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CD/Digital releases

  • CD/Digital releases

    Neglected symphonies: Rued Langgaard

    by 5:4 October 1, 2025 • 06:25
    October 1, 2025 • 06:25

    The last time i wrote about Danish composer Rued Langgaard, it was to celebrate a new recording of his Symphony No. 1, not only one of his own best works but a symphonic masterpiece in its own right (surely the best first symphony by any young composer; he was a …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Neglected symphonies: Lepo Sumera – Symphonies Nos. 1 & 6

    by 5:4 September 25, 2025 • 06:00
    September 25, 2025 • 06:00

    Neglect has also surrounded the symphonies of Estonian composer Lepo Sumera. He’s generally lauded, loudly, within his homeland, but Sumera’s symphonic cause – comprising six symphonies, the last completed not long before his sudden death in 2000 – has been almost entirely limited to Estonian conductors. Parvo Järvi recorded a …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Neglected symphonies: Miloslav Kabeláč – Symphony No. 2

    by 5:4 September 20, 2025 • 11:29
    September 20, 2025 • 11:29

    The second of Czech composer Miloslav Kabeláč‘s eight symphonies has come out in a new recording by the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra under Jakub Hrůša. i got to know his symphonies a few years ago, in the excellent Supraphon box set, and found him to be a curiously inconsistent …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Neglected symphonies: Elsa Barraine – Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2

    by 5:4 September 16, 2025 • 10:27
    September 16, 2025 • 10:27

    One of my biggest classical music bêtes noires is the way so much significant music is allowed to be forgotten, with concert programmers snoozing on their laurels as they serve up yet another reheated season of the same old, same old. That’s especially the case where symphonies – and, more …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Aggregate – new works for automated pipe organs

    by 5:4 August 15, 2025 • 16:29
    August 15, 2025 • 16:29

    If you’re in the mood for something a bit left-field to liven up your summer, you could do worse than check out Aggregate, a double album featuring “new works for automated pipe organs”. i know, right? i’ve experienced my fair share of automated organ music, and it invariably tends toward …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Grażyna Bacewicz – Orchestral Works, Vol. 2

    by 5:4 August 5, 2025 • 14:43
    August 5, 2025 • 14:43

    Another year, another Grażyna Bacewicz portrait CD. CPO’s series Complete Symphonic Works, begun in 2023 and featuring the WDR Symphony Orchestra, concluded after three volumes with the wildly inaccurate claim that they’d released the lot. The BBC Symphony Orchestra’s Orchestral Works series on Chandos, also begun in 2023, has only …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    FRUM – Whirlpool

    by 5:4 July 30, 2025 • 17:07
    July 30, 2025 • 17:07

    Often, when i’ve written about music from the Faroe Islands, i’ve remarked on the fascinating way they make diverse genres blend and mingle. What often emerges is a unique kind of hybrid, comprising elements from prog rock, jazz, contemporary, experimental and electronic. But not always, and certainly not in the …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Alex Paxton – Delicious

    by 5:4 July 13, 2025 • 11:22
    July 13, 2025 • 11:22

    i started smiling even before i started listening. There’s playful and there’s joyful – and then there’s actual play and joy. To spend time with Alex Paxton‘s music is to enter a soundworld that’s all about the latter. It’s a world where the idea of being embarrassed, reserved, sensible or …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Formuls – Disorder as a function of time (from Graz to Holycross); Obsession as a function of time (inertia)

    by 5:4 June 28, 2025 • 08:17
    June 28, 2025 • 08:17

    It’s always good to hear new music from Birmingham composer James Dooley, aka Formuls. He’s recently put out two releases that are essentially siblings. It’s been a while (too long) since i last wrote about Dooley’s work, but on that occasion i was exploring music that sat in various levels …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Toivo Tulev – Dawn, Almost Dawn

    by 5:4 June 18, 2025 • 16:16
    June 18, 2025 • 16:16

    My first impression of Toivo Tulev, established nearly a decade ago during my first few sojourns to Estonia, was of a composer whose language was one of polarised extremes. The more i’ve got to know his music over the years, the more that first impression has been confirmed: Tulev’s is …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Erkki-Sven Tüür / Max Bruch – Violin Concertos (Hans Christian Aavik / Odense Symphony Orchestra / Gemma New)

    by 5:4 June 4, 2025 • 09:00
    June 4, 2025 • 09:00

    Hot on the heels of the recent Estonian Music Days, there have been several interesting new releases of Estonian music. Among them is a new recording of Violin Concerto No. 2 “Angel’s Share” by one of the country’s most accessible composers, Erkki-Sven Tüür, featuring soloist Hans Christian Aavik with the …

