• About
  • Patrons
  • The Lists
    • Listening History
    • Complete List of Ratings
    • Compositions reviewed on 5:4
    • Composer Map
    • 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
    • Contact Form
    • Submission Contact Form
5:4
Tag:

song

  • CD/Digital releasesFree music

    Joanne Pollock – Optimist

    by 5:4 January 28, 2022 • 12:01
    January 28, 2022 • 12:01

    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…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • CD/Digital releasesFree musicThematic series

    Chelsea Wolfe – Folkadelphia Session 5/31/2014

    by 5:4 January 11, 2021 • 10:40
    January 11, 2021 • 10:40

    Among my favourite singer-songwriters is Chelsea Wolfe. To spend time with her albums – the last two of which featured in my Best Albums of the Year lists: Birth of Violence in 2019 and Hiss Spun in 2017 – is to become immersed in uniquely spine-tingling worlds of dark lyricism,…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • CD/Digital releases

    Fovea Hex – The Salt Garden III

    by 5:4 December 6, 2019 • 05:00
    December 6, 2019 • 05:00

    It all began with a trilogy. This was back in 2005 when, over the course of three successive years, Irish musical entity Fovea Hex (singer Clodagh Simonds, together with a changing roster of collaborators) put out the trio of EPs – Bloom, Huge and Allure – that would become collectively…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • 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…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • Concerts

    Centrala, Birmingham: Illuminate Women’s Music

    by 5:4 October 17, 2019 • 15:23
    October 17, 2019 • 15:23

    In Birmingham last Saturday i caught the latest concert in the current season by Illuminate Women’s Music, touring six UK towns between September and November. As the name implies, the purpose of Illuminate Women’s Music is to shine a light on women composers and performers, featuring a mixture of new…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • Retrospectives

    Björk – Crave (Odd Duck Mix); Hearts & Bones; Undone

    by 5:4 October 11, 2018 • 12:41
    October 11, 2018 • 12:41

    In my most recent mixtape, exploring the noble art of the remix, i included a track by Björk – ‘Crave (Odd Duck Mix)’ – that i mentioned had been made available as a download back in 2001, but which was no longer available. There were in fact four tracks that Björk…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2018: Per Nørgård – Symphony No. 3 (UK Première); Rolf Wallin – WHIRLD; Bushra El-Turk – Crème Brûlée on a Tree (World Premières)

    by 5:4 August 29, 2018 • 12:51
    August 29, 2018 • 12:51

    Quite apart from anything else they may embody, this year’s Proms premières have occupied pretty much the entire span of the profound—trivial continuum. At its most extreme, this has been exemplified by the most recent new works, which have ranged from a compositional exploration of infinity culminating in a state…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2018: Mark-Anthony Turnage – Farewell; Lisa Illean – Sleeplessness … Sails (World Premières)

    by 5:4 August 16, 2018 • 14:19
    August 16, 2018 • 14:19

    Two of the smallest of this year’s new works were given their first performances in a recital at Cadogan Hall on 6 August by mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly and pianist Joseph Middleton. The concert had themes of sleep (and the lack of it), dreams and lullabies running through it, explored primarily…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • CD/Digital releases

    Fovea Hex – The Salt Garden II

    by 5:4 August 29, 2017 • 17:43
    August 29, 2017 • 17:43

    It’s high time i flagged up one of the standout new releases i’ve been spending time with over the summer. Whenever Irish experimental electronic folk group Fovea Hex put out something new, it’s not just a cause to rejoice but a guarantee of something unique and indescribably wonderful. They’ve been around…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2017: Anders Hillborg – Sirens (UK Première)

    by 5:4 July 30, 2017 • 19:00
    July 30, 2017 • 19:00

    It’s quite unusual to be sitting down to enjoy the Proms première of a piece you already know quite well. But that was the case with Anders Hillborg‘s Sirens, which received its first UK performance a couple of days ago by Swedish sopranos Ida Falk Winland and Hannah Holgersson with the BBC…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • Commemorations

    In Memoriam: Richard Rodney Bennett – Goodbye for Now

    by 5:4 December 27, 2012 • 13:22
    December 27, 2012 • 13:22

    2012 has almost drawn to a close, but not before claiming another prominent musical voice: Richard Rodney Bennett, who passed away on Christmas Eve aged 76. Bennett began his compositional life as something of a modernist, studying with Boulez and showing a distinct interest in serialism. But i suspect it’s…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • CD/Digital releases

    A spine-tingling fusion: Alone Architect

    by 5:4 November 8, 2012 • 20:00
    November 8, 2012 • 20:00

    A release i’ve been anticipating for a while came out recently: the self-titled debut EP from Alone Architect. Much of the best electronica-fuelled songwriting in recent times has emanated from Canada, and Alone Architect is no exception, being the project of Montreal musician Jeff Feldman. Feldman posted a couple of…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • Mixtapes

    Mixtape #23 : Modern Troubadours

    by 5:4 July 1, 2012 • 15:13
    July 1, 2012 • 15:13

    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.…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • Lent Series

    John Cage – The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs

    by 5:4 March 21, 2012 • 20:43
    March 21, 2012 • 20:43

    Austerity is probably not the first characteristic that would come to mind when describing the music of John Cage, and yet that’s precisely what dominates his short song The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs, composed in 1942. The text is extracted from a passage (on page 556) of James Joyce’s…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • Lent Series

    György Kurtág – Scenes from a Novel

    by 5:4 March 19, 2012 • 22:57
    March 19, 2012 • 22:57

    A profound sense of melancholic introspection pervades the next piece in my Lent series, György Kurtág‘s song cycle Scenes From a Novel. Kurtág composed the work in 1982, setting 14 texts by the Russian writer Rimma Dalos, texts that are in perfect sympathy with the composer’s penchant for exceptionally short…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • CD/Digital releases

    Mind-bogglingly beautiful: Fovea Hex – Here Is Where We Used To Sing

    by 5:4 May 14, 2011 • 12:33
    May 14, 2011 • 12:33

    Clodagh Simonds likes to take her time. Following an early spell of musical incandescence in the late ’60s and early ’70s (in her own group, the fascinating prog folk outfit Mellow Candle), the Irish singer was content to hover in the fringes for three and half decades before taking centre…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • Uncategorized

    Hoping against hope: the soft, exquisite sorrow of Daisy Chapman

    by 5:4 April 5, 2009 • 22:05
    April 5, 2009 • 22:05

    What is it, i’ve often wondered, that makes melancholy such rich, fertile inspiration for art? Perhaps because in its impossibly deep, dark furrows—in the troughs of our experience—there simply is nothing else an artist can do, but (in whatever guise) sing. Art, after all, captures what words alone cannot; it…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail

Join 2,146 other subscribers.

Nils Henrik Asheim: Lydkilder Sound and Image: Aesthetics and Practices Music Beyond Airports: appraising ambient music Simon Cummings | 間 Studies vol. 6

  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Rss
  • Mixcloud
Footer Logo

© 2008-2023 Simon Cummings

5:4
  • About
  • Patrons
  • The Lists
    • Listening History
    • Complete List of Ratings
    • Compositions reviewed on 5:4
    • Composer Map
    • 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
    • Contact Form
    • Submission Contact Form