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CD/Digital releases

  • CD/Digital releases

    Bára Gísladóttir & Skúli Sverrisson – Live from the Spirit Store / Bára Gísladóttir – VÍDDIR

    by 5:4 October 28, 2022 • 09:31
    October 28, 2022 • 09:31 1 minutes read

    Over the last few years i’ve been more and more deeply impressed by the music of Icelandic composer and performer Bára Gísladóttir. First contact was at the Dark Music Days in 2020, when i saw her in action with Skúli Sverrisson, forming a complex double bass / electric bass soundworld …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Brett Dean – Testament / Beethoven – Symphony No. 2

    by 5:4 October 18, 2022 • 13:59
    October 18, 2022 • 13:59 1 minutes read

    The last time i wrote about Australian composer Brett Dean was exploring his response to the music of J. S. Bach, as part of The Brandenburg Project. This time it’s Beethoven’s music that Dean is responding to, in his orchestral work Testament, which has recently been released in a performance …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Congregation of Drones – Twenty Twenty

    by 5:4 October 4, 2022 • 14:58
    October 4, 2022 • 14:58 2 minutes read

    Is there a collective noun for drones? It wasn’t until i was about halfway through Twenty Twenty, the debut release from Congregation of Drones, that the question occurred to me. On the strength of this remarkable album, though, ‘congregation’ seems entirely appropriate. Congregation of Drones is a duo comprising violinist …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Stefan Węgłowski – PHASE_1_4

    by 5:4 September 14, 2022 • 09:25
    September 14, 2022 • 09:25 5 minutes read

    One of my unexpected highlights of 2017 was the album Contemporary Jewish Music by Polish composer Stefan Węgłowski, a mesmerising sequence of electroacoustic responses to a variety of Jewish sources, utterly transforming them while retaining tangible links to their origins. His latest release, PHASE_1_4, makes that album sound like an …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Fia Fiell – Endless Filament

    by 5:4 August 25, 2022 • 14:33
    August 25, 2022 • 14:33 1 minutes read

    It’s a good sign when, despite being a passionate believer in the maxim “less is more” in terms of a composer’s output, i still find myself feeling frustrated and impatient waiting for certain artists to create something new. That’s been the case very strongly with Vietnamese-Australian musician Carolyn Schofield, aka …

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  • 20th CenturyCD/Digital releases

    Boris Lyatoshynsky – Symphonies

    by 5:4 August 23, 2022 • 10:12
    August 23, 2022 • 10:12 2 minutes read

    While the answer to the question, “What is it good for?” continues to be “Absolutely nothing!” where war is concerned, there’s a tiny sliver of comfort to be gained from the fact that the ongoing outrage perpetrated by the Russian regime has thrown a spotlight onto aspects of Ukrainian culture …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Olga Neuwirth – Orlando

    by 5:4 June 27, 2022 • 16:12
    June 27, 2022 • 16:12 2 minutes read

    There’s something rather depressing about the fact that, despite nearly a century separating the publication of Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando in 1928, and the première of Olga Neuwirth‘s opera Orlando in 2019, the topic of gender identity and fluidity continues to be regarded as such a hot, controversial topic in …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Annelien Van Wauwe – Flow

    by 5:4 June 20, 2022 • 15:59
    June 20, 2022 • 15:59 9 minutes read

    Flow is the title of a new album featuring Belgian clarinettist Annelien Van Wauwe wielding the less common basset clarinet. Invented in the 1770s by Theodor Lotz (who had previously created the basset horn), the purpose of the instrument was in part to extend the lower range of the clarinet. …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Lera Auerbach – 24 Preludes for Violin and Piano & Oskolki

    by 5:4 June 15, 2022 • 16:23
    June 15, 2022 • 16:23 7 minutes read

    Chamber music implies a particular kind of intimacy, and that’s overwhelmingly the case on a new album of music by Russian-born composer Lera Auerbach. Part of its intensity comes from the fact that the performers are Avita Duo, comprising pianist Ksenia Nosikova and her violinist daughter Katya Moeller. This in …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    JH – APEIROZOAN

    by 5:4 June 11, 2022 • 18:21
    June 11, 2022 • 18:21 10 minutes read

    far away and hidden in the lands beneath no moon,in gorges below pinnacles upon which dwell the dead,a cavern, overshadowed by encircling mountains, gapesbeneath a narrow vault across whose dark the stars are sped.from deep down in its cave there comes a sinister refrainthat resonates the barren, shadowed valleys with …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    LEYA – Eyeline