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  • CD/Digital releasesLent Series

    Christopher McFall – Late Night Fate Directory

    by 5:4 April 19, 2025 • 17:29
    April 19, 2025 • 17:29

    The aim of this year’s 5:4 Lent Series has been twofold: first, to celebrate the work of US composer and sound artist Christopher McFall, and second, in collaboration with McFall, to re-release his work after many, many years of languishing completely unavailable. In the early stages of planning this series, …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Mads Emil Dreyer – Figure Pieces

    by 5:4 April 16, 2025 • 16:14
    April 16, 2025 • 16:14

    One of the more beguiling things to have entered my ears recently is Figure Pieces, a new 22-minute EP from Danish composer Mads Emil Dreyer. Two of Dreyer’s Forsvindere pieces were featured on his album Disappearer, released last year, and Figure Pieces demonstrates the same fascination with the permutational possibilities …

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  • CD/Digital releasesLent Series

    Christopher McFall – Disengaged Songs for Disenchanted Lovers

    by 5:4 April 14, 2025 • 10:26
    April 14, 2025 • 10:26

    Familiarity can go a long way to diminish the effects of ambiguity. By now, 40 days into this Lent Series, we’re accustomed to the fact that immersing oneself within Christopher McFall‘s work is to enter a dark world of shapes moving in shadows, where sounds hint, suggest and allude, but …

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  • CD/Digital releasesLent Series

    Christopher McFall – Epilog (Recombinant)

    by 5:4 April 10, 2025 • 10:06
    April 10, 2025 • 10:06

    After the unexpected tangibility of An Eris 23, explored last time, Christopher McFall‘s 2012 album Epilog (Recombinant) isn’t just a return to his more familiar umbral soundworld, but to a degree that is way more than usually abstract. It takes as its starting point the materials he used when creating …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Natasha Barrett – Toxic Colour

    by 5:4 April 8, 2025 • 15:23
    April 8, 2025 • 15:23

    It seems fitting that the unique acousmatic music of Natasha Barrett, a composer whose life and work have encompassed the UK (originally, for a while) and Norway (later, for much longer), should have been primarily served by labels from those two countries. In earlier times it was the Oslo-based Aurora …

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  • CD/Digital releasesLent Series

    Christopher McFall – An Eris 23

    by 5:4 April 4, 2025 • 08:12
    April 4, 2025 • 08:12

    When exploring This Heat Holds Snow, i mentioned how Christopher McFall’s music features passages i call ‘in between’, states where things are more than usually elusive and / or blurred. The conclusion of that album took the three discrete elements in McFall’s work – pitch, rhythm and noise – and …

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  • CD/Digital releasesLent Series

    Christopher McFall – The Body As I Left It

    by 5:4 March 30, 2025 • 09:42
    March 30, 2025 • 09:42

    i often find myself thinking of the word ‘concrete’ when listening to Christopher McFall’s music. It’s because of the way that word’s meanings have a contradictory presence: many of the sounds McFall uses feel solid, firm; yet the soundworlds he creates tend toward vague, allusive and abstract environments. Concrete, yet …

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  • CD/Digital releasesLent Series

    Christopher McFall – This Heat Holds Snow

    by 5:4 March 25, 2025 • 10:32
    March 25, 2025 • 10:32

    One of the defining features of Christopher McFall‘s sound art is the ambiguity with which his source materials are handled. There’s at most a liminality to it – enough clarity (or ostensible clarity) to suggest something tangible – yet more often we’re left to fend for ourselves in worlds of …

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  • CD/Digital releasesLent Series

    Christopher McFall – The City of Almost

    by 5:4 March 20, 2025 • 09:43
    March 20, 2025 • 09:43

    i’ve been looking forward to this one. The City of Almost was the first of Christopher McFall‘s albums that i heard. i can’t remember what led me to it, but somehow in 2008 this CD, wrapped in a protective case of thick transparent paper, arrived at my door, and my …

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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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5:4
  • About
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