It would be disingenuous to downplay just how laugh out loud funny is so much of John Oswald’s music. And this is surely one of the main reasons why he has fallen foul of the more simple-minded legal “brains” in the pop industry, since a casual encounter with his later…
Category:
CD/Digital releases
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To return to the theme of reissues that i was exploring recently, another composer whose work has hitherto been languishing relatively unheard is the Canadian John Oswald. i first encountered his music around 25 years ago, at a Birmingham Symphony Hall concert where the Kronos Quartet included his astonishing electroacoustic…
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Released tomorrow is a new album of eight works by Icelandic composers, all of which have been curated by – and in some cases created in collaboration with – cellist and vocalist Gyða Valtýsdóttir. The general tone of these works, all of which are quite brief, is meditative in nature,…
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Despite being located at opposite ends of the aesthetic / behavioural spectrum, i’ve recently been finding that two new releases pose the same questions about the distinction between long- and short-term listening. In the case of Arboreal, the latest album by Canadian musician Jamie Drouin’s alter ego Liquid Transmitter, this…
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A couple of years ago i wrote about the world première of Erkki-Sven Tüür‘s Symphony No. 9, subtitled ‘Mythos’. It was a fantastic performance of what turned out to be a marvellous piece (i often find myself marvelling while listening to Tüür’s music), so it’s exciting to see that original…
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The most fascinating – and the most extensive – campaign of reissuing earlier work that i’ve ever encountered is by US artist Matt Waldron, better known as irr. app. (ext.). His earliest releases date from the late 1990s, a time when Waldron’s access to and capabilities with technology were apparently…
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Another composer who has been polishing off, smartening up and reissuing old works recently is Canadian Paul Dolden. It always surprises me how underappreciated and even unknown Dolden’s music continues to be, particularly as it’s among the most extreme stuff i’ve ever encountered (and, for good or ill, people love…
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A few months back i wrote about about the appearance of various releases by The Hafler Trio on Bandcamp, which quite apart from being highly unexpected (hitherto Andrew M. McKenzie had seemed opposed to his output being released in a digital format) is a very good thing indeed, since most…
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A noticeable musical side-effect of the lockdown has been to take the opportunity to reissue composers’ earlier work, usually in some newly-polished or otherwise revised form. Four artists in particular – Roland Kayn, The Hafler Trio [Andrew M. McKenzie], Paul Dolden and irr. app. (ext.) [Matthew Waldron] have reissued work…
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It’s fitting that the first portrait disc devoted to the music of UK composer Naomi Pinnock should be titled Lines and Spaces. Not merely because one of the four works featured on the disc has that as its title, but due to the fact that every time i’ve listened to…
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Composer portrait albums tend to go one of two ways, highlighting either the broad diversity of their output or the more single-minded consistency of a central idea permeating multiple works. In the case of Verbinden und Abwenden, a new disc exploring the music of Turkish composer Zeynep Gedizlioğlu, it’s most…
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Nine years ago, in a series of articles about ‘Contemporary Epics’, i wrote about The Death of Rave, Leyland Kirby‘s gargantuan paean to the world of rave culture. Originally released in 2006 as a free MP3 download in 20 instalments (under Kirby’s occasional nom de guerre V/Vm), it vanished from…
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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 memories of that first…
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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…
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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…
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It’s always nice when music you’ve encountered in a previous context finds its way onto disc. That’s true of two of the three works on the latest CD of Olga Neuwirth‘s music, released by Kairos. i first heard Neuwirth’s viola concerto Remnants of Songs … an Amphigory during the 2012…
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If you’ve been finding that the current state of lockdown and isolation has been making you feel bored or world-weary, then Ennui, the latest release by Austrian ensemble Franui might just be exactly what you need – regardless whether that’s empathy or escapism. Franui are well-known for their arrangements and…
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Another release on the Mikroclimat label that it’s taken me far too long to spend time with is Paysages imaginaires by Montréal-based composer Pierre-Luc Lecours. As the title – ‘imaginary landscapes’ – implies, the five tracks on this half-hour album create and inhabit artificial environments conjured up through the combination…
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One of the mid-length releases i’ve been revelling in most lately is PUNT by Érick d’Orion and Guillaume Cliche. It exhibits something i always treasure in music of all kinds: complexity as the product of relative simplicity (which is usually the most interesting kind of complexity). The nine electronic pieces on…
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While it remains impossible to experience live performances at the moment, i’ve been enjoying doing it virtually by immersing myself in Live at Cafe OTO, a recording of the half-hour debut performance given there in summer 2018 by sound artist Nokuit. i need to cut to the chase with this…