    by 5:4 June 6, 2022 • 16:46
    June 6, 2022 • 16:46 6 minutes read

    One of the more beguiling albums i heard in 2020 was Flood Dream by New York duo LEYA. That being said, at the time i wasn’t at all sure what to make of it, except that it left me intrigued, fascinated and, in a way that i couldn’t really articulate, …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Juliana Hodkinson – Angel View

    by 5:4 May 31, 2022 • 12:23
    May 31, 2022 • 12:23 2 minutes read

    i’ve crossed paths with the music of Juliana Hodkinson on a few occasions over the last few years, and they’ve always been somewhat discombobulating experiences. My response each time has been ambivalent, primarily due to the way that Hodkinson seeks to harness – and, potentially, rely upon – physical and …

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  • 20th CenturyAnniversariesCD/Digital releases

    25 years on: John Wall – Fractuur

    by 5:4 May 26, 2022 • 05:00
    May 26, 2022 • 05:00 2 minutes read

    Fractuur, released in 1997, occupies an interesting position in the output of British composer John Wall, coming at a pivotal point in his approach to working with sound. On Wall’s previous album Alterstill, released two years earlier, he had created five ambitious sound sculptures, playfully constructed from samples plundered from …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Orphax – Spectrum

    by 5:4 May 23, 2022 • 10:37
    May 23, 2022 • 10:37 2 minutes read

    When it comes to drones, i tend to feel that each listener’s mileage doesn’t merely vary, but is often entirely unique. Nonetheless, from my perspective there are some nice things going on in Spectrum, a new two-track album from Netherlands artist Sietse van Erve, a.k.a. Orphax. The essence of each …

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  • 20th CenturyCD/Digital releases

    Tālivaldis Ķeniņš – Symphonies Nos. 5 & 8

    by 5:4 May 19, 2022 • 17:01
    May 19, 2022 • 17:01 1 minutes read

    A long-standing interest of mine is exploring symphonies by composers i’ve never heard of. Apropos: Tālivaldis Ķeniņš, who until relatively recently i didn’t know was one of Latvia’s foremost 20th century composers. However, Ķeniņš was arguably as much Canadian as Latvian; after Russia re-occupied Latvia during World War II, Ķeniņš …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    New Estonian Chamber / Choral / Orchestral Music

    by 5:4 May 16, 2022 • 16:29
    May 16, 2022 • 16:29 1 minutes read

    As an appendix to my coverage of this year’s Estonian Music Days, i want to highlight three new anthologies of Estonian contemporary music. Focusing on chamber, choral and orchestral music respectively, and featuring a diverse collection of ensembles and vocal groups, they complement and expand upon a previous series of …

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  • CD/Digital releasesRetrospectives

    Paul Dolden – Golden Dolden Box Set

    by 5:4 February 23, 2022 • 20:57
    February 23, 2022 • 20:57 15 minutes read

    i feel like i’m emerging from a bomb shelter. For the last two days i’ve been immersed in the Golden Dolden Box Set, a huge self-released compilation by Canadian composer Paul Dolden. Usually, the task of retrospective falls to curators and writers, but in the case of this box set, …

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  • 20th CenturyCD/Digital releases

    Michael Gielen Edition Vol. 10: Music after 1945

    by 5:4 February 18, 2022 • 13:21
    February 18, 2022 • 13:21 3 minutes read

    i’m really not a conductor fanboy. Composers are always getting me excited; performers too, from time to time; but conductors, in general, not so much. There are some special cases: Bernard Haitink and Riccardo Chailly have both stunned me on countless occasions; i’ve always had a lot of time for …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Octavi Rumbau – Pendular Motion

    by 5:4 February 13, 2022 • 05:00
    February 13, 2022 • 05:00 1 minutes read

    It’s just over a decade since Spanish label Neu Records was established, and as i’ve explored each new release from them through the intervening years, every single one has seemed not remotely like a regular album, but a special edition. That’s in no small part due to the presentation. From …

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  • CD/Digital releasesFree music

    Nikita Golyshev update

    by 5:4 February 9, 2022 • 09:27
    February 9, 2022 • 09:27 1 minutes read

    In my series of articles focusing on free music last year, i explored Nikita Golyshev‘s remarkable album 15 Songs from Glass, Oil and Other Sources. Originally released in 2007, and long since vanished from the web, at time of writing i was only able to share the MP3 version of …

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5:4
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    • The Proms premières – Poll results
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