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CD/Digital releases

  • CD/Digital releasesLent Series

    Allan Pettersson – Complete Edition: Symphonies Nos. 8-9, 1968-70

    by 5:4 March 11, 2024 • 06:00
    March 11, 2024 • 06:00

    Symphony No. 8 (1968-1969) Allan Pettersson’s previous two symphonies, though structured as single movements, both featured what amounts to two distinct sections. Symphony No. 8 is the same, though here Pettersson explicitly divides the work into two movements. This is an interesting decision, as it can easily be argued that, …

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  • CD/Digital releasesLent Series

    Allan Pettersson – Complete Edition: Symphonies Nos. 6-7, 1963-67

    by 5:4 March 7, 2024 • 06:00
    March 7, 2024 • 06:00

    Symphony No. 6 (1963-1966) i said previously that Symphony No. 5 upped the ante, so perhaps it seems like hyperbole to say that in Symphony No. 6 Pettersson does it again, but there really is no other way of perceiving this vast 60-minute, single span behemoth. By this point in …

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  • CD/Digital releasesLent Series

    Allan Pettersson – Complete Edition: Symphonies Nos. 4-5, 1958-62

    by 5:4 March 3, 2024 • 06:00
    March 3, 2024 • 06:00

    Symphony No. 4 (1958-1959) By now, the paradigm is well-established: Pettersson’s music is one of disruptive struggle, where contrasting, sometimes contradictory, musical ideas jostle and collide in a cycle of seemingly unstoppable volatility. In his previous work, the Concerto No. 3 for String Orchestra, Pettersson had allowed himself a greater …

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  • CD/Digital releasesLent Series

    Allan Pettersson – Complete Edition: Concertos Nos. 2 & 3 for String Orchestra, 1956-57

    by 5:4 February 29, 2024 • 06:00
    February 29, 2024 • 06:00

    Following on from his first three symphonies, in the mid-1950s Allan Pettersson’s compositional interest returned to strings, writing two more concertos, one small, one large.

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  • CD/Digital releasesLent Series

    Allan Pettersson – Complete Edition: Symphonies Nos. 1-3, 1951-55

    by 5:4 February 25, 2024 • 06:00
    February 25, 2024 • 06:00

    Having spent a little over a decade exploring chamber and vocal music, from 1951 onward the trajectory of Allan Pettersson’s compositional journey changed, and changed permanently. In a similar way to Mahler, as soon as Pettersson began work on his first symphony, in 1951, it evidently became clear to him …

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  • CD/Digital releasesLent Series

    Allan Pettersson – Complete Edition: First major works, 1949-51

    by 5:4 February 21, 2024 • 06:00
    February 21, 2024 • 06:00

    Concerto No. 1 for Violin and String Quartet (1949) Arriving at Allan Pettersson’s first violin concerto comes as something of a shock. On the one hand, it continues the composer’s focus on chamber music that dates back to his earliest pieces, as well as his exploration of counterpoint, which was …

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  • CD/Digital releasesLent Series

    Allan Pettersson – Complete Edition: Early works, 1938-48

    by 5:4 February 17, 2024 • 06:00
    February 17, 2024 • 06:00

    In the second part of this year’s Lent Series, focusing on the recently released BIS Complete Edition of Allan Petterson’s music, i’m continuing to explore the earliest compositions, which include his first large-scale work.

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  • CD/Digital releasesLent Series

    Allan Pettersson – Complete Edition: Early works, 1934-36

    by 5:4 February 14, 2024 • 06:00
    February 14, 2024 • 06:00

    About a year-and-a-half ago, in the summer of 2022, i emailed the Swedish label BIS to ask whether they might at some point box up all of their individual releases of Allan Pettersson‘s symphonies. (At the time i was immersed in the box set released by CPO, featuring all of …

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  • CD/Digital releasesFree music

    Francisco López – Heitsi-Eibib-Rec

    by 5:4 January 28, 2024 • 06:00
    January 28, 2024 • 06:00

    i’m concluding my January exploration of interesting free music with Heitsi-Eibib-Rec by Spanish sound artist Francisco López. Usually, López prefers to leave his works untitled, so Heitsi-Eibib-Rec is therefore somewhat unusual. Though the work doesn’t have an accompanying note – except to say it uses “original environmental sound matter recorded …

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  • CD/Digital releasesFree music

    Jefre Cantu-Ledesma – Devotion

    by 5:4 January 24, 2024 • 06:00
    January 24, 2024 • 06:00

    The next freely available release i want to explore is Devotion, by US musician Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. It’s a 20-minute fantastical work that lives up to its title by suggesting varying forms of ecstatic focus.

