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5:4
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experimental

  • FestivalsPremières

    Dark Music Days 2022 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 March 11, 2022 • 13:15
    March 11, 2022 • 13:15

    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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  • CD/Digital releasesFree music

    Nikita Golyshev update

    by 5:4 February 9, 2022 • 09:27
    February 9, 2022 • 09:27

    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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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Ultima 2021 (Part 3)

    by 5:4 October 4, 2021 • 15:59
    October 4, 2021 • 15:59

    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.

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  • CD/Digital releases

    LUX:NM – Dark Lux

    by 5:4 July 6, 2021 • 14:31
    July 6, 2021 • 14:31

    Not so long ago i revisited an old favourite of mine, William Walton’s Façade, a work that takes sublimity and absurdity and wonderfully manages to make them gel – or, at least, engage in a weirdly (un)comfortable coexistence. Both the character and the attitude of Façade have been brought instantly…

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  • CD/Digital releasesFree musicThematic series

    Nikita Golyshev – 15 Songs from Glass, Oil and Other Sources

    by 5:4 January 18, 2021 • 11:18
    January 18, 2021 • 11:18

    NB. At the time when this article was published i only had access to the lossy version of this album; this situation has now changed – click here for an update. [February 2022] We tend to assume nowadays that, once something is put online, it’ll never disappear. But in the…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2019 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 November 27, 2019 • 15:58
    November 27, 2019 • 15:58

    Last week i was able to catch a couple of days of the shenanigans going on at this year’s Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. It was strange not to be doing my usual thing of setting up camp for the whole shebang, but quite apart from it being better than nothing,…

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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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  • ConcertsFestivals

    Summartónar 2019 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 August 7, 2019 • 16:26
    August 7, 2019 • 16:26

    When did you last listen to music from the Faroe Islands? Who’s your favourite Faroese composer or group? For many, i suspect, those questions would likely be impossible to answer, and until recently – with the big exception of Eivør, one of my very favourite singers – i would have been…

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  • 20th CenturyCD/Digital releases

    all that dust: music by Morton Feldman, Matthew Shlomowitz, Séverine Ballon, Milton Babbitt and Luigi Nono

    by 5:4 October 12, 2018 • 11:57
    October 12, 2018 • 11:57

    The launching of a new label devoted to contemporary music is something to celebrate, and the newest kid on the block is all that dust, the brainchild of composer Newton Armstrong, soprano Juliet Fraser and pianist Mark Knoop. The label’s first five releases have recently appeared, and there are a…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    North of North, Rohan Drape & Anthony Pateras – Ellesmere

    by 5:4 June 5, 2018 • 14:57
    June 5, 2018 • 14:57

    My first encounter with the music of Anthony Pateras – in the form of last year’s The Slow Creep of Convenience, his duo with violinist Erkki Veltheim – was a mind-blowing experience, one of the best things i had heard all year. So i was excited when two new discs arrived…

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  • CD/Digital releasesFree musicThematic series

    Ektoise – Ektoise / Kiyomizu

    by 5:4 January 26, 2018 • 13:00
    January 26, 2018 • 13:00

    It’s Australia Day, so the next artist i’m featuring in my series looking at free internet music is the Brisbane-based group Ektoise. It’s difficult to know where to begin, partly because, stylistically speaking, it’s not easy to summarise succinctly what their music is like, and partly because Ektoise is just…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Sonic ceremonial & blasted bedrock: Paul Jebanasam – Rites; The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation – Roadburn

    by 5:4 October 19, 2013 • 18:29
    October 19, 2013 • 18:29

    My favourite album of 2012, Kreng’s epic Works for Abattoir Fermé 2007–2011, dove into the deepest depths of doom-laden, gothic, dark ambient. It’s not going to find an equal any time soon, but there have been two albums this year that have come particularly close. The first is by Paul…

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  • Mixtapes

    Mixtape #28 : Speech

    by 5:4 October 1, 2013 • 12:14
    October 1, 2013 • 12:14

    For the last mixtape of 2013, i’ve decided to explore music in which speech is paramount. Within a musical context, spoken words can jar in much the same way as an actor breaking the fourth wall, unsettling us by (ostensibly at least) withholding abstraction in favour of direct reference. The…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Minimal and dangerously liminal: Jakob Ullmann – fremde zeit addendum 4

    by 5:4 May 6, 2013 • 19:03
    May 6, 2013 • 19:03

    Despite the fact that writing about amazing music is such an unalloyed pleasure, there are times—many more times than i would care to admit—when the music skitters away, becoming elusive when confronted by one’s attempts to speak of it. Perhaps there’s no dishonour in being confounded by glory, but the…

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  • Announcements

    Coming soon: Scott Walker’s Bish Bosch

    by 5:4 October 15, 2012 • 08:15
    October 15, 2012 • 08:15

    In one of the most exciting teasers i’ve seen in a long while, Scott Walker has released a video of snippets from his forthcoming album, Bish Bosch. It includes clips from a number of tracks, bearing such tantalising titles as ‘See You Don’t Bump His Head’, ‘Tar’, ‘Dimple’, ‘Corps de…

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  • ConcertsPremières

    Marc Yeats – sturzstrom (World Première)

    by 5:4 June 15, 2012 • 23:31
    June 15, 2012 • 23:31

    Two weeks ago, i was fortunate to be in the cool gloom of Beer Quarry Caves, a man-made cave network on the east coast of Devon. The caves themselves—resulting from two millennia of mining, beginning with the Romans—are fascinating enough, but i was there for something almost as remarkable, the…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Mika Vainio – Life (… It Eats You Up)

    by 5:4 August 1, 2011 • 01:43
    August 1, 2011 • 01:43

    For around seven minutes, you wonder where you are. Extended, sharp, contorted droning outbursts emanate from somewhere, wrestling either to cling to or break free from their origin. It’s like witnessing an alien voice learn how to speak. And then, seemingly from nowhere, IRRUPTION! the music transformed into a massive…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Noveller – Glacial Glow

    by 5:4 June 6, 2011 • 17:12
    June 6, 2011 • 17:12

    Since departing from rock outfit Parts & Labor in 2009, Sarah Lipstate has taken to exploring deeply experimental territory. Under the nom de guerre of Noveller, armed with only a guitar and the determination to subject it to all manner of treatments, she has spent the last couple of years…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    A flawless reverie for the end of the world: The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation – Anthropomorphic

    by 5:4 May 23, 2011 • 11:09
    May 23, 2011 • 11:09

    From time to time, an album comes along that doesn’t just confound expectations, but actually goes so far as to widen one’s understanding of what music is capable of being. Scott Walker’s The Drift (which recently turned five years old) is, for me, the most memorable example of that; the…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    The familiar and the strange playing together as friends: Radiohead – The King of Limbs

    by 5:4 March 6, 2011 • 16:23
    March 6, 2011 • 16:23

    As an occasion, Valentine’s Day is polarising enough, split between they who regard it with importance, and those for whom it’s little more than an overhyped, vacuous sham. But that polarisation was exacerbated further on this particular Valentine’s Day, bringing as it did Radiohead‘s announcement that their eighth album, The…

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5:4
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    • Compositions reviewed on 5:4
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  • The Dialogues
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