• About
    • Other writings
  • Patrons
  • The Lists
    • Listening History
    • Complete List of Ratings
    • Compositions explored on 5:4
    • Albums and EPs reviewed on 5:4
    • Festivals reviewed on 5:4
    • Best Albums of the Years
    • The Proms premières – Poll results
  • The Dialogues
  • Mixtapes
    • Mixtapes
    • The Isolation Mixtapes
    • Mystery Mixtapes
    • Podcasts
  • Contact
    • Contact Form
    • Submission Contact Form
5:4
Category:

CD/Digital releases

  • 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 …

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • 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, …

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • 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 …

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • 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 …

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • 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 …

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • 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 …

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • 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 …

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • 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 …

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • 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 …

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • 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 …

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • CD/Digital releasesLent Series

    Christopher McFall – Sensuality May Be Found At The Mouth Of A Snake

    by 5:4 March 15, 2025 • 09:57
    March 15, 2025 • 09:57

    i wrote previously about Christopher McFall‘s tendency to construct his work via smooth fades and transitions, rather than abrupt changes. That’s overwhelmingly the case, perhaps more than anywhere else, in his 2008 album Sensuality May Be Found At The Mouth Of A Snake. Though released as one 31-minute track, the …

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • CD/Digital releasesLent Series

    Christopher McFall – Four Feels for Fire

    by 5:4 March 10, 2025 • 09:58
    March 10, 2025 • 09:58

    Four Feels For Fire was Christopher McFall‘s first physical release, put out on CD by renowned Belgian label Entr’acte in 2007. At 50 minutes’ duration, it was also his longest work so far, structured in five sections, the first four titled after the points of the compass, with a closing …

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • CD/Digital releasesLent Series

    Christopher McFall – A Little Rouge

    by 5:4 March 5, 2025 • 08:48
    March 5, 2025 • 08:48

    20 years ago, US sound artist Christopher McFall quietly emerged via a Spanish netlabel with his first release, A Starved-Strafe Lancing Machine, an album i wrote about in 2022. Throughout his career, McFall’s output has deeply and consistently impressed me, and his releases have featured in many of my Best …

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • CD/Digital releases

    Žibuoklė Martinaitytė – Aletheia

    by 5:4 February 24, 2025 • 06:00
    February 24, 2025 • 06:00

    Of the four portrait discs i’ve been spending time with lately, the most successful overall is Aletheia, a new album of choral works by Lithuanian composer Žibuoklė Martinaitytė, performed by the Latvian Radio Choir conducted by Sigvards Kļava.

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • CD/Digital releases

    Grażyna Bacewicz – Complete Orchestral Works Vol. 3

    by 5:4 February 19, 2025 • 06:00
    February 19, 2025 • 06:00

    Two years ago i wrote that a composer i’d been “trying to get the measure of” was Grażyna Bacewicz. Since then, CPO have helped that process with a series of albums exploring her orchestral music, the latest of which, Complete Orchestral Works Vol. 3, has recently been released. It’s clear …

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • CD/Digital releases

    Outi Tarkiainen – Midnight Sun Variations

    by 5:4 February 14, 2025 • 06:00
    February 14, 2025 • 06:00

    Continuing my short survey of recent portrait discs, a different kind of surprise came from Midnight Sun Variations, a collection of orchestral works by Finnish composer Outi Tarkiainen. The world première of Midnight Sun Variations, performed at the 2019 Proms by the BBC Philharmonic conducted by John Storgårds, left me …

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • CD/Digital releases

    Kristine Tjøgersen – Between Trees

    by 5:4 February 9, 2025 • 06:00
    February 9, 2025 • 06:00

    There were a couple of occasions last year when i commented on the potential hit-or-miss quality of portrait albums, in relation to the music of Bára Gísladóttir and Rolf Wallin. i’ve been reflecting on this further while listening to four other recent portrait discs, which i’ll be exploring in the …

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • CD/Digital releases

    Kenneth Kirschner – April 27, 2023 and more

    by 5:4 February 3, 2025 • 09:22
    February 3, 2025 • 09:22

    Notions of continuity are often complicated in Kenneth Kirschner‘s music. That’s just as true for the connections between material in his compositions as it is between the compositions themselves, as Kirschner has been exploring various parallel and interconnected trains of thought throughout his career, regularly returning to ideas that he …

    Read more
    1 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • CD/Digital releasesFree music

    Yarn/Wire – Currents Vol. 8

    by 5:4 January 30, 2025 • 06:00
    January 30, 2025 • 06:00

    To conclude this month’s focus on post-festive free(down)loading, i’m turning to one of the Currents albums released by two-piano, two-percussion ensemble Yarn/Wire. Over the last decade, the quartet has released 10 albums in the Currents series, showcasing an array of works composed for them. Not surprisingly, with such a diversity …

    Read more
    1 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • CD/Digital releasesFree music

    Hakushi Hasegawa – iPhone 6 Plus

    by 5:4 January 26, 2025 • 08:38
    January 26, 2025 • 08:38

    While it didn’t end up in my Best Albums of 2024, one of the releases that almost made it into the list was Mahōgakkō by Japanese musician Hakushi Hasegawa [長谷川白紙]. It’s an insanely, gleefully over-the-top cavalcade of pure pop extroversion, exhausting yet irresistible, mind-melting in its complete stylistic and artistic …

    Read more
    1 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • …
  • 19

Subscribe to 5:4

World New Music Days 2025 Nils Henrik Asheim: Lydkilder Sound and Image: Aesthetics and Practices Music Beyond Airports: appraising ambient music Simon Cummings | 間 Studies vol. 6

  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • Rss
  • Mixcloud
Footer Logo

© Simon Cummings

5:4
  • About
    • Other writings
  • Patrons
  • The Lists
    • Listening History
    • Complete List of Ratings
    • Compositions explored on 5:4
    • Albums and EPs reviewed on 5:4
    • Festivals reviewed on 5:4
    • Best Albums of the Years
    • The Proms premières – Poll results
  • The Dialogues
  • Mixtapes
    • Mixtapes
    • The Isolation Mixtapes
    • Mystery Mixtapes
    • Podcasts
  • Contact
    • Contact Form
    • Submission Contact Form