CD/Digital releases

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

The assorted members of Australian experimental group Ektoise are involved in a plethora of other musical outlets, one of which is Subsea, the solo project of Jim Grundy. Untitled V is an album released in 2017, and while the title suggests otherwise, doesn’t appear to be the fifth in a …

One of the most exciting – and, typically, underappreciated – pop acts of the 2010s was Man Without Country, the welsh duo of Tomas Greenhalf and Ryan James. Beginning in 2011, they released a series of truly outstanding singles – including King Complex, Inflammable Heart, Puppets, Migrating Clay Pigeon, Closet …

An interesting album that came out quite late last year is San Servolo Registri Festival Concert, featuring assorted organ-based electroacoustic works performed by Lauren Redhead and Alistair Zaldua. It’s a curious mixture of music, yet while the pieces demonstrate a certain amount of diversity, several of them share aspects in …

The most immersive Icelandic music i’ve encountered is by Þóranna Björnsdóttir, whose collaborative work LUCID blew my mind a few years back (becoming by Best Album of 2019), and who has consistently captivated me on the various occasions i’ve heard her performing live. Released in 2022, Þyrpingar [convergences – the …

It’s January, when we take time to recover from the repercussions of our festive financial shenanigans, and i once again turn my attention to some of the best music available that doesn’t require – but no doubt deserves, if you can – any kind of payment. i originally cottoned on …

i want to flag up a recent release by Danish composer Mads Emil Dreyer, featuring two works i previously encountered at the Dark Music Days festival in Iceland. More specifically, two works and two sibling works, as the four pieces included on his new album Disappearer comprise a pair each …

During the considerable time i’ve spent in Estonia throughout the last decade, one of the musicians who has consistently impressed me the most is Tarmo Johannes. His talents are multi-faceted: primarily a flautist, he’s also a long-term member of Ensemble U: and the Ensemble of the Estonian Electronic Music Society, …

i recently had cause to remark on the pro / con nature of portrait discs, and here we are again, with a new album of music by Norwegian composer Rolf Wallin. i’ve often been impressed by Wallin’s work, never more so than in his large scale collaborative work The Otheroom, …

i stressed before the primacy of Plexure within the context of these two new albums. Yet the extent to which Oswald has been irresisitably drawn back to this work suggests that the idea of a ‘definitive’ version is meaningless. Indeed, the extensiveness of the so-called “bonus tracks” (most of which …

Part 2 of my deep dive into John Oswald‘s extensive reissue of all things Plexure is coming soon. However, in the meantime there’s a time-critical update relevant for any other plex-heads out there. For this weekend only, Oswald has made available two additional Plexure-related items.