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An attempt to convert Brussels' sonic reality into music. Mutated environmental sound materials gathered in Brussels, remixes of interviews with inhabitants and extracts of installations are flanked with atmospheric compositions made with sounds from other cities and countries.
The second release from this abstract trio who mingle hard electronics with acoustic and processed percussion. A more focused, subtle aesthetic here, I think, than on their last also excellent - CD. These are finely tuned and seamlessly integrated sounds that have been crafted and, importantly, performed; this is essentially played music that had been painstakingly reworked, and bears still the deep qualities of interactivity and immediacy that created it.
Anne-James Chaton (voice, electronics) with Andy Moor (electric guitar, radio, electronics). Le journaliste consists of 8 pieces and is a part of a series of 100 portraits iniated by Anne-James Chaton... Most of these portraits have become large posters. Le journaliste is a journey into the texts and columns of a newspaper and radio broadcasts of a single journalist selected by Anne James. The world news, the politics, headlines, the stock exchange figures and the weather are all explored and tr…
Before the epigones take over the stage we are given a chance to hear out Bach himself: the unfinished four-voice Contrapunctus XIV from the Art of the Fugue marks the starting point of Andreas Grau's and Götz Schumacher's remarkable exploration of the Bach cosmos. In the Berlin autograph of the Contrapunctus XIV the place where the score breaks off is marked by an inscription: "At the point where the name BACH is introduced in the countersubject to this fugue, the composer died." Even though fr…
'Written and recorded by Gordon Sharp at Belmont Shore (ca), mid-levels (hk) & kobe (japan) 2001-2009. Mastered at Piethopraxis, july 2009. Dedicated to Matt Kinnison (1965-2008). Cindytalk have been active since 1982, which we won't go into here (a quick Google search will satisfy that need). During The 80s and 90s Their sound was defined by broken down rock structures and abstract piano ambience. A third side to Their coin emerged at The dawn Of The 21st Century with a turn towards obscure com…
As part of its Japan focus the 1999 Biennial Festival for New Music in Hannover also presented Toshio Hosokawa's exploration into the music of his "musical ancestors." This CD was recorded live during the performance and includes three works from the 17th and 19th centuries. Chidori no kyoku by Yoshizawa kengyô II (1808-1872) is based on the 31-syllable poems of the classical poetry anthology Kokin wakashû (10th century), so-called waka poems; chidori is the Japanese plover, whose calls have bee…
Heavly influenced by the seventies, this band is able as no one to pick those elements and build them in a fresh and modern kraut-psychedlic shape. Playing together since 1995, the four members of Bron y Aur , attracted soon attention thanks to the quality of the first two demotapes (1997 and 1998) and obviously for two previous albums. Always considered a band who take roots in the seventies, they don't hide having spent their days in youth between Zeppelin and Sabbath, to b…
JanuarY 2004. Two years after the highly acclaimed album “Rose-garden", the portables come up with their second full length. “Girls Beware!" starts where their previous album ended. De Portables developed a cult reputation during the years, mainly because of their many intense and always different performances. Against all recent trends, standards and expectations they do their thing; they play because they like playing. The quartet twists themselves during 11 songs a way between pop, post-rock …
American Landscapes 2 ramps up the intensity slowly and with the clear objective to display power and a thorough sense of control. The first 13 minutes come at you sounding like a forest fire churning with stored energy. Underneath this unfurling force are composed parts that are revealed through close inspection. Once the energy breaks a trombone/saxophone duo stops the presses and summons a simple chamber horn interlude with other brass walking in. The piece wanders a bit into more open free p…
On the second full-length release by Kiila, the band gently conjures up mildly otherworldly tunes with a peaceful air and feathered eyes. What was once free-pop played by two is now free-folk played by seven. The language of the songs has reverted back to Finnish, and the human voices rest on a warm texture of sounds from an array of acoustic and electronic instruments. Carefully-arranged songs alternate with those improvised on the spot, all bearing the mark of a handcrafted article.
Against spontaneity and con-sistency: Poppe manages the feat of being both a systematic and a revolutionary composer, one who plays by the rules and beats them at the same time.
Long deleted, this is a must have cd collecting all the Scelsi pieces for string orchestra. "An internal struggle, stemming from the introductory tremolo, all through its serene yet chaotic means of lumonisity"
****THE WIRE 2008 TOP 50 RECORDS OF THE YEAR WINNER****"A couple of years ago the promoters Arika invited John Butcher to tour a number of out-of-the-way spaces in Scotland. The venues, selected for their extreme acoustic properties, included a mausoleum, a wartime fuel-storage tank and a cave. This album grows out of Butcher’s evident interest in escaping the acoustic confines of conventional venues (work with resonant spaces is documented on the earlier Geometry of Sentiment and Cavern with Ni…
The Kidnapping Europe project was initialized by the artists Christina Clar (Paris, France) and Peter Jap Lim (Berlin, Germany) in 2001. Based on the "Europa Myth" (Zeus kidnapped the phoenician princess Europa and brought her to a continent which now has her name), the project aims to approach the topic of migration and the dreams, hopes and visions of migrants, in particular, from a contemporary perspective. In addition to their own work, which resulted in an installation that made its debut a…
Including Notturno volgare, for clarinet; Playtime No.1; Alex in Mongolia, for two guitars; Rite in progress, for piano; Notturno, for double bass; Playtime No.4; Dietro l'orologio, for soprano & tenor saxophones; Sei danze, for violin.
Giacinto Scelsi (1905-88) has featured prominently in my music writing life for a decade and a half, ever since I wrote Discovering Scelsi on my first computer for Piano Journal (Oct. 1986), one of the first UK articles about this fascinating and elusive composer.There are particular reasons why the Scelsi CD in the latest, indispensable batch from Kairos prompted a trawl of my files. Scelsi applauded my analysis of his piano music and we had a cordial correspondence, after which I met him tw…
The Sinfonia n° 1 "Canarias" is dedicated to the composer's father, an old Canary Islander aged 94 at the time it was written. He was the reason why Cruz de Castro decided to focus the composition's middle movement wholly on the Canarian Folía. This special, important form of Canarian folk music appears both in its original form and in variations: "That's the way it should be: from the simple to the complex, from the melody line to the concentration: a harmonious whole." (Cruz de Castro) The Toc…