A few years ago, in a book about ambient music that i co-edited with Monty Adkins, i wrote a chapter where i proposed the possibility of ‘meta-ambient’, the idea that a great deal of music not necessarily immediately heard as being related or even connected to ambient – as it…

This week i’ve been spending time with a couple of new albums that could each be described as being “devotional”. By that i don’t simply mean ‘religious’, although both of them are fundamentally informed by that attitude, one explicitly, the other implicitly. Listening to them has been a thought-provoking experience,…

Somewhat against the odds – and also somewhat unexpectedly – i’m heading off this morning to the north of England for a holiday in Yorkshire. Back next week.

What’s the difference between consistency and tautology? It’s a question i’ve returned to repeatedly over the last few years primarily in relation to the music of both Rebecca Saunders and Autechre, and it seems to be pertinent to Clara Iannotta as well. Last year, when exploring the previous album of…

Not so long ago i revisited an old favourite of mine, William Walton’s Façade, a work that takes sublimity and absurdity and wonderfully manages to make them gel – or, at least, engage in a weirdly (un)comfortable coexistence. Both the character and the attitude of Façade have been brought instantly…

When i first started putting together the new 5:4 mixtape, my intention – inspired by the sunshine of summer – was to focus on the colour yellow. However, i also allowed gold and orange onto the shortlist as well, and in the end, completely by chance, gold has almost completely…

In my last article i explored a CD featuring an overview of the string music of Penderecki, and it’s been interesting to reflect further on aspects of that in relation to Filz, a new album devoted to German composer Enno Poppe – featuring Ensemble Resonanz, and conducted by Poppe – which…

A couple of years ago, in my annual ‘Free internet music’ series i explored the work of US electronica artist Rob Lioy, better known as Access to Arasaka. At the time, one of the drawbacks to accessing his work was that it was mostly only available in low resolution lossy…

It must have been a strange experience for anyone smitten by the music of Krzysztof Penderecki during the 1960s and early 1970s, falling in love with the bold, abrasive, raw abstract shapes and sound forms unleashed in works such as Emanations (1959), Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima (1960), St…

It’s often felt a bit strange for me that the composer about whose music i’m the most passionate, whose music occupies the largest percentage of my music collection, and whose music i’ve analysed and studied in more depth and therefore know more about than any other composer, is someone i…

Three years ago, the Proms festival featured the first complete performance of The Brandenburg Project, a large-scale undertaking by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, who commissioned six composers to write a work responding to one of J. S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, with the aim that they should ideally also use the…

Despite its name, it’s important to note that not everything performed at this year’s inaugural Baltic Music Days originated in the Baltic (though all of the performers did). Among the most striking of the international pieces was Spur by Austrian composer Beat Furrer. Composed in 1998, it was especially interesting…

Does the phrase “Baltic music” mean anything? Is it something that has a discrete, tangible identity? i found myself considering this question during pretty much every concert of this year’s first ever Baltic Music Days. A festival that’s been in the offing for a number of years, bringing together composers…

This year’s Proms programme has begun, tentatively, to be unveiled. At present there remains a number of concerts where the content has not yet been announced – plus several ‘Mystery Proms’ – so there will be more to come, but thus far there are a few contemporary items to start…

The Sono Luminus label’s ongoing commitment to Icelandic music continues with Moonbow, a new album featuring five works by Gunnar Andreas Kristinsson. Hitherto, my only contact with Gunnar’s music has been via his 2013 release Patterns, showcasing a variety of his earlier output for piano and organ. That album had…

It’s always exciting when a new album of music by Natasha Barrett appears, and it feels like it’s been a long wait since her last release, the dazzling Puzzle Wood (one of my Best Albums of 2017), came out four years ago. While that album explored her earlier output –…

The act of listening, at its best, often seems to suggest a form of ‘inhabiting’ the music, and that’s particularly true of Splitting, a new 26-minute work by UK composer Paul Obermayer. i’ll come back to this a bit later. It’s perhaps best to start not at the beginning but…

It’s rare these days to find new additions to the sphere of ambient music that go beyond being merely extended, superficial, one-dimensional platitudes. So it’s been a relief to spend a mixture of active and passive time with Verdant, a recent album from US composer David Dunn, which taps into…

Considering that most of us have been spending the last 12 months in varying forms of isolation, it seems a fitting time to focus on music for solo instruments. German label Kairos clearly feels the same way, as they’ve recently brought out a short series of five albums, each titled…

Early last year, before life on earth tilted over into abject abnormality, i experienced a performance at the Dark Music Days in Reykjavík that, in hindsight, i perhaps summed up a little too succinctly. On the one hand, it was completely true when i wrote, of the performance given by…