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  • CD/Digital releasesFree music

    Natural Snow Buildings – The Night Country

    by 5:4 January 20, 2024 • 06:00
    January 20, 2024 • 06:00

    A group that i’ve come back to time and time again over the years is Natural Snow Buildings. A duo comprising French musicians Mehdi Ameziane and Solange Gularte, they mingle elements of folk, ambient and psychedelia. The result is a heady mixture that consistently falls somewhere between song, trance and …

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  • CD/Digital releasesFree music

    Ekca Liena – November in Flight

    by 5:4 January 16, 2024 • 06:00
    January 16, 2024 • 06:00

    Today’s piece of freely available music is by British ambient musician Daniel W J Mackenzie, aka (via some partial name reversing) Ekca Liena. November in Flight was originally released over a decade-and-a-half ago, on a bonus CD included in Mackenzie’s 2011 album Slow Music For Rapid Eye Movement. It’s a …

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  • CD/Digital releasesFree music

    Conure & Kenji Siratori – Heteromania

    by 5:4 January 12, 2024 • 06:00
    January 12, 2024 • 06:00

    Heteromania is a collaboration between sound artist Conure (aka Mark Wilson) and cyberpunk poet Kenji Siratori, originally created around the start of 2007, but subsequently unreleased, so Wilson made it available online in 2011. While i’m only familiar with a relatively small amount of the extensive Conure back catalogue, i’ve …

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  • CD/Digital releasesFree music

    Ko T. C. – Pink Grey Sky

    by 5:4 January 8, 2024 • 06:00
    January 8, 2024 • 06:00

    It’s January, the month of resolutions and reduced bank balances, so once again i’m starting the year exploring some of the more interesting music i’ve encountered that’s available free online. It was in 2021, while in Huddersfield for the festival, that i learned about the music of Ko Takasugi-Czernowin, aka …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Enno Poppe – Prozession

    by 5:4 December 22, 2023 • 10:49
    December 22, 2023 • 10:49

    Delayed gratification is one thing, but i realise that i’ve been putting off listening to one of this year’s releases that i’ve been most looking forward to. When i first encountered Enno Poppe‘s epic Prozession, performed by Ensemble Musikfabrik at HCMF 2021 (and conducted by Poppe), it was all i …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Berlin Philharmonic – The Unsuk Chin Edition

    by 5:4 December 20, 2023 • 14:40
    December 20, 2023 • 14:40

    Like many institutions, the Berlin Philharmonic set up their own record label some years ago, and for much of the last decade has been putting out lavish box sets, featuring not only audio recordings but also blu-rays drawn from their enormous video archive (accessible via the orchestra’s Digital Concert Hall). …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Coppice – Draw Agreement

    by 5:4 December 11, 2023 • 16:29
    December 11, 2023 • 16:29

    Few releases i’ve explored this year have pulled me into their orbit so completely, and so (in the best sense) puzzlingly, as Draw Agreement by the US experimental duo Coppice. i’ve been following the work of Noé Cuéllar and Joseph Kramer for around a decade, and have been consistently entranced …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Colin Andrew Sheffield – Images

    by 5:4 December 6, 2023 • 15:37
    December 6, 2023 • 15:37

    It’s surprising to realise i’ve not given US sound artist Colin Andrew Sheffield some attention for a long time. His 2008 album Signatures made it into my very first Best Albums of the Year way back in 2008, since when i have to admit to playing catch-up with his work. …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Elis Hallik – Born In Waves

    by 5:4 October 28, 2023 • 05:00
    October 28, 2023 • 05:00

    Elis Hallik is probably the most interesting Estonian composer who, thus far, i haven’t written much about. During my annual trips to the Estonian Music Days in recent years, she has rarely been featured, so until recently, all i knew of her music were two chamber works, To Become A …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Per Nørgård – Symphony No. 8

    by 5:4 October 23, 2023 • 14:06
    October 23, 2023 • 14:06

    The other conductor filling in the blanks in a symphony cycle is John Storgårds. With the Oslo Philharmonic, Storgårds has previously recorded four of Per Nørgård‘s eight symphonies (numbers 2, 4, 5 and 6) on a couple of discs released by DaCapo in 2016, which i explored at the time. …

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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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    • Best Albums of the Years
    • The Proms premières – Poll results
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    • Mixtapes
    • The Isolation Mixtapes
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