5:4
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  • About
  • Patrons
  • The Lists
    • List of compositions reviewed on 5:4
    • List of albums and EPs reviewed on 5:4
    • Festivals reviewed on 5:4
    • Best Albums of the Years
    • The Proms premières – Poll results
    • Complete list of ratings
  • Mixtapes, etc.
  • Contact
    • Contact Form
    • Submission Contact Form
5:4
Tag:

experimental

  • CD/Digital releasesFree internet musicThematic series

    Free internet music: Nikita Golyshev – 15 Songs from Glass, Oil and Other Sources

    by 5:4 January 18, 2021 • 11:18
    January 18, 2021 • 11:18

    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,…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2019 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 November 27, 2019 • 15:58
    November 27, 2019 • 15:58

    Last week i was able to catch a couple of days of the shenanigans going on at this year’s Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. It was strange not to be doing my usual thing of setting up camp for the whole shebang, but quite apart from it being better than nothing,…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Nordic Music Days 2019 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 November 19, 2019 • 16:31
    November 19, 2019 • 16:31

    Founded in 1888, the annual Nordic Music Days is one of the oldest contemporary music festivals in the world. It’s a peripatetic festival, moving from place to place each year, and for 2019 – surprisingly, for the first time – it moved north of the Arctic Circle, to the small…

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  • ConcertsFestivals

    Summartónar 2019 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 August 7, 2019 • 16:26
    August 7, 2019 • 16:26

    When did you last listen to music from the Faroe Islands? Who’s your favourite Faroese composer or group? For many, i suspect, those questions would likely be impossible to answer, and until recently – with the big exception of Eivør, one of my very favourite singers – i would have been…

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  • 20th CenturyCD/Digital releases

    all that dust: music by Morton Feldman, Matthew Shlomowitz, Séverine Ballon, Milton Babbitt and Luigi Nono

    by 5:4 October 12, 2018 • 11:57
    October 12, 2018 • 11:57

    The launching of a new label devoted to contemporary music is something to celebrate, and the newest kid on the block is all that dust, the brainchild of composer Newton Armstrong, soprano Juliet Fraser and pianist Mark Knoop. The label’s first five releases have recently appeared, and there are a…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    North of North, Rohan Drape & Anthony Pateras – Ellesmere

    by 5:4 June 5, 2018 • 14:57
    June 5, 2018 • 14:57

    My first encounter with the music of Anthony Pateras – in the form of last year’s The Slow Creep of Convenience, his duo with violinist Erkki Veltheim – was a mind-blowing experience, one of the best things i had heard all year. So i was excited when two new discs arrived…

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  • CD/Digital releasesFree internet musicThematic series

    Free internet music: Ektoise

    by 5:4 January 26, 2018 • 13:00
    January 26, 2018 • 13:00

    It’s Australia Day, so the next artist i’m featuring in my series looking at free internet music is the Brisbane-based group Ektoise. It’s difficult to know where to begin, partly because, stylistically speaking, it’s not easy to summarise succinctly what their music is like, and partly because Ektoise is just…

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  • Mixtapes

    Mixtape #28 : Speech

    by 5:4 October 1, 2013 • 12:14
    October 1, 2013 • 12:14

    For the last mixtape of 2013, i’ve decided to explore music in which speech is paramount. Within a musical context, spoken words can jar in much the same way as an actor breaking the fourth wall, unsettling us by (ostensibly at least) withholding abstraction in favour of direct reference. The…

