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CD/Digital releases

  • CD/Digital releases

    Rohan Drape & Anthony Pateras – The traces of a mistake, the most simple one possible the reactions of even younger children

    by 5:4 October 27, 2021 • 15:26
    October 27, 2021 • 15:26

    Let’s get static – or, at least, steady static. The latest collaborative work from Rohan Drape & Anthony Pateras, The traces of a mistake, the most simple one possible the reactions of even younger children, could be regarded as a development of the processes explored on their outstanding 2018 album…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Berglind María Tómasdóttir – Ethereality

    by 5:4 October 12, 2021 • 10:58
    October 12, 2021 • 10:58

    The other recent release of Icelandic music that i’ve been spending time with lately is Ethereality, by flautist Berglind María Tómasdóttir (whose Icelandic Flute Music album i explored at the start of the year). When writing about Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Enigma i commented on the way the distinction between the different…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Anna Thorvaldsdottir – Enigma

    by 5:4 October 11, 2021 • 14:23
    October 11, 2021 • 14:23

    i’ve been spending quite a bit of time lately with two interesting recent releases of Icelandic music. The first is a short album (an EP really) featuring a string quartet by Anna Thorvaldsdottir titled Enigma. The first thing that struck me, long before actually listening to the music, is that it’s…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Xiaogang Ye – Mount E’mei; Winter; The Song of the Earth

    by 5:4 August 20, 2021 • 00:00
    August 20, 2021 • 00:00

    Five years ago i was getting excited by an album of orchestral music by a Chinese composer previously unknown to me, Xiaogang Ye. That excitement has been rekindled recently by the coincidentally-timed release of three new albums of Ye’s music in the last few weeks, which together provide an excellent…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    J. Peter Schwalm & Markus Reuter – Aufbruch

    by 5:4 July 23, 2021 • 17:01
    July 23, 2021 • 17:01

    A few years ago, in a book about ambient music that i co-edited with Monty Adkins, i wrote a chapter where i proposed the possibility of ‘meta-ambient’, the idea that a great deal of music not necessarily immediately heard as being related or even connected to ambient – as it…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir – music by Schnittke and Pärt; Latvian Radio Choir – Ramon Humet: Light

    by 5:4 July 21, 2021 • 17:43
    July 21, 2021 • 17:43

    This week i’ve been spending time with a couple of new albums that could each be described as being “devotional”. By that i don’t simply mean ‘religious’, although both of them are fundamentally informed by that attitude, one explicitly, the other implicitly. Listening to them has been a thought-provoking experience,…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Clara Iannotta – MOULT

    by 5:4 July 8, 2021 • 16:46
    July 8, 2021 • 16:46

    What’s the difference between consistency and tautology? It’s a question i’ve returned to repeatedly over the last few years primarily in relation to the music of both Rebecca Saunders and Autechre, and it seems to be pertinent to Clara Iannotta as well. Last year, when exploring the previous album of…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    LUX:NM – Dark Lux

    by 5:4 July 6, 2021 • 14:31
    July 6, 2021 • 14:31

    Not so long ago i revisited an old favourite of mine, William Walton’s Façade, a work that takes sublimity and absurdity and wonderfully manages to make them gel – or, at least, engage in a weirdly (un)comfortable coexistence. Both the character and the attitude of Façade have been brought instantly…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Enno Poppe – Filz

    by 5:4 June 29, 2021 • 15:53
    June 29, 2021 • 15:53

    In my last article i explored a CD featuring an overview of the string music of Penderecki, and it’s been interesting to reflect further on aspects of that in relation to Filz, a new album devoted to German composer Enno Poppe – featuring Ensemble Resonanz, and conducted by Poppe – which…

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  • CD/Digital releasesFree music

