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5:4
Tag:

electroacoustic

  • FestivalsPremières

    Ultima 2023 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 October 2, 2023 • 13:47
    October 2, 2023 • 13:47 1 minutes read

    Oslo’s annual contemporary music festival Ultima is currently in something of a transition, between outgoing artistic director Thorbjørn Tønder Hansen and incoming Heloisa Amaral, who took the helm in February this year. On the one hand, what i experienced during my three days there was broadly comparable to previous years, …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Alvin Lucier – Swing Bridge / Sizzles; Bára Gísladóttir – SILVA; Kali Malone – Does Spring Hide Its Joy

    by 5:4 June 29, 2023 • 11:23
    June 29, 2023 • 11:23 1 minutes read

    It’s been interesting to compare and contrast three recent releases all of which feature drone at the core of their musical language. (The music is long, so i’m going to keep this quite short.) Drone music tends to operate in one of two ways: either by establishing a literal fundamental, …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Only Connect 2023 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 April 25, 2023 • 08:06
    April 25, 2023 • 08:06 2 minutes read

    Very few performances at Only Connect 2023 failed to impress. Among the exceptions was Caminante by Michael Pisaro, premièred on the opening night by Trondheim Sinfonietta with bassist Michael Francis Duch. Though the work began well, establishing a nicely darkened texture that became almost gritty and dirty, as soon as …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Forum Wallis 2023 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 March 16, 2023 • 09:34
    March 16, 2023 • 09:34 1 minutes read

    It doesn’t take long to get the measure of a new music festival – aims, outlook, characteristics – but that doesn’t mean it becomes predictable. i’ve found this to be more than usually true of Forum Wallis, which remains one of the most remote festivals i’ve had the pleasure of …

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  • CD/Digital releasesFree music

    Gareth Davis, Jan Kleefstra, Romke Kleefstra – Sieleslyk

    by 5:4 January 9, 2023 • 08:24
    January 9, 2023 • 08:24 1 minutes read

    To begin my usual January focus on interesting free music, i’m returning to the ephemeral world of netlabels. Rural Colours appeared in 2010 as a tangential off-shoot from parent label Hibernate, which had begun the previous year. What distinguished them both from other netlabels was the fact that their releases …

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Anna Fišere – Radices (World Première)

    by 5:4 December 16, 2022 • 05:00
    December 16, 2022 • 05:00 1 minutes read

    One of the more memorable works performed at the inaugural Baltic Music Days in 2020 was Mundus Invisibilis by Latvian composer Anna Fišere (formerly Ķirse). That piece was concerned with fungal mycelium, and her earlier work Radices for 8 singers and electronics, composed in 2018, is similarly rooted in the …

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Max de Wardener – Until my Blood is Pure (World Première)

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

    In last year’s Advent Calendar i featured an untitled piece by Max de Wardener from a live performance at the Southbank Centre in March 2014. On the same occasion he presented a new version of Until my Blood is Pure, originally included on his 2002 EP Stops. That version, for …

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Galina Grigorjeva – Molitva (World Première, theremin & strings version)

    by 5:4 December 2, 2022 • 05:00
    December 2, 2022 • 05:00 1 minutes read

    Today marks the 60th birthday of Ukraine-born, Estonia-based composer Galina Grigorjeva. Her music over the last decade or so has progressively moved more closely in both character and ideology to that of Arvo Pärt, rooted in musical simplicity, articulating aspects of Orthodox religious belief. In the case of her 2005 …

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  • CD/Digital releasesPremières

    Shiva Feshareki – Turning World

    by 5:4 November 2, 2022 • 11:26
    November 2, 2022 • 11:26 1 minutes read

    Concerts of contemporary music have a tendency to be obsessed with presenting premières, yet it’s all too common for those performances to be dazzling one-offs that are all too soon lost to oblivion. So there’s some serious kudos due to NMC for saving two such performances, both electroacoustic, both showcasing …

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  • 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

    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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  • FestivalsPremières

    Ultima 2022 (Part 3)

    by 5:4 September 29, 2022 • 05:00
    September 29, 2022 • 05:00 2 minutes read

    i’m concluding my coverage of this year’s Ultima festival with something that – over a week since it took place – i’m still grappling with in terms of what i experienced as well as, quite simply, what to call it. On 17 September a marathon was being run through the …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Ultima 2022 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 September 26, 2022 • 10:26
    September 26, 2022 • 10:26 1 minutes read

    It’s reasonable to expect extreme variety and diversity at Ultima, though many of the more conventional concert events i experienced at this year’s festival were a surprisingly mixed bag, qualitatively speaking. The most taxing was unfortunately a concert celebrating the award of this year’s Arne Nordheim prize to Jan Martin …

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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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  • ConcertsPremières

    BEAST FEaST 2022: Resonances (Part 1)

    by 5:4 July 7, 2022 • 12:25
    July 7, 2022 • 12:25 3 minutes read

    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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  • Announcements

    Gigs, gigs, gigs: BEAST FEaST 2022: Resonances

    by 5:4 June 23, 2022 • 14:02
    June 23, 2022 • 14:02 1 minutes read

    It’s no fewer than 40 years since the formation of BEAST – Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre, one of the leading organisations pioneering the creation and presentation of electronic music. To celebrate this milestone, next week Birmingham University will be hosting BEAST FEaST 2022, a four-day extravaganza of concerts, installations and …

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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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  • FestivalsPremières

    Estonian Music Days 2022 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 April 28, 2022 • 16:51
    April 28, 2022 • 16:51 3 minutes read

    Even before my plane touched down at Tallinn airport, i knew that this year’s Estonian Music Days was going to feel a bit different. Last year marked the 20th anniversary of Estonia’s independence from Soviet occupation, and one of the effects of Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine is that Tallinn …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Dark Music Days 2022 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 March 14, 2022 • 19:34
    March 14, 2022 • 19:34 1 minutes read

    As i mentioned previously, the majority of the music i heard at this year’s Dark Music Days fell somewhere between emotional allusion and full-on abstraction. In many ways it was the most abstract music that made some of the strongest and most long-lasting impressions, primarily because of the composers’ focus …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Dark Music Days 2022 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 March 11, 2022 • 13:15
    March 11, 2022 • 13:15 1 minutes read

    Postponed from its usual position in late January to early March due to last-minute Covid restriction shenanigans, Iceland’s Dark Music Days festival was therefore not quite so dark as usual. All the same, it was hardly the Light Music Days, and in any case Mother Nature was seemingly more determined …

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5:4
  • About
    • Other writings
  • Patrons
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    • Listening History
    • Complete List of Ratings
    • Compositions explored on 5:4
    • Albums and EPs reviewed on 5:4
    • Festivals reviewed on 5:4
    • Best Albums of the Years
    • The Proms premières – Poll results
  • The Dialogues
  • Mixtapes
    • Mixtapes
    • The Isolation Mixtapes
    • Mystery Mixtapes
    • Podcasts
  • Contact
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