It’s three months since i began the Outside-In project, responding to the lockdown by compiling submitted field recordings that could act as vivid reminders of, and virtual windows onto, the outside world during a time when we weren’t able to experience it first-hand. Thankfully, much has changed and improved from that initial state of lockdown, so with today’s recording, i’m bringing the project to a close. The final recording comes from Norwegian sound engineer Cato Langnes, who works at Notam, Norway’s centre for technology, art and music.
Cato has been by far the most enthusiastic participant in Outside-In; during the last couple of months he has sent me a large number of recordings made both before and during the lockdown, the longest of which was almost an hour long. Any of them would have been a fine addition to the series, but the one that i like most he recorded a few weeks ago in the woods beside Lake Øyungen, around 15km north of Oslo. The recording was made on 15 May using a RØDE NT-SF 1 ambisonic microphone and a Sound Devices MixPre-6 recorder.
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i want to give a big shout-out and a heads-up for a new book that’s just been published, which includes a chapter by me. Sound and Image: Aesthetics and Practices had its inception at the 
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A few days ago marked the 25th anniversary of my father’s death. It seems like such an impossibly long time ago, yet his all-too-brief presence in my life, and all-too-long absence from it, continue to resonate in me and make their mark in my life and in my music. Back in 2009, i created a three-part composition exploring my memories of him, which by then were becoming intangible and strange. That work, one of my earliest electronic works, was Triptych, May/July 2009, and as well as being an important act of catharsis, it was a significant step forward in my musical technique and language. The piece was also the first of mine that i put out on a limited edition, self-released CD. It did rather well, but during a recent lockdown-inspired spring clean i discovered a small cache of the remaining CDs nestling in a box.
i’ve been waiting for this for three years. At the 2017 Estonian Music Days, i experienced a double onslaught to the head and heart courtesy of choir Vox Clamantis performing the music of Cyrillus Kreek. For this reason more than any other, i’ve clung to the 
One of the first works of contemporary music that i ever got to know was Dérive 1 by Pierre Boulez. i fell for the piece pretty hard, and one of the main reasons for that infatuation – which hasn’t really subsided in the decades since – was the way Boulez constructs pretty much the entire fabric of the work from tremulous fibres that constantly vibrate, shimmer and thrum as if an electric current were coursing through them. Paradoxically, a palpable stillness emerges despite all this surface movement (not unlike the surface of water covered in pond skaters), creating a soundworld pulsating with life while conveying an air of quiet solemnity. A similar quality permeates the five chamber compositions on Atonement, a new portrait disc of music by Icelandic composer Páll Ragnar Pálsson.
For those of you who prefer a little less avant in your garde, consider the latest portrait disc of music by Tõnu Kõrvits. Kõrvits occupies an interesting position within the Estonian contemporary scene. His music embodies a great deal of the conservatism that tends to typify new music from that country – a situation that is gradually changing – yet it’s also mischievous, quixotic and capricious, often turning out to be something more or other than first appearances might suggest. Additionally, he’s by far the most lyrical Estonian composer i’ve encountered (and that’s saying something), unafraid to allow his music to expand seemingly unchecked into vast, passionately romantic (with both a small and large ‘R’) reveries – though often these are coloured in such a way that they simultaneously convey an air or at least a trace of unease. The new disc of his work, Hymns to the Northern Lights, performed by the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Risto Joost, is an excellent demonstration of all these traits.
