A couple of electronic music announcements. First, if you’ll forgive the self-pluggery, i’m pleased to announce that the third volume of my ongoing series of Studies is now available. (Many thanks to all of you who have purchased volumes 1 and 2.) The Studies explore my interest in structuring sound materials from an initially visual perspective, an approach i describe as ‘Op music’, a sonic equivalent of Op art. The three studies on Vol. 3 are highly diverse. No. 12 is an exploration of near parallel pitch movement, resulting in shepard tone-like sequences and a shifting, paradoxical sense of stasis and movement. No. 13 examines the juxtaposition of freely-evolving sounds within an imposed metric system, positioning quasi-random clouds of pitch within an grid-like arrangement. Vol. 3 ends with my longest study to date, No. 10. Its 14-minute duration begins with a vast number of tightly packed pitch bands, moving as one; over time, these gradually drift out of alignment, resulting in complex waves and patterns of harmonic distribution and introducing elements of implied melody. The work is complicated further by a central episode, the noise of which permeates this process and threatens to disrupt it from within.
Studies vol. 3 is a digital-only EP, available via Bandcamp. The accompanying artwork has again been created by the marvellous Polish generative artist Tomasz Sulej (folds2d.tumblr.com). All three pieces can be streamed below.
Second, more importantly, Huddersfield University’s annual Electric Spring festival kicks off this Wednesday, running until Sunday. Once again it features a typically diverse collection of composers, many of whom are happily new to me. Alex McLean and Dave Smith will be performing improvisations, Mark Lyken & Emma Dove are presenting their film Mirror Lands, Argentine composer Beatriz Ferreyra (well-known particularly for her work composed as part of Pierre Schaeffer’s Groupe de Recherches Musicales) is represented in three electronic works including her brand new 16-channel work Los senderos de luz y sombras, premièred last month in Paris, and Richard Scott will bring the festival to an end with a suite of analogue synth pieces. These concerts are supplemented with opening acts from Tadej Droljc, Demelza Kooij & Lars Koens, Geoff Cox & Keith Marley, Frédéric Dufeu, Solomiya Moroz & Marko Ivic and Elías Merino. Each concert
All are preceded by pre-concert talks, and there’s a keynote talk from filmmaker Andrew Kötting. There are two additional late night concerts on Friday and Saturday nights, and throughout the festival there’s an interactive installation by Stewart Worthy called Speaker Grid situated in the Creative Arts Building’s large atrium. Everything is free – everything – so it’s a fabulous opportunity for some really new sonic experiences. i’ll be there for the duration, and will be reviewing as much as i can. Full details are available on the Electric Spring website, where you can also download the festival programme.
There’s a time to get excited about music, and there’s a time to leap around with irresistible, exuberant elation. 2017 is less than two weeks old, and already I have no doubt whatsoever that I’ve heard what will prove to be one of its very best albums. Looking back over the last decade, one of its most epic recurring zeniths—running through it like a range of mountains towering over almost everything else—has been the output from two sibling projects of Dutch musician Jason Köhnen: The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble and The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation. They’ve appeared on 5:4 on numerous occasions—TMFDC’s 
As with his vocal works, Michael Finnissy‘s chamber music is represented on four Metier discs, comprising around twenty pieces composed across three decades, from 1977 to 2007. This is only a miniscule proportion of Finnissy’s vast quantity of chamber music, but it nonetheless provides a valuable demonstration of various aspects of his compositional language. Above all, his omnipresent engagement with existing musical materials, which while often manifested in Finnissy’s music to varying degrees of convolution and obfuscation, could hardly be more overwhelmingly obvious in Metier’s 2013 CD featuring two works for piano quintet. 
It’s been good to get back to the plethora of new releases that have have found their way to my door in recent weeks and months. While i don’t like to make spurious connections between disparate pieces of music, i’ve been fascinated at the way various composers explore the interplay between what we might call the ‘virtual’ and the ‘actual’. In Morton Feldman‘s 1976 ‘Beckett trilogy’—comprising Orchestra for orchestra, Elemental Procedures for soprano, mixed choir and orchestra and Routine Investigations for six players, released together on a CD from Wergo titled 
