Jenny Hval

This week’s Isolation Mixtape explores music by artists, composers and groups starting with the letter J. Once again there are two of the most interesting tracks from each of the years 2010 to 2019, featured in chronological order. Here’s the tracklisting in full, together with approximate timings and links to …

Happy New Year! i want to start this year by expressing my heartfelt thanks to all of you who have followed and supported 5:4 in the last year, particularly my delectable band of Patrons. Hot on the heels of my Best Albums of 2019 list, i’m beginning 2020 with the …

Here they are, then, the best of the best albums that have brought untold levels of wonderment into my ears and mind throughout this year. i cannot recommend them highly enough – this is music at its most literally essential.

For the latest 5:4 mixtape, inspired by the incredible heat that’s been sizzling its way across Europe recently, i’ve turned to the Sun as my theme. The mix has a somewhat different tone from my Summer mixtape from four years ago (which was, generally, intended to be quite upbeat and …

“En festival for eksperimentall musikk”. That’s the strapline for arguably Norway’s most progressive contemporary music festival, Borealis, some of which i was fortunate to attend in Bergen last week. As straplines go it’s almost laughably simple, yet its implications turned out to be impressively far-reaching. The key word, of course, …

Even more than is usually the case, the new 5:4 Mixtape is a pure stream of consciousness. i’ve returned to a theme i explored in one of the earliest mixtapes, miniatures, once again setting myself a limit of music lasting under two minutes. With a shortlist of 100+ tracks (each …

HAPPY NEW YEAR! i’m starting 2017 in the usual way, with a mixtape bringing together one track from each of the forty albums on my best of 2016 list. i’m sure posterity will come to regard last year as something of a trough in human history, but this mixtape does …

* Please note this list has how been superseded by the one on the Best Albums of the Years page * i’ve long wondered whether there’s any justification—or, indeed, any point—in making end of year lists, particularly when, as usual, there’s a pile of as yet unplayed discs staring down …

HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone! Many, many thanks to all of you who have followed the blog through the last 12 months, particularly to all those who have commented and tweeted in response or retort. As usual, here’s my new year mixtape featuring a track from all forty of my Best …

* Please note this list has how been superseded by the one on the Best Albums of the Years page * And so to the main course: the countdown of my forty best albums of the year; part 2 will follow tomorrow.

Creatively, my thoughts have been heavily focused on song in the last couple of months, so i’ve made that the focus of the new 5:4 mixtape. Songs as we think of them today more or less conform to a generic, prefabricated mould that’s often at odds with their lyric content. …

A very HAPPY NEW YEAR to you all! 5:4 is four years old today, and as in previous years, here’s a new mixtape showcasing the music from my best albums of 2011. One track from each of them—in total, 3½ hours of eclectica to start the new year in real …

* Please note this list has how been superseded by the one on the Best Albums of the Years page * “A list gives us the surface of something, and that leads to another list, which contains more surface, and from there, more lists, and more surface. The lists make …