The 5:4 doormat has been inundated with a stream of new releases falling onto it through the last few weeks, many of which are outstanding and deserve fuller treatment in due course—but to at least get the ball rolling, here’s an overview of some of the best, starting with chamber music. Read more
Have you heard of Fuzzy? No, i hadn’t either – so i was pleased to explore a new compilation of music by the enigmatically-monikered Danish composer (otherwise known as Jens Vilhelm Pedersen), recently released by DaCapo. Chimes of Memory presents five works, most of them pretty hefty and which together indicate a composer of diverse interests and decidedly playful outlook. Electronics feature prominently, yet the longest piece is his 30-minute Notre-Dame Trilogy for solo organ, completed in 2006. Fuzzy’s approach to the instrument is clearly rooted in the 20th century French organ tradition but this doesn’t so much fetter the music as provide a frame of reference for it to circle around, bash against and, occasionally, flee from. As such, although regimented within highly compartmentalised structures, Fuzzy’s irrepressible humour and sense of fun keeps the music from being all about an ongoing sense of formal interconnectedness. Put simply, intuition and whim seem to have led the way, and despite some lurches into quasi-Baroque figurations and one or two rather obvious melodic homages to Dupré and Tournemire, Fuzzy more than stamps his own mark on this most unwieldy of instruments, only occasionally using it at full blast. Electronics are clearly close to Fuzzy’s heart, though, often evocative to the point of resembling TV/movie soundtracks. In a piece like B-Movies, for harp and electronics, it’s quite deliberate, the soloist acting as a foil to the electronic scene-shifting around it. But Tre tilbageblik for bass saxophone and electronics clarifies that a dramatic sensibility—and a highly accessible one at that—is an essential part of Fuzzy’s language. Read more
Among the swathe of new releases currently jostling around the 5:4 jukebox, i want to start by flagging up two interesting recent releases, both serendipitous discoveries from the panning-for-gold approach to listening that is my modus operandi these days. First is Duologue, a five-piece from London whose latest EP, Memex, has initiated a host of earworms that are continuing to burrow around my subconscious at the moment. It’s an obvious place to begin, but their sound has more than a little to do with Radiohead, and not simply due to singer Tim Digby-Bell’s ululating vocals that often sound strikingly like a less defocussed Thom Yorke. Their songs share Radiohead’s interest in playing with the multiplicity of conventions associated with rock and pop. Thus, the EP’s title track melds dream pop and autotune to strange effect, crumbling into a hard-edged coda, while ‘Operator’ bumbles along at a fair old lick, with some nicely-judged harmonic shifts in a pair of softer episodes that break up the momentum—yet overall carrying a sense of ecstatic stasis, made manifest in the song’s energetic dancefloor-infused conclusion. But third track ‘Traps’ stands out way beyond either of these, evoking music from an earlier time while conjuring up a sense of balmy humidity; this is checked by the song’s regular structural shifts where major and minor tonality are superimposed (such a simple use of dissonance but still more-or-less unheard of in music of this kind) to delicious effect. Having also spent time with the group’s first album, Song and Dance (which i also warmly recommend), ‘Traps’ is definitely their strongest song to date, mature and subtle. The EP is available in physical formats (CD/vinyl) direct from the band and in digital from all the usual places, plus you can stream it below. Read more
Having recently examined the more interesting soloistic and orchestral new releases, it’s time to give an overview of the best of the rest, music that doesn’t fit quite so easily into nice categories. First, released today on the Innova label, is Sunken Cathedral, the new album from Korean-American composer and singer Bora Yoon. Described as “a sonic journey through the chambers of subconscious”, the collection of songs that comprise Sunken Cathedral are a testament to Yoon’s fascination with sound design, married to a vocal approach that evokes a kind of ecstatic mysticism (or should that be mystical ecstasy?). It’s a quality writ large at the outset, refitting Hildegard of Bingen into a soft ambient driftscape, but throughout the album it reveals itself in increasingly subtle and unexpected ways. Yoon’s ear is clearly very fine-tuned; a dreamy setting of the Latin In Paradisum text is encased in the sounds of a scrawling pen, dogs barking, gentle bow tappings on a viola, jangling chimes, the rustling of Bible pages, a pair of Buddha machines and — my favourite — “subwoofing spoons”. It’s heady, even intoxicating stuff, with absolutely no sense of novelty to any of it; each sound, literally, rings true. Read more
