L'art de toucher
First, long over-due, Another Timbre disc of the US composer Evan Johnson. Five works from his unique, whispering soundworld. Three pieces in the ‘L’art de toucher le clavecin’ series, with ‘thaes ofereode, thisses swa maeg’ for cello and voice, and ‘Plan and section of the same reservoir’ played by Trio Accanto. Note that the CD version of this album includes a fifth track, 'Plan and section of the same reservoir', which can't be included as part of the Bandcamp download for copyright reasons.…
A Coiled Form
'A Coiled Form' by UK-based composer Bryn Harrison. The piece was originally composed as a shorter solo in 2020, and then revised and expanded in collaboration with violinist Sarah Saviet, who gives an astonishing virtuosic performance, to become a 50-minute solo work. It was released on CD by Another Timbre in November 2022.
Promise & Illusion
Promise & Illusion is the first LP from Ecka Mordecai, following the release of her solo Critique + Prosper on Takuroku in 2020. Cello, voice, horsehair harp, violin and field recordings combine to spin narrative melody, rich intimacy and melancholic landscapes.
Composed around an exploration of la charnière (from the French ‘hinge’), Promise & Illusion begins with the sound of footsteps and a door opening and closing repeatedly, unsure whether to let us into the mysterious interior beyond. We a…
Elements
*In process of stocking.* Since my piece Terrible Fake (Piano, Drums, 2013) and especially Darkroom (Clarinet, Vibraphone, Sampler, 2017), I've been trying to to integrate some grooves into classical contemporary idiom. Since those experiments were mostly for smaller setups, this time I wanted to transfer it into the larger one in order to get more possibilities to work with different textures and coloring within harmonic structures of clusters and chromatic movements of melodies. Constant trans…
Filters
*Limited edition of 200 copies.* A beautifully meditative and architectural set of loops for solo piano, Filters is the solo debut of pianist and composer Phillip Golub (b. 1993). Approaching the concept of endless repetition through the prism of his radiant pianism, Golub’s loops unite the austerity of the systems-based with the infinite variety & imagination of live performance.
What does it mean to physically perform something that repeats endlessly? To press down the keys on a piano in the s…
) / (
*In process of stocking.* “) / (" is a collection of improvisations and alternate versions of existing productions recorded onto cassette. The track "swim" by Baraboro sampled in the opening of ")". Released on the label Forlaget Kornmod, a collective label based in Odense and Copenhagen introducing New Danish heartfelt sounds.
Throat
Tip! *In process of stocking.* Throat is an examination of using site-specific and unusual acoustic environments as a catalyst for compositional expression as well as a tool to transform and transcend the timbral and aesthetic qualities associated with the recorder as an instrument. The 5 pieces on the record are written for, and recorded in, the following spaces: 1) Brønshøj Vandtårn: the massive cathedral-like water tower with approximately 15 seconds of reverb is shrouded in modal harmony and…
Vinden bærer fuglenes drømme
*In process of stocking.* Vinden bærer fuglenes drømme is a contemporary classical ambient work by Jakob Folke Ivarsson. Released as a cassette on the label Forlaget Kornmod, a collective label based in Odense and Copenhagen introducing New Danish heartfelt sounds.
From The Machine: Volume 1
*In process of stocking. Limited edition of 200 copies.* The first volume in an ongoing collaboration between composers Kenneth Kirschner and Joseph Branciforte, From the Machine explores the application of software-based compositional techniques — including algorithmic processes, generative systems, and indeterminacy — to the creation of new music for acoustic instruments. Featuring members of Flux Quartet and International Contemporary Ensemble. Although digital approaches to music-making are …
LP1
*In process of stocking. Limited edition of 150 copies.* The debut recording from Grammy-nominated vocalist Theo Bleckmann and electronic musician & producer Joseph Branciforte. Vocal loops of hushed beauty framed by artificially-synthesized tones, deep subharmonic oscillations, and gently layered sheets of noise, with a shared musical language drawing upon ambient, choral, microsound, and free improvisation.
In the early days of spring 2018, Theo Bleckmann and Joseph Branciforte retreated for t…
Arch of Motion
*Edition of 300* In recent years Swedish musician Linnéa Talp has grown interested in liminal spaces of sound, increasingly searching for her breath deep within passages of a song when instruments gently and patiently bridge the verses. In 2020 she released Cochlea, a brooding pop-rock record made under the name Deerest. “I’ve been trying to work with my body, my breath and my listening,” she says of her work since finishing that release. “I wanted to integrate a sense of slow and simple movemen…
Music For Smalls Lighthouse
Plinth (Michael Tanner) has been recording for the better part of a decade, sharing time as a member of numerous other acts. What makes Music for Smalls Lighthouse so special? The album tells a story whose outlines are visible even without the accompanying text; the field recordings are location-specific, and contribute to an overall mood; the composition is tender, the playing exquisite; and there's little else to which it can be compared.
Tanner has chosen just the right instruments for the oc…
Zeitfrei
In the album Zeitfrei the mesmerizing timbre of the classical soprano voice of Maraile Lichdi interweaves with an acoustic and electronic world of sound. The songs are characterized by the concept of the ambivalence of the temporal in music. In the lyrical, sketch-like texts, always vague and associative, the topics of transience, vanity, disorientation, loss of control, alienation, farewell, sorrow and finally the invincibility of time but also the resilience of man, are reflected in polarising…
A Moonbeam is Just a Filtered Sunbeam
An extended solo work by the California-based composer/instrumentalist Andrew McIntosh, using field recordings and electronics, alongside violin, viola, piano, bowed wine glasses and slate – all played by the composer. Wonderful music produced during the year of lockdown
September
Apartment House again, performing eight exquisite chamber works by the young UK composer Georgia Rodgers
Songs For a Shed
A series of six beautiful works for piano and instruments, realised by Apartment House and pianist Siwan Rhys, with great cover artwork by Maxwell Doig
Sapindales
Four clarinet-based works, brilliantly played by Heather Roche, with Juliet Fraser, Anton Lukoszevieze and James Opstad. Music with intricate, interweaving lines, the title piece is a mesmerising work for multi-tracked clarinets and field recordings
…et après (2Lp)
After an already productive year, Alga Marghen, in the guise of their sub-imprint, Planam, delivers, “…et après”, an astounding double LP of archival material documenting the collaboration between Luc Ferrari and Ensemble Laborintus. Issued in a limited edition of 250 copies on vinyl, and bristling with tense electroacoustic sonorities at the forefront of electronic and experimental chamber music, it's among the most challenging, exciting, and engaging albums we’ve heard all year.
The Live One
XI Records is very pleased to announce the release of Tom Chiu’s new double-CD The Live One, a diverse and thoroughly engrossing album that showcases the multiple facets of Chiu’s visions. Chiu is a polymath who is as comfortable with lyricism and the beauty of tonality as he is with process-based works and challenging conventions of composition. Chiu specializes in creating spatial experiences and altered states of mind with his music, with a singular, questing path. He is a gifted improviser a…
A More Attractive Way
** Edition of 500 + 20 pages booklet ** A More Attractive Way is a comprehensive study of live performances made by IST between 1996 and 2000. This set begins at the very outset of the group's career and features their debut concert at Club Orange in London and charts its way through further gigs in London, Billericay, Norwich and Cambridge. “A completely different intensity, but an intensity nonetheless,” Jo Fell reflects in notes accompanying A More Attractive Way. Her husband Simon, to whose …