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5:4
Tag:

acousmatic

  • 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 …

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  • Best of the Year

    Best Albums of 2024 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 December 31, 2024 • 00:00
    December 31, 2024 • 00:00

    And finally we reach the zenith, the apex of this year’s best albums, each and every one of them a bewilderment of shock, awe and wonder.

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Lee Fraser – Scii Tenaph / Ghost Semantics

    by 5:4 September 12, 2024 • 09:50
    September 12, 2024 • 09:50

    Honestly, it’s like that old joke about waiting for buses. You wait years for a new release from Lee Fraser, and then two come along at once. Hot on the heels of Live at Parken, Vienna, 05.08.23, released in March, comes a new album, Scii Tenaph, not so much accompanied …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Natasha Barrett – Reconfiguring the Landscape

    by 5:4 September 6, 2023 • 11:09
    September 6, 2023 • 11:09

    Reconfiguring the Landscape is the title of a new album of acousmatic works by Natasha Barrett, though in some respects, as presented here, it could just as well be titled Reconfiguring the Room. The five works on the album originate in site-specific projects, all of which sought in some way …

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Francisco López – Untitled, Live at Cafe Oto (#2) (World Première)

    by 5:4 December 19, 2022 • 05:00
    December 19, 2022 • 05:00

    Francisco López‘s second live performance at Cafe Oto, in March 2015, makes a strong contrast to the first (featured earlier this month); where that had harnessed electronic elements largely devoid of referential qualities, this piece focuses on a juxtaposition of sounds that are clearly derived from (or intended to imitate) …

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  • Festivals

    Ultima 2022 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 September 22, 2022 • 05:00
    September 22, 2022 • 05:00

    Within the context of new music festivals, it can be rather too easy to assume that installations are a kind of secondary activity, even an optional extra, something to check out if you’ve got some spare time between the really important stuff, i.e. the actual concerts. This misconception is perhaps …

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  • ConcertsPremières

    BEAST FEaST 2022: Resonances (Part 2)

    by 5:4 July 10, 2022 • 11:41
    July 10, 2022 • 11:41

    In the previous part i highlighted the works heard at BEAST FEaST 2022 that went against the grain and handled their materials with gentleness. However, not surprisingly the dominant compositional attitude was one aspiring to power and heft. Though unassumingly titled, Helena Gough‘s Yolk featured an almost flamboyant display of …

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  • ConcertsPremières

    BEAST FEaST 2022: Resonances (Part 1)

    by 5:4 July 7, 2022 • 12:25
    July 7, 2022 • 12:25

    The key word, i think, is “feast”. There was something gloriously gluttonous about the quantity of music performed at BEAST FEaST 2022, though considering the festival was celebrating both the 40th anniversary of the founding of Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre and the recent 70th birthday of its founder Jonty Harrison, …

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  • InterviewsThe Dialogues

    The Dialogues: Natasha Barrett

    by 5:4 January 24, 2022 • 11:27
    January 24, 2022 • 11:27

    i’m delighted to present the latest instalment in my occasional long-form conversation series The Dialogues. My guest this time is UK-born, Norway-based composer Natasha Barrett, whose music i’ve deeply admired for at least 20 years. Barrett is both a veteran and a pioneer of electronic music, utilising a convoluted mixture …

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  • 20th CenturyCD/Digital releases

    Remixed, remastered, revised, reissued: irr. app. (ext.)

    by 5:4 July 24, 2020 • 11:11
    July 24, 2020 • 11:11

    The most fascinating – and the most extensive – campaign of reissuing earlier work that i’ve ever encountered is by US artist Matt Waldron, better known as irr. app. (ext.). His earliest releases date from the late 1990s, a time when Waldron’s access to and capabilities with technology were apparently …

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Nordic Music Days 2019 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 November 21, 2019 • 06:00
    November 21, 2019 • 06:00

