CD/Digital releases

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…

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…

As in most countries, Estonian contemporary music has its share of conservatives (more) and radicals (fewer), but one composer in particular tends to flit between the two. At first listen, many would probably place Tõnu Kõrvits‘ music firmly in the conservative camp. He is, without a doubt, the country’s most…

i’m no lover of vinyl. Quite the opposite, yet some of the best musical creations i’ve ever heard all stem in some respect from its archaic world of spin and surface noise, pop and crackle. A full decade ago i was marvelling at Cosey Fanny Tutti and Philippe Petit’s miniature…

It was earlier this year that i first encountered the label Elli Records, self-described as “an independent label focused on music made by humans, for humans, with computers”. Nothing particularly unusual about that, but while i’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of their five years’ worth of releases,…

In order to write about In Blue, the new collaborative album from The Bug and Dis Fig, i need to break a couple of personal ground rules. #1: Don’t do nostalgia. #2: Don’t write about yourself. The reason i need to break those rules is because of the way In…

Considering it was released back in July it’s taken me far too long to get round to spending time with a split album featuring two field recording-based works by Chris Watson and Georgia Rodgers. Both works have their origins in installation pieces. Watson’s Notes from the Forest Floor began life five…

One of the shorter albums i’ve heard this year, but nonetheless one of the more arresting, is by the improbably named Joeri Chipsvingers (nom de guerre for Belgian composer Michiel de Naegel). Titled De Avonturen van Joeri Chipsvingers, it comes across as a sort of unhinged electroacoustic chamber farrago in…

Coincidentally, another project i’ve been involved with also materialised last week. For Gunnar Geisse‘s new CD TRIPTYCH, released on the NEOS label, i’ve contributed an essay to the liner notes. Titled ‘Liminal (un)reality’, my text explores the music’s complex amalgam of reproduced and recreated, supposedly real and actually real sounds,…

It’s a work i’d very much like to write about in more depth at a later date, as there’s so much to say about it… i wrote those words following a concert that took place almost exactly a year ago, before the time when lockdowns were a thing and i…

The other newly-released portrait album that’s got me thinking about polarities lately is Earthing, featuring four works for string quartet by Italian composer Clara Iannotta. The reason it provoked that particular train of thought (among many others) is due to the fact that, unlike most new music, it doesn’t so…