothing Left To Say (Nonlinear) – already expressed the Australian’s prompt perception of what should be obvious to any authentically conscious being: the human language is a frustratingly […]
Monte Espina | y culebraMarginal Frequency (CD) After spending decades surrounded by innumerable species of investigational sonority, I am still pretty ashamed with myself when tackling the work of artists I had literally never heard of before. By looking at the press release for y culebra, not only the names of Venezuelan Ernesto Montiel and […]
David Jackman | HerbstsonneDie Stadt (CD) “The new music involves a lot of repetition; more accurately, near-repetition. It is a quality which I find most elegant. In the visual arts, such formal arrangement would be greeted without a murmur but in music it does seem to cause people some problems; problems which I am afraid I have […]
Elliott Sharp | Plastový HradInfrequent Seams (DL) Very few musicians own the privilege of being recognized in the first seconds of a piece. Among them, for this reviewer, stands Elliott Sharp. The unique drive of Sharp’s vibrating matter generates an out-and-out physical affinity, whatever the instrumental setting. I hereby confess my fetishism for the ferrous […]
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