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  • CD/Digital releasesLent Series

    Christopher McFall – Late Night Fate Directory

    by 5:4 April 19, 2025 • 17:29
    April 19, 2025 • 17:29

    The aim of this year’s 5:4 Lent Series has been twofold: first, to celebrate the work of US composer and sound artist Christopher McFall, and second, in collaboration with McFall, to re-release his work after many, many years of languishing completely unavailable. In the early stages of planning this series, …

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  • CD/Digital releasesLent Series

    Christopher McFall – Disengaged Songs for Disenchanted Lovers

    by 5:4 April 14, 2025 • 10:26
    April 14, 2025 • 10:26

    Familiarity can go a long way to diminish the effects of ambiguity. By now, 40 days into this Lent Series, we’re accustomed to the fact that immersing oneself within Christopher McFall‘s work is to enter a dark world of shapes moving in shadows, where sounds hint, suggest and allude, but …

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  • CD/Digital releasesLent Series

    Christopher McFall – Epilog (Recombinant)

    by 5:4 April 10, 2025 • 10:06
    April 10, 2025 • 10:06

    After the unexpected tangibility of An Eris 23, explored last time, Christopher McFall‘s 2012 album Epilog (Recombinant) isn’t just a return to his more familiar umbral soundworld, but to a degree that is way more than usually abstract. It takes as its starting point the materials he used when creating …

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  • CD/Digital releasesLent Series

    Christopher McFall – An Eris 23

    by 5:4 April 4, 2025 • 08:12
    April 4, 2025 • 08:12

    When exploring This Heat Holds Snow, i mentioned how Christopher McFall’s music features passages i call ‘in between’, states where things are more than usually elusive and / or blurred. The conclusion of that album took the three discrete elements in McFall’s work – pitch, rhythm and noise – and …

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  • CD/Digital releasesLent Series

    Christopher McFall – The Body As I Left It

    by 5:4 March 30, 2025 • 09:42
    March 30, 2025 • 09:42

    i often find myself thinking of the word ‘concrete’ when listening to Christopher McFall’s music. It’s because of the way that word’s meanings have a contradictory presence: many of the sounds McFall uses feel solid, firm; yet the soundworlds he creates tend toward vague, allusive and abstract environments. Concrete, yet …

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  • CD/Digital releasesLent Series

    Christopher McFall – This Heat Holds Snow

    by 5:4 March 25, 2025 • 10:32
    March 25, 2025 • 10:32

    One of the defining features of Christopher McFall‘s sound art is the ambiguity with which his source materials are handled. There’s at most a liminality to it – enough clarity (or ostensible clarity) to suggest something tangible – yet more often we’re left to fend for ourselves in worlds of …

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  • CD/Digital releasesLent Series

    Christopher McFall – The City of Almost

    by 5:4 March 20, 2025 • 09:43
    March 20, 2025 • 09:43

    i’ve been looking forward to this one. The City of Almost was the first of Christopher McFall‘s albums that i heard. i can’t remember what led me to it, but somehow in 2008 this CD, wrapped in a protective case of thick transparent paper, arrived at my door, and my …

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  • CD/Digital releasesLent Series

    Christopher McFall – Sensuality May Be Found At The Mouth Of A Snake

    by 5:4 March 15, 2025 • 09:57
    March 15, 2025 • 09:57

    i wrote previously about Christopher McFall‘s tendency to construct his work via smooth fades and transitions, rather than abrupt changes. That’s overwhelmingly the case, perhaps more than anywhere else, in his 2008 album Sensuality May Be Found At The Mouth Of A Snake. Though released as one 31-minute track, the …

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  • CD/Digital releasesLent Series

    Christopher McFall – Four Feels for Fire

    by 5:4 March 10, 2025 • 09:58
    March 10, 2025 • 09:58

    Four Feels For Fire was Christopher McFall‘s first physical release, put out on CD by renowned Belgian label Entr’acte in 2007. At 50 minutes’ duration, it was also his longest work so far, structured in five sections, the first four titled after the points of the compass, with a closing …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Musica Nova 2025 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 March 7, 2025 • 10:21
    March 7, 2025 • 10:21