    Access to Arasaka update

    by 5:4 June 22, 2021 • 16:17
    June 22, 2021 • 16:17

    A couple of years ago, in my annual ‘Free music’ series i explored the work of US electronica artist Rob Lioy, better known as Access to Arasaka. At the time, one of the drawbacks to accessing his work was that it was mostly only available in low resolution lossy files…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Krzysztof Penderecki – Complete Music for String Quartet & String Trio

    by 5:4 June 16, 2021 • 14:34
    June 16, 2021 • 14:34

    It must have been a strange experience for anyone smitten by the music of Krzysztof Penderecki during the 1960s and early 1970s, falling in love with the bold, abrasive, raw abstract shapes and sound forms unleashed in works such as Emanations (1959), Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima (1960), St…

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  • Blasts from the PastCD/Digital releases

    Blasts from the Past: Gustav Mahler – Symphony No. 7

    by 5:4 June 9, 2021 • 17:30
    June 9, 2021 • 17:30

    It’s often felt a bit strange for me that the composer about whose music i’m the most passionate, whose music occupies the largest percentage of my music collection, and whose music i’ve analysed and studied in more depth and therefore know more about than any other composer, is someone i…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    The Brandenburg Project

    by 5:4 June 7, 2021 • 11:21
    June 7, 2021 • 11:21

    Three years ago, the Proms festival featured the first complete performance of The Brandenburg Project, a large-scale undertaking by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, who commissioned six composers to write a work responding to one of J. S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, with the aim that they should ideally also use the…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Gunnar Andreas Kristinsson – Moonbow

    by 5:4 May 27, 2021 • 10:39
    May 27, 2021 • 10:39

    The Sono Luminus label’s ongoing commitment to Icelandic music continues with Moonbow, a new album featuring five works by Gunnar Andreas Kristinsson. Hitherto, my only contact with Gunnar’s music has been via his 2013 release Patterns, showcasing a variety of his earlier output for piano and organ. That album had…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Natasha Barrett – Leap Seconds

    by 5:4 May 24, 2021 • 15:49
    May 24, 2021 • 15:49

    It’s always exciting when a new album of music by Natasha Barrett appears, and it feels like it’s been a long wait since her last release, the dazzling Puzzle Wood (one of my Best Albums of 2017), came out four years ago. While that album explored her earlier output –…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Paul Obermayer – Splitting

    by 5:4 May 21, 2021 • 12:32
    May 21, 2021 • 12:32

    The act of listening, at its best, often seems to suggest a form of ‘inhabiting’ the music, and that’s particularly true of Splitting, a new 26-minute work by UK composer Paul Obermayer. i’ll come back to this a bit later. It’s perhaps best to start not at the beginning but…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    David Dunn – Verdant

    by 5:4 May 12, 2021 • 14:45
    May 12, 2021 • 14:45

    It’s rare these days to find new additions to the sphere of ambient music that go beyond being merely extended, superficial, one-dimensional platitudes. So it’s been a relief to spend a mixture of active and passive time with Verdant, a recent album from US composer David Dunn, which taps into…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Listening, isolated: solo music by Brian Ferneyhough, Sam Hayden, Olga Neuwirth, Rebecca Saunders and Salvatore Sciarrino

    by 5:4 May 4, 2021 • 16:19
    May 4, 2021 • 16:19

    Considering that most of us have been spending the last 12 months in varying forms of isolation, it seems a fitting time to focus on music for solo instruments. German label Kairos clearly feels the same way, as they’ve recently brought out a short series of five albums, each titled…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Bára Gísladóttir & Skúli Sverrisson – Caeli

    by 5:4 April 22, 2021 • 15:18
    April 22, 2021 • 15:18

    Early last year, before life on earth tilted over into abject abnormality, i experienced a performance at the Dark Music Days in Reykjavík that, in hindsight, i perhaps summed up a little too succinctly. On the one hand, it was completely true when i wrote, of the performance given by…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Fritz Hauser – Spettro; Bryn Harrison – Time Becoming

    by 5:4 April 20, 2021 • 15:11
    April 20, 2021 • 15:11

    i’ve been catching up with the latest pair of releases from the always interesting Neu Records label. In the process, i’ve been contemplating the fact that both of them pull the rug out from under you in terms of what’s certain and uncertain about the music, which often appears to…

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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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