I’m delighted to share a piece from my old friend, the Siberian composer and multi-instrumentalist Roman Stolyar. This nearly 20-minute improvisation was recorded live on July 30, 2021 at the MMMESSS studio in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The piano-playing is quick, sharp, with each keystroke coming at you like waves of…
Z Tapes is a small-but-mighty label out of Bratislava, Slovakia, who release everything from bedroom pop to properly polished indie music. They have a massive roster of artists they work with, and also, bucking the current trend for vinyl, offer cassette releases. There is a lot of appealing music on…
Our friends at Habibi Funk are becoming legendary as their roster grows. What impresses me the most about the folks who run the label is their absolute passion for music from the Maghreb which has been criminally underrepresented throughout the world for decades. It’s shameful that the labels in the…
KAUAN hail from Estonia and bring something extra to both progressive rock and post-rock. Long, drone-laden, repetitive music that holds one’s interest throughout. Perhaps the best way to describe this is like a very much slowed-down My Bloody Valentine with a symphonic progressive tinge to it. Unique. I quite like…
The legendary Shenzhen-based Old Heaven Books released a powerful album from the Chinese-Kazakh band IZ Band. This is listed as folk music, yet the music is brutal, sounding like early 1980s post-punk or Industrial rock. Think of, maybe, a Kazakh Killing Joke or a Central Asian early-period Current 93.
Controlled Bleeding were one of the few bands who could glide from genre to genre easily. They were comfortable working with EBM, harsh noise and experimental music, and would even appeal to some elements in the goth-rock crowd, but this particular album stood out as their magnum opus for me. …
I had no idea what to expect with this album except that it was promoted by Carbon 7 record label impresario and former Univers Zéro bassist Guy Segers. His taste tends to be outstanding, so I gave this a shot. Quite pleasant, actually. Dominique Figaro’s voice reminds me of a…
Will Long is Celer, an ambient music composer living in Japan and therefore, a relatively close expatriate neighbor of mine. He releases a lot of music, as is the fashion with some highly competent composers these days, but his work feels like a cut above. Though this album has 12…
Dzivia are a project out of Belarus specializing in a music that crosses ambient, Nordic folk music, symphonic progressive rock and regional music. They manage to do all this in one track. Impressive.
Thanks to my friend and Galego brother Andrés, I’ve come across a soundtrack composer and sound designer out of New York called Gil Talmi. He has been nominated for an Emmy Award (presumably in soundtrack music and apparently fond of working on socially