For reasons geographical and pandemical, it’s quite a long while since i’ve had the chance to be by the sea. To a limited extent, i’ve been able to do this vicariously through the opening movement of To Be Beside the Seaside, the first orchestral work by English composer Joanna Bailie.…

The longest work i’ve ever written about on 5:4 is Scottish composer James Dillon‘s magnificent three-hour Nine Rivers cycle, which i explored almost a decade ago. So it’s rather nice that the next piece i’m exploring in this year’s Lent Series focusing on nature, also by James Dillon, is one…

For the majority of us, throughout much of the last 12 months we’ve been largely unable or forbidden from travelling far from home. Personally, i’ve become increasingly aware of how fortunate i am to live somewhere rural, enabling me to enter the countryside by, literally, crossing the road. But many…

Another festival that’s recently been announced is an entirely new addition to the annual list of new music events. The Baltic Music Days is in initiative that seeks to bring together contemporary music from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. i first heard suggestions about the possibility of this festival a few…

Following the almost complete write-off of 2020, festivals are continuing to be forced to rejig, reorganise and reconfigure their concerts this year due to ongoing restrictions. The 2021 Borealis festival in Bergen, Norway, has just been announced, and whereas last year it managed to take place just about normally before…

One of the first new releases of 2021 to catch my attention is Occurrence featuring the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. According to conductor Daníel Bjarnason, this is “the third and last album of the ISO project” which, if true, is a shame in both a positive and a negative sense. Positive:…

For the last two years, in the final week of January i’ve been heading off to Iceland for the annual Dark Music Days festival. Like pretty much all festivals at the moment, DMD has been postponed for a few months, but as a small consolation i’m going to conclude this…

As i’m sure i’ve lamented previously, the organ is a bit of a neglected instrument in the world of new music. No doubt that’s due in part to its historical associations and also the site-specific nature of so many of them, but all the same, considering the range, power and…

There have been numerous occasions when i’ve previously written about and celebrated the art of the remix. Remixes were an integral part of my developing musical taste and understanding at the start of, and throughout, my teens: i got into the habit of buying both the 7-inch and 12-inch versions…

We tend to assume nowadays that, once something is put online, it’ll never disappear. But in the case of 15 Songs from Glass, Oil and Other Sources, by Russian experimentalist Nikita Golyshev (aka CD-R), that’s not the case. The album was originally released in 2007 on a netlabel called Musica Excentrica,…

Three years ago, i featured in my ‘Free internet music’ series a new release from Finnish musician Lassi Nikko, aka Brothomstates, who had surprised everyone at the end of 2017 by suddenly putting out a new 13-minute track after over a decade and a half of silence. In the final…

Among my favourite singer-songwriters is Chelsea Wolfe. To spend time with her albums – the last two of which featured in my Best Albums of the Year lists: Birth of Violence in 2019 and Hiss Spun in 2017 – is to become immersed in uniquely spine-tingling worlds of dark lyricism,…

Last July, i included in my Isolation Mixtape N an excerpt from Oblivion, a 12-minute work by Vietnamese sound artist Nhung Nguyen. In its entirety it’s an impressive and strikingly beautiful piece, one that sets up an interesting relationship between its various elements. Or is it a relationship at all?…

As has been the custom on 5:4 in recent years, i’m starting 2021 with the financial aftermath of the holiday season in mind, exploring some of the more interesting music freely available online. It’s important to stress that, just because it’s available free, doesn’t mean you can’t choose to pay an…

A very Happy New Year to you all! As always, i want to begin 2021 by thanking all of you around the world who have followed and supported 5:4 during the last year, most especially and above all to my growing number of esteemed and beloved Patrons. i don’t think…

It’s something of a relief knowing that this year, finally, is poised to become a memory, consigned to history. But before it does, here’s the second part of my 40 Best Albums of 2020, each of which has wonderfully demonstrated that this year has had a lot more going for…

i’m sure i’m not alone in being somewhat impatient to see the back of 2020. It’s been a horribly testing and demoralising year, and of course there’ll be some way to go into 2021 (and likely beyond) before life starts to settle into whatever version of ‘normal’ eventually prevails. But…

For the last six years, the SWR Vokalensemble and conductor Marcus Creed have been on a systematic journey through choral music from all points of the globe. It’s a journey i wasn’t aware of until earlier this year, when a large box set unexpectedly arrived at my door, ambitiously titled…

NB. While this article does not contain any specific plot spoilers, it does discuss various aspects of Saint Maud; anyone yet to see the film may wish to postpone reading further until afterwards. For a long time i’ve been itching to write a large-scale text about the relationship between avant-garde…

[This article is adapted and expanded from a patron-only post published to my Patreon supporters late last year.] In two weeks’ time i’ll be starting my annual two-day pilgrimage through the forty Best Albums of the Year. Each year these articles tend to garner more attention (and certainly a greater…