    Being the host nation, music from Norway was especially well-represented at this year’s Nordic Music Days in Bodø. Harnessing the large and impressive organ of Bodø Cathedral, Trond Kverno‘s Triptychon 2 was one of the fieriest things i heard at the festival. We tend to think of toccatas as fast-flowing, …

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Nordic Music Days 2019 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 November 19, 2019 • 16:31
    November 19, 2019 • 16:31

    Founded in 1888, the annual Nordic Music Days is one of the oldest contemporary music festivals in the world. It’s a peripatetic festival, moving from place to place each year, and for 2019 – surprisingly, for the first time – it moved north of the Arctic Circle, to the small …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    relief – The Gloaming

    by 5:4 September 7, 2019 • 22:00
    September 7, 2019 • 22:00

    An album that i’ve been returning to again and again in recent months is The Gloaming, the debut release from relief, nom de guerre of composer Chris Berkes. As debuts go – a 42-minute work cast in four broad movements – it’s certainly impressive. A title like The Gloaming, with …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Juhani Silvola – Post-biological wildlife

    by 5:4 July 8, 2019 • 17:23
    July 8, 2019 • 17:23

    We might call it “conjectural anthropology”. What i’m referring to here is music (or any art, for that matter) that seeks to fabricate and/or otherwise be inspired by fictitious notions of organic life and activity. We find examples of this in, among other places, the strange electronic languages being uttered …

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  • ConcertsFestivals

    Forum Wallis 2019 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 June 18, 2019 • 12:50
    June 18, 2019 • 12:50

    It’s impossible to be aware of everything that’s going on in new music. For me, that fact is usually associated with new CD releases, but i’ve come to realise it’s just as true for concerts and festivals. Apropos: Forum Wallis, a five-day festival of contemporary music that takes place annually …

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Only Connect 2019 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 May 29, 2019 • 14:41
    May 29, 2019 • 14:41

    There’s something absolutely right about the bringing together of Norway’s Only Connect – a festival that, as its name implies, encourages one to question (inter)connections between ostensibly disparate musics – with Tectonics, Ilan Volkov’s peripatetic festival the name of which evokes fundamental, underlying bedrocks that continually meet, connect and rupture. …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Robert Scott Thompson – Of Natural Magic and the Breathing of Trees; William Price – Rush Hour

    by 5:4 May 14, 2018 • 16:13
    May 14, 2018 • 16:13

    A couple of noteworthy albums of electronic music by US composers have found their way to me recently. Of Natural Magic and the Breathing of Trees by Robert Scott Thompson was released last year and pretty much tells you everything you need to know in that title. Aesthetically, the five pieces contained on this album …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    New releases: Paul Dolden – Histoires d’histoire; Annette Vande Gorne – Yawar Fiesta

    by 5:4 September 25, 2017 • 15:10
    September 25, 2017 • 15:10

    Nobody – but nobody – makes music that sounds like Paul Dolden. His work typically exhibits unchecked exuberance, both his instrumental and electronic (and electroacoustic) music not merely firing on all cylinders, but with their inner workings ludicrously pimped and their processors absurdly overclocked, sounds and timbres piled on top …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    New releases: Morton Feldman, Jonty Harrison, Chaya Czernowin

    by 5:4 December 4, 2016 • 16:11
    December 4, 2016 • 16:11

    It’s been good to get back to the plethora of new releases that have have found their way to my door in recent weeks and months. While i don’t like to make spurious connections between disparate pieces of music, i’ve been fascinated at the way various composers explore the interplay …

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  • ConcertsFestivals

    Electric Spring 2015

    by 5:4 February 25, 2015 • 21:33
    February 25, 2015 • 21:33

    i don’t know which felt more strange, being in Huddersfield for a music festival in February (rather than November), or the fact that, somehow, for two decades the university’s Electric Spring festival has entirely passed me by. Better late than never, i suppose, especially as this year’s festival, which took place …

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5:4
  • About
    • Other writings
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    • Compositions explored on 5:4
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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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