Catherine Christer HennixThe Deontic Miracle – Selections from 100 Models of Hegikan RokuBlank Forms (2xLP/DL) This latest release is the first-ever surfacing of a work by Swedish composer Catherine Christer Hennix recorded in 1976 (at Moderna Museet), continuing a series that kickstarted last year by Blank Forms (Brooklyn, NY) with Selected Early Keyboard Works which […]
Edgar Valcárcel | Electronic Compositions for the Andes (1967-2006) Buh Records (12″/DL) Edgar Valcárcel (1932-2010) was one of those rare Peruvian orchestral and chamber music composers from an era that also saw fellow avant garde craftsmen like César Bolaños, Leopoldo La Rosa, and Francisco Pulgar Vidal. Electronic Compositions for the Andes (1967-2006) is like a […]
©B.Ellison Experimental sound artist Francisco López has been long developing and delivering what he calls sonogenic composition, since 1980. He has an extensive discography and has presented his work in some of the world’s most prestigious institutions and has long maintained indulgences in cerebral minimalism. I’ve been fortunate to have witnessed his live performances […]
Magnus Granberg & Skogen | Nun, es wird nicht weit mehr gehen Another Timbre (CD/DL) ‘Well, it won’t be much longer’ or ‘Now, there won’t be much more walking‘ – roughly translated (depending) breathes certain light into this latest composition by Magnus Granberg as performed by Swedish group Skogen: Anna Lindal & Angharad Davies – […]
Stereo Hypnosis & Christopher Chaplin | Bjarmi Fabrique Records (CD/DL) Collaborating here are a trio of Icelandic electronic artists, Stereo Hypnosis (Óskar Thorarensen, Pan Thorarensen + Thorkell Atlasson) alongside British composer Christopher Chaplin on Vienna-based imprint Fabrique. Here, on these four tracks these gentlemen explore some interesting cross-textural style that only comes from combining various […]
Oyvind Torvund | The Exotica Album Hubro (LP/CD/DL) It may seem initially surprising that a record like ‘The Exotica Album’ is doing the rounds of experimental music websites, not least because it is not, by any conventional measure, the least bit experimental. This caveat aside, however, Oyvind Torvund has constructed a work that rests upon […]
Régis Renouard Larivière | Contrée Recollection/Editions Mego (LP/DL) A former teacher of electro-acoustic music at CFMI in Poitiers (1990-99) this is only Régis Renouard Larivière‘s second full-length recording, and his previous, Futaie/Tchernoziom garnered him the Ars Electronica Prize in 1996 and was released in 2000. The album, full of quizzical musique concrète abstractions, is dedicated […]
Ingar Zach | Floating Layer Cake Sofa (CD/DL) This is Ingar Zach‘s Floating Layer Cake. The disc consists of two lengthy tracks beginning with The Lost Ones, a collab with Canadian string quartet Quatuor Bozzini and others. Low frequency tones fall in the hollows and as slow booming percussion takes steps an alert violin leads […]
Matthijs Kouw & Radboud Mens | 2 Moving Furniture Records (LP/DL) In follow-up to 2017’s 1 here are composers Matthijs Kouw & Radboud Mens continuing their journey as a duo with 2 which includes two alphabetic twenty minute long tracks. The tones are low and minimal on C, the first half opener. Well it’s actually […]
Robert Lippok and Kaan Bulak | Kubus Feral Note (DL) In these six tracks, Kubus I-VI, the Berlin-based first-time collaborative duo of composer Robert Lippok and (augmented) pianist Kaan Bulak flex their newfound synergy from light to dark, and back again. We begin in a fairly ambient sweet spot, with only a half-sweetened tinkling of […]
Hugh Marsh | Violinvocations Western Vinyl (LP/DL) I Laid Down In The Snow is the opener to Canadian musician Hugh Marsh‘s latest, Violinvocations. Oozing with air-brushed drone and a fly-like buzz at first, the setting is somewhat barren, the mood distinctively peculiar. There lay Marsh’s strings, in there somewhere, amid the solitude, the static and […]
Christian Winther Christensen | Almost in Gcol legno (CD/DL) Time. Tik-tok. Plink-plonk. The concentric cycles of the day and the labour within the day and the activities within the labour and each movement within each activity. Is it, is everything predictable? Is it, everything determined? Or things we do today, the most transitory movements, can […]
Ellen Fullman & Okkyung Lee | The Air Around HerSkivbolaget (LP/CD/DL) The Air Around Her is a collaboration between two already highly prolific artists – Fullman, she of the infamous Long String Instrument, and Lee, who has teamed up with everyone from Steve Beresford to Mike Ladd. The album is, presumably, an improvisation – both […]
Beni Giles and Colin Alexander | AddelamBig Ship (CD) Comprised of composers Beni Giles and Colin Alexander, Addelam offers a series of site-specific cello-based compositions that both eagerly point to some notable and challenging reference points, and succeed at enouncing their ideas in a novel and exciting manner. Although in no way replicating such luminaries, […]
Lori Goldston and Judith Hamann | Alloys Marginal Frequency (CD/DL) In two long-form pieces Melbourne-based Judith Hamann and Seattle teacher Lori Goldston both bring a new language to their common instrument, the cello. The first piece seems an ‘amalgam’ of several shorter works: Silver | Amalgam | Mother of Pearl | Felt | A Thin […]