    Especially prominent at this year’s Musica Nova festival was the lavish organ in Helsinki’s Musiikkitalo concert hall, unveiled at the start of 2024. The largest modern concert hall organ in the world, its construction was partly made possible by one of Finland’s greatest composers, the late Kaija Saariaho, who in …

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  • CD/Digital releasesLent Series

    Christopher McFall – A Little Rouge

    by 5:4 March 5, 2025 • 08:48
    March 5, 2025 • 08:48

    20 years ago, US sound artist Christopher McFall quietly emerged via a Spanish netlabel with his first release, A Starved-Strafe Lancing Machine, an album i wrote about in 2022. Throughout his career, McFall’s output has deeply and consistently impressed me, and his releases have featured in many of my Best …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Kenneth Kirschner – April 27, 2023 and more

    by 5:4 February 3, 2025 • 09:22
    February 3, 2025 • 09:22

    Notions of continuity are often complicated in Kenneth Kirschner‘s music. That’s just as true for the connections between material in his compositions as it is between the compositions themselves, as Kirschner has been exploring various parallel and interconnected trains of thought throughout his career, regularly returning to ideas that he …

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  • CD/Digital releasesFree music

    Yarn/Wire – Currents Vol. 8

    by 5:4 January 30, 2025 • 06:00
    January 30, 2025 • 06:00

    To conclude this month’s focus on post-festive free(down)loading, i’m turning to one of the Currents albums released by two-piano, two-percussion ensemble Yarn/Wire. Over the last decade, the quartet has released 10 albums in the Currents series, showcasing an array of works composed for them. Not surprisingly, with such a diversity …

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  • Best of the Year

    Best Albums of 2024 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 December 31, 2024 • 00:00
    December 31, 2024 • 00:00

    And finally we reach the zenith, the apex of this year’s best albums, each and every one of them a bewilderment of shock, awe and wonder.

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  • Best of the Year

    Best Albums of 2024 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 December 30, 2024 • 00:00
    December 30, 2024 • 00:00

    It was 16 years ago that my first Best Albums of the Year list was published, and for most of the years since there have been 40 entries on the list. However, there were many times when recommending 40 as genuinely ‘best’ felt like a struggle, and a few years …

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Milton Babbitt – Autobiography of the Eye (European première)

    by 5:4 December 7, 2024 • 06:00
    December 7, 2024 • 06:00

    In my 2022 Advent Calendar, i included Milton Babbitt‘s An Encore, a work i likened to a nut that i kept returning to in order to try new ways to crack it. It’s a similar situation with the work of his i’m featuring today, Autobiography of the Eye for soprano …

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Gloria Coates – Rainbow Across the Night Sky (World Première, a cappella version)

    by 5:4 December 4, 2024 • 06:00
    December 4, 2024 • 06:00

    In due course, when her music has finally been disseminated and explored properly, and begun to be understood, i’m convinced Gloria Coates will be revealed not only as one of the most fascinating and unique musical voices of modern times, but also as one its most prolific recyclers. In the …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2024 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 November 30, 2024 • 09:19
    November 30, 2024 • 09:19

    At the more serious end of the expressive spectrum, there was a lot to take in during my long weekend at this year’s HCMF. It was disappointing to witness, in Ann Cleare‘s TERRARIUM, yet another example of that which has become so prevalent at HCMF in recent years, a multimedia …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    AFEKT 2024 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 November 20, 2024 • 11:56
    November 20, 2024 • 11:56

    As i mentioned previously, the majority of this year’s AFEKT was focused on solo performers – primarily members of Ensemble Musikfabrik – with or without electronics, and these proved to be the strongest events of the festival.

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2024: the premières (Part 2)

    by 5:4 September 20, 2024 • 06:00
    September 20, 2024 • 06:00

    Thomas Adès has always tended to be as qualitatively erratic as he is consistently overhyped, but his new orchestral piece Aquifer finds him back on the right side of accomplishment. The title refers to a subterranean stratum through which water can flow, and it’s a superb descriptor for both the …

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5:4
  • About
    • Other writings
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  • The Lists
    • Listening History
    • Complete List of Ratings
    • Compositions explored on 5:4
    • Albums and EPs reviewed on 5:4
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    • Best Albums of the Years
    • The Proms premières – Poll results
  • The Dialogues
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