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, …
electroacoustic
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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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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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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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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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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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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, …
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In my series of articles focusing on free music last year, i explored Nikita Golyshev‘s remarkable album 15 Songs from Glass, Oil and Other Sources. Originally released in 2007, and long since vanished from the web, at time of writing i was only able to share the MP3 version of …
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Among the plethora of releases i’ve received in recent times there’s been a number of especially noteworthy items, either in the form of sizeable box sets or otherwise ‘unusual’ editions, so throughout the course of this month, alongside other things, i’ll be exploring some of them. Surely the strangest (and, …
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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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For today’s Advent Calendar piece i’m turning to part of a concert given by the choir Vox Clamantis. Originally formed to explore Gregorian chant, while the choir’s repertoire now encompasses ancient and modern, one of the features of their concerts is the way they’re structured as what could be called …
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i said at the start of this Advent Calendar that many of the pieces i’d be featuring would be miniatures, but in the case of the piece behind today’s door, technically a complete performance would last 24 hours – or, indeed, could continue endlessly. Renate Fuczik by Peter Ablinger is …
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Behind today’s Advent Calendar door is a short electroacoustic work by Bethan Morgan-Williams. The unusual word in the work’s title originates from one of my favourite linguistical sources, the wonderful Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, where ‘kenopsia’ (presumably a blending of the Greek words ‘kenosis’, indicating an act of emptying or …
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Today’s Advent Calendar piece is a beautiful curiosity from 2014 by British composer Max de Wardener. This particular piece, which is untitled, came as the last of three new works by de Wardener performed live at the Southbank Centre in 2014, the first of which was also untitled, while the …
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Something new i’m introducing this year is a 5:4 Advent Calendar. Over the next few weeks, in the run-up to the festive season, i’m going to briefly explore a collection of interesting, and in some cases neglected, musical delights. Many of them are miniatures, but one or two larger works …
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One of my recurring trains of thought during HCMF 2021 was concerned with the notion of continuity. This was, very simply, due to the fact that all of the best things i heard at the festival had an incredibly clear, logical sense running through them that, regardless of their inner …
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HCMF always has its fair share of unconventional, genre-defying performances, and this year was no exception. Among the more unusual was Eupepsia/Dyspepsia devised by Austrian composer Eva Reiter. Taking the form of a concert-cum-lecture (or possibly lecture-cum-concert), the focus of the work was on the socio-cultural effects wrought on Bolivia …
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How have i never heard the music of Aleksandra Gryka before? That’s the question i’ve kept wondering while exploring Interialcell, a new CD featuring five works of hers performed by Klangforum Wien. It’s left me disappointed at making what is, for me, such a very late discovery (her worklist goes …
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CD/Digital releases
Rohan Drape & Anthony Pateras – The traces of a mistake, the most simple one possible the reactions of even younger children
by 5:4Let’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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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 …