Canada

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, …

It was in 2014 that i first discovered Canadian musician Joanne Pollock, thanks to her superb collaboration with Aaron Funk (Venetian Snares), Poemss. It’s an album i still return to regularly, due to its unique blend of disarmingly naturalistic vocals and sleek but distinctly bedroom pop-type electronica. It’s not a …

In addition to the soundwalks, installations, music theatre, performance art and electroacoustic shenanigans, Ultima 2021 also had its fair share of more conventional ensemble concerts, which took place in two Oslo churches. The beautiful Tøyen Kirke played host to two of Norway’s most prominent new music ensembles, asamisimasa and Cikada.

As i may have said previously, i have a love-hate relationship with film scores. Being something of a movie addict, i’m obviously encountering them all the time, and at their best, i adore how they don’t merely accompany the on-screen drama but contain their own distinctive parallel narrative, interesting in …

It would be disingenuous to downplay just how laugh out loud funny is so much of John Oswald’s music. And this is surely one of the main reasons why he has fallen foul of the more simple-minded legal “brains” in the pop industry, since a casual encounter with his later …

To return to the theme of reissues that i was exploring recently, another composer whose work has hitherto been languishing relatively unheard is the Canadian John Oswald. i first encountered his music around 25 years ago, at a Birmingham Symphony Hall concert where the Kronos Quartet included his astonishing electroacoustic …

As was the case at last year’s festival, most of the concerts at Forum Wallis 2020 focused on works for ensemble. However, while in 2019 the majority of performances involved larger numbers of players, due to the pandemic almost all of the pieces this year were for small chamber groupings, …

i’ve often likened going to a music festival to an act of pilgrimage, and that feels especially true of Forum Wallis. The two-and-a-half hour train journey from Geneva, edging round the lake before passing by Montreux and on into the heart of the Swiss Alps, feels akin to leaving behind …

Despite being located at opposite ends of the aesthetic / behavioural spectrum, i’ve recently been finding that two new releases pose the same questions about the distinction between long- and short-term listening. In the case of Arboreal, the latest album by Canadian musician Jamie Drouin’s alter ego Liquid Transmitter, this …

Another composer who has been polishing off, smartening up and reissuing old works recently is Canadian Paul Dolden. It always surprises me how underappreciated and even unknown Dolden’s music continues to be, particularly as it’s among the most extreme stuff i’ve ever encountered (and, for good or ill, people love …