Gleb Kanasevich | Subtraction Flag Day Recordings (CD/DL) Just out on Flag Day Recordings, from composer (and clarinetist) Gleb Kanasevich, is his latest, Subtraction. The recordings starts with a four and a half minute excerpt of the title track which follows and runs for just about forty-five minutes. What initially opens as the hum of […]
Phill Niblock | Music for CelloImportant Records (CD) This record sets together three works for cello that Phill Niblock composed between 1974 and 1981, all of them performed by the cellist David Gibson. It is very interesting to investigate backwards in Niblock’s works to find traces of the gestation of drone music as a genre […]
Michael Hoppe (Get On! Records, LP/DL)Put A Filter To Your Ears And Just Smile Through It Michael Hoppe’s gloriously named Put A Filter To Your Ears And Just Smile Through It is a frenetic and ostensibly confused album, but one that is often as rewarding as it is infuriating. Opening with a poly-rhythmic horn section […]
Pauline Oliveros | Reverberations 1 Important Records (LP) It is always hard to speak the right words when it comes to talk about classics. The work of Pauline Oliveros has been seminal for the experience of every composer, listener or simple aficionado who put their interest in electroacoustic music. Being part of that new group […]
Ulex Xane | Stances/Semblance Cipher Productions (CD) Stances/Semblance (edition of 300) is both a forty-year retrospective of musique concrète and electroacoustic works of Ülex Xane (1975-2015) and my personal introduction to his work. Though I’ve been listening as long as he’s been making my tastes have shifted and evolved over time, as has his sound […]
Alvin Lucier | Ricochet LadyBlack Truffle (CD) Alvin Lucier’s I am Sitting in a Room is one of his most associated works, the concept of which uses the room itself to process and reform sounds. The notion of different spaces impacting on the quality of the sounds inside has been explored often in the world […]
3 REVIEWS/3 RECORDS: It demonstrates the versatility of both contemporary composition and the instrument in question, to arrive in the New Year with three very different, modern piano works up for review. Although operating in different fields, and with different scopes and intentions, these three albums have been reviewed together, so as to showcase their […]
Éliane Radigue | Geelriandre/Arthesis Important Records (LP) Released tomorrow, this welcome reissue is the first vinyl pressing (1000 ltd ed; black + clear) of this work by the lauded French composer Éliane Radigue which was originally recorded back in 1972-73 (previously released in 2011 by Senufo Editions on CD). They have put each singular, lengthy […]
Spill | Stereo Corvo Records (LP/DL) Spill is a Berlin duo made up of Magda Mayas (piano) and Tony Buck (percussion) and here are their latest full-length improvisations, Stereo. On this record they lay out two twenty minute plus tracks, Magnetic Island and Sway – one per side. They start with an abstract, sporadic arrangement […]
Dirk P. Haubrich | Robinson Out Of Context Quanta Records (12″/DL) This is my introduction to both Paris imprint Quanta as well as to German improvisational composer, Dirk P. Haubrich who has been known to collaborate with choreographers and other artists. This is his debut recording which includes two works, 7 to 8 and the […]
Antoine Chessex | Subjectivation Fragment Factory (LP/DL) These two lengthy tracks are culled from live material by Swiss noisemaker Antoine Chessex. Subjectivation is the composer playing solo. Beginning with the flared electronic open sources in San Francisco _ Berlin _ Zurich 2010-2014 he bends a series of pedals or wires attached to a tenor sax […]
We are talking with Italian sound/installation artist Fabio Perletta today. Aside from his own work he is also an active curator and label runner for the now defunct Farmacia901 and the upcoming launch, now on Kickstarter (18 Days Left), of 901 Editions. It’s an exciting prospect, to launch a completely new imprint, and Perletta does […]
Håvard Volden | Space Happy SOFA Music (LP/CD/DL) This recording consists of eleven tracks, simply numbered I through XI, one spacier than the next. Space Happy by Oslo-based experimental electric guitarist Håvard Volden is flavored with cosmic dust and syncopated drone. The acoustics are a unique abstract space rock, a nu-musique concrète, rising, falling, drifting. […]
eRikm | Mistpouffers empreintes DIGITALes (CD/DL) Mistpouffers is a selection of three compositions completed between 2014-16, composed by French artist and improviser eRikm. Each piece runs approximately 17-18 minutes in length with two based on 8-channel fixed medium and one in stereo. Opening with Draugalimur where, poof like smoke, the setting is a quiet distant […]
Alvin Lucier | Illuminated by the Moon Black Truffle + ZHdK Records (Box Set: 4xLP + CD + BK) Alvin Lucier hardly needs an introduction as one of the pivotal minimalist composers in the crossover between the 20th + 21st Century. This “Second Edition” of Illuminated by the Moon as printed on back of box, is […]
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