Alongside the collection of impressive soloistic new releases i recently reviewed, several new CDs of orchestral and ensemble music have emerged lately. One of the most surprising, from an aesthetic perspective, is the latest disc of Mark-Anthony Turnage‘s music released by LSO Live. The surprise is encapsulated in the titles of the two works on the CD, Speranza and From the Wreckage, both titles that are inherently optimistic in outlook. For a composer who has hitherto created countless works from mining deep seams of despair and desolation, this is quite the volte face, but as Turnage himself commented prior to Speranza‘s first performance last year, it’s all too easy self-indulgently to “wallow in misery and darkness”. That’s not to suggest Turnage’s tone in these works is chipper, exactly, but there is, particularly in parts of From the Wreckage, a spring in the music’s step of a thoroughly different kind from the grotesque forms of bounce and stumble more common in his output. Beyond this, there’s a quite deliberate move towards that most disquieting concept for the avant garde, accessibility. From the Wreckage—a work that’s by no means as blasted as its title suggests—conjures up majestic sweeping vistas, and even when it lurches into more violent territory, it’s more obstreperous than angry, smarting rather than wounded. Read more
Judging by the majority of CDs that have been sent to me recently, contemporary music is seeing a surge in recordings of works highlighting solo instruments. The collection i have received occupies different regions of the avant garde, from the most familiar and accessible to its forbidding outer fringes. 
Somewhere in between, yet the most impenetrable of them all, is James Erber‘s ‘Traces’ cycle for solo flute, released by Convivium Records. Erber has long struck me as a kind of non-mainstream Alexander Goehr, in that his music is always rigorously argued, its logic unassailable (a point Erber has always hammered home via his voluble essays and programme notes), yet never really opening itself up to allow the listener in. In short, its intellectual prowess crowds out its emotional potential, and in this respect the ‘Traces’ cycle is no different. There’s greatest interest to be found in the first of the three movements, where a low, increasingly rhythmic element makes incursions into the music’s ongoing melodic thrust (involving some nice fluttertongue writing and, after its fraught high point, some enigmatic ruminative finger tapping). But the second and third movements ramp up the intensity such that it becomes relentless, demonstrating an unstoppable, determined conviction that ends up nullifying both the effect and the interest. A curious extended stasis towards the end, involving soft high notes, is a welcome break, but the piece is no less inscrutable for it. In many ways, the trio of smaller works on the disc make a much stronger impact, but strongest of all is flautist Matteo Cesari‘s playing; it may be hard to decode Erber’s code, but Cesari does at least ensure its intricacies are presented with utmost clarity. Read more
Many’s the time i decide to write about a composer, group or artist and find it almost unconscionable that i haven’t done so already. That’s overwhelmingly the case with Man Without Country, a duo from south Wales whose unique brand of dreamy electronic pop has been doing the rounds for a little over two years. Indeed, it’s tempting to begin with an apology for not featuring them sooner. Still, definitely better late than never.
If you were to combine the heartfelt melancholy of Keane, the aloof, breathy detachment of Pet Shop Boys, the late-night wistfulness of Go West and the viscous, transcendent haze of M83, you’d begin to approximate the essence of Man Without Country’s music. Choosing their name, they say, as it “carries an instant intrigue […] it derives from ‘a sense of not belonging’ “, Tomas Greenhalf and Ryan James hit the ground running two summers ago with their first EP, King Complex. Both in its entirety and in just the title track (which remains one of their best) can be heard the duo’s predilection for a mode of expression that employs both the gentlest of soft edges as well as timbres and textures that cut like razor wire. It’s a dichotomy that works because it must, being the means to what is ultimately a very emotional end, declared with unflinching honesty in their lyrics. Read more