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  • ConcertsPremières

    Marc Yeats – sturzstrom (World Première)

    by 5:4 June 15, 2012 • 23:31
    June 15, 2012 • 23:31

    Two weeks ago, i was fortunate to be in the cool gloom of Beer Quarry Caves, a man-made cave network on the east coast of Devon. The caves themselves—resulting from two millennia of mining, beginning with the Romans—are fascinating enough, but i was there for something almost as remarkable, the…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Mika Vainio – Life (… It Eats You Up)

    by 5:4 August 1, 2011 • 01:43
    August 1, 2011 • 01:43

    For around seven minutes, you wonder where you are. Extended, sharp, contorted droning outbursts emanate from somewhere, wrestling either to cling to or break free from their origin. It’s like witnessing an alien voice learn how to speak. And then, seemingly from nowhere, IRRUPTION! the music transformed into a massive…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Noveller – Glacial Glow

    by 5:4 June 6, 2011 • 17:12
    June 6, 2011 • 17:12

    Since departing from rock outfit Parts & Labor in 2009, Sarah Lipstate has taken to exploring deeply experimental territory. Under the nom de guerre of Noveller, armed with only a guitar and the determination to subject it to all manner of treatments, she has spent the last couple of years…

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  • Anniversaries

    Björk – The Breezeblock & Mixing It Specials

    by 5:4 November 21, 2010 • 01:00
    November 21, 2010 • 01:00

    It’s more than a little staggering to realise that today is the 45th birthday of one Björk Guðmundsdóttir, an artist i’ve followed for the entirety of her solo career and continue to admire very much (one day, i hope to explore her complete output here—when i have a couple of…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Quixotic risks: Deerhoof – Offend Maggie

    by 5:4 October 17, 2008 • 23:03
    October 17, 2008 • 23:03

    The week before last saw the release of Deerhoof’s new album, Offend Maggie. After the undiluted artistry and infectiousness of 2007’s Friend Opportunity, this was a definite highlight in the calendar, made all the more tantalising by the performance of half of the songs at their concert in Brooklyn’s Prospect…

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  • Concerts

    Live in Prospect Park: Metropolis Ensemble and Deerhoof

    by 5:4 September 5, 2008 • 13:14
    September 5, 2008 • 13:14

    i’m surprised there’s not more comment on the web about the recent concert given jointly by the Metropolis Ensemble and Deerhoof, which took place in July in Brooklyn as part of the Wordless Music series. This had been hyped up a fair bit beforehand, partly because it was bringing together…

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  • Miscellaneous

    Deerhoof: confounding & clever

    by 5:4 April 30, 2008 • 20:57
    April 30, 2008 • 20:57

    i detest the obsession to subdivide music into genres, and what excites me so much about Deerhoof’s music is that it’s absolutely impossible to pigeon-hole. i’ve seen them called “indie rock”, “post rock”, “avant rock” and “math rock”; but i don’t worry about such things, and choose rather to revel…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Leave your high hopes at the door: Portishead – Third

    by 5:4 April 13, 2008 • 12:15
    April 13, 2008 • 12:15

    Engaging with music (or any of the arts) is one of the greatest, most edifying experiences life has to offer. Arguably the most insuperable barrier to this engagement is expectation. It’s a mistake that arises all too easily; our past experiences (pleasurable or otherwise) construct the likelihood of a similar…

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  • Miscellaneous

    Irrational Appendage (Extending)

    by 5:4 February 18, 2008 • 18:51
    February 18, 2008 • 18:51

    Back in the late autumn of 2005, when – in every sense – things were very much darker than they are now, i did perhaps the strangest music search i’ve ever done. Into Soulseek i idly typed the words “disjecta membra”, only half curious to see what it might find,…

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  • Thematic series

    Scandanavian sounds, part 2: Deathprod

    by 5:4 February 15, 2008 • 21:50
    February 15, 2008 • 21:50

    Deathprod – it’s a name both striking and strange, which is appropriate, as his music is both of these things too. There are obvious similarities to Biosphere – both are Norwegian; both explore large soundscapes; both create music that is immediately arresting – and yet there’s something very much more going…

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Nils Henrik Asheim: Lydkilder Sound and Image: Aesthetics and Practices Music Beyond Airports: appraising ambient music Simon Cummings | 間 Studies vol. 6

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