John Tilbury plays Terry Riley
There are certain works by minimalist pioneer Terry Riley that are rightly celebrated as classics, paradigm-shifting masterpieces that exerted a wide influence within classical music, but also well beyond its often hermetic borders. Hello, “Baba O’Riley!” But there is so much more in his repertoire deserving the same accolades. On “Terry Riley: Keyboard Studies”, released by Another Timbre, one of the premiere contemporary music labels of our time, three mid-1960s masterpieces are interpreted by…
Landmarks
Eight collaborative compositions for organ and percussion by the longstanding Canadian duo, who also appeared on Isaiah’s previous, and now sold out, CD ‘Bow’.
Hope Lies Fallow
Six pieces developed by Johnny and Keir from music by Hildegard van Bingen and Orlando de Lassus. Three violin duets, + three tracks for violins and the voice of Celeste Oram.
Trois Mémoires Discrètes
*300 copies * 'Another fantastic Af Ursin release. Af Ursin is Timo van Luijk’s solo project. The first piece, Sylphide, is a side-long wonder. Long drawn out brass tones with some other accompaniment. I could listen to this music all day. The closest parallel I can think of is Davide Mosconi’s divine LP of foghorn recordings. But Sylphide has a bit more of a musical element. This will be my go-to last side of the night for my (rare these days) late night Salons. The second side features two tra…
Gold
* Digipack CD* The lightning rod for Alabaster DePlume’s luminous follow up to the widely-acclaimed 2020 release To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1 was personal. “Someone was going through a thing,” says the Mancunian poet-performer. “I said, ‘go forward in the courage of your love’. And then I thought 'yeah, that's what I need to hear as well’.” Gold is a sonorous double album that celebrates the communal act of making music and the relationships that can be explored when you purposefully avoid …
Michael Pisaro-Liu: Radiolarians
Radiolorians (2018) finds Pisaro-Liu drawing inspiration from another gifted observer of this world-in-variation, the German zoologist, naturalist, and philosopher Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), who promoted and popularized evolutionary thought via extensive monographs and artful renderings of insects, animals, sea creatures, and embryos. For Radiolarians, Pisaro-Liu creates what he terms “transcriptions” of individual radiolaria species depicted in Haeckel’s drawings. Radiolarians comprises fourtee…
World in World
Black Truffle is pleased to announce World in World, the latest solo offering from prolific Berlin-based guitarist-composer Julia Reidy. Where the recent trilogy of LP releases – brace, brace (Slip, 2019), In Real Life (Black Truffle, 2019), and Vanish (Editions Mego, 2020) – focussed on increasingly lush electronic settings for Reidy’s propulsive fingerpicking and auto-tuned vocals, arranged into wide-ranging side-long epics, World in World finds Reidy refocusing on the core elements of their a…
Caspar
This habit some experimental musicians have of applying forced context or stories to what is essentially pure improvised music does sometimes perplex me. Here Janek references Kaspar Hauser with the title and in the sleeve notes. He also states the intention “…to de- and reformulate the idea of beauty”. When referencing the case of Kaspar Hauser, I assume Janek sees himself as “…set free…” from traditional technique, and aims, on this disc at least, to “…redefine by discover[y] and recover the p…
Spirits Of Absent Dancers - Music For Solo Vibraphone And Percussion
Created out of adversity and artistic longing, this is a wondrous, evocative diversion.
Monteverdi | Pianocloud
"The Coronation of Poppea by Claudio Monteverdi garnered the interest of Gian Francesco Malipiero, who emphasized a second copy of the manuscript found in Naples in the rooms of the Conservatory Library, and showing a series of pages not included in the Venetian manuscript. Among these, a Prologue that constitutes, together with other fragments taken from the work, the main plot of monteverdi | pianocloud.
As is known, the Coronation was performed in Naples in 1651 and is ignored, given that Mon…
58'
58' was composed in 2010 on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of d-zAkord. I wanted a very minimalist piece with few sound events and long silences. At that time we presented t'Drone(s)Scape', a sound/living installation lasting 3 hours. The public was invited to sit or lie down in the center of the sonic maelstrom for a multicast travel. It is in this context that 58' was imagined.
Although unconventional, the 58' score is extremely precise. The musicians follow a graphic score, with time p…
Spiralis Aurea
Venturing into untapped realms of creative exploration, the Genoa born, Bologna based, guitarist and electroacoustic composer, Stefano Pilia, returns to Die Schachtel with “Spiralis Aurea”, a double LP of material that intertwines traces of sacred geometry, collective experience and elusive connections between nature and human kind.
Approdi 3, Avanguardie Musicali a Napoli - Volume III
**300 copies** Konsequenz has released a new anthology that offers another incredible window into the Napoli’s remarkable experimental endeavours, another essential artifact for any fan of Italian border and avant-garde musics.
Avant-garde and experimental musics are intrinsically connected to community, collectivism, support, and collaboration. Audiences and artists, stretching to every corner of the globe, continuously rely on each other to push into ever more ambitious realms. This spirit of …
Naturspil, Automatmusik, Syngeskål
New tape from Michael Mørkholt, made during his winter residency at Polychrome. "Naturspil, Automatmusik, Syngeskål". The pieces are performed on an acoustic singing bowl and a self-invented digital system, an electroacoustic composition principle for triads and rhythm in pure atmosphere. The principle is that the tonal relationships are mirrored in the rhythmic. A computer program with an amplitude-controlled trigger records a sound clip each time the singing bowl is struck. The sound clip is d…
The Expanded Body
This CD by Alessandro Perini combines electronic sound manipulation with the creation of electromechanical and electroacoustic instruments and a reflection on sound environment, tending toward the exploration of unusual compositional solution. In short, it is experimental music and as such, it deserves to be listened to and commented upon. A few words about the composer. Alessandro Perini is a young musician: he studied composition (with Luca Francesconi and Ivan Fedele among others), electroni…
Works for Cello and Piano
With their 2018–2019 Isang Yun Recording Project, ItalianCellist Luigi Piovano and Pianist Aldo Orvieto pay homageto the late Korean composer and the tragic course of his life. “The events that marked Isang Yun’s life emblematically show the miserable short-sightedness of the human being, unable to act authentically and with love towards others, in striving for a common good and reach a common spiritual elevation. When confronted with the exceptional musical depth and the dramatic power of Isang…
Watercolors and Psychograms
"In the works of Martón Illés from the early 2000s, physically perceptible energy, gestural force, and visual conceptions of the sonic are already present. After 2010 the composer drew further implications from these for his work: since then, his musical thinking has no longer been based on fixed pitches, but rather on sounds – either as acoustic manifestations of imagined lines or as gestures modeled on the physical. The way he actually implements this by means of instruments is impressively de…
Painted Lights
Painted Lights, a new album of compositions by Kui Dong is now available on Kairos Music. The record, which features performances by Juliet Petrus, Deirdre Brenner, Third Coast Percussion, Arditti Quartet, Koehne Quartett, Volti, Piedmont East Bay Children's Choir, Robert Geary, and Raphael Schlüsselberg, comprises four pieces of chamber and choral music written by Dong between 2009 and 2017. California Shoreline (2017) for soprano, string quartet and prepared piano opens the album, followed by …
Music For The Kama Sutra
*2022 stock* Robert Hughes, composer and author, is a graduate of the University of Buffalo (now SUNY Buffalo) and composition student of Aaron Copland, Carlos, Chavez, Luigi Dallapiccola, and Lou Harrison. He has written for symphony orchestra, chamber ensemble, voices, performance art events and a wide variety of media, including twenty film scores and a large body of electronic music. His compositions include commissions from the San Francisco Symphony, Cabrillo Music Festival, Oakland Sympho…
Solar One/The Watts Towers
Other Minds is excited to bring you an EP of two archival works from Bay Area composer Charles Boone. Both pieces take their inspiration and titles from man-made landmarks across California. Solar One from a monumental power station near the desert city of Barstow, The Watts Towers from Simon Rodia’s outsider art masterpiece in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts. In much of his work, the composer seeks to create sonic landscapes that are simultaneously static and dynamic. Certain elements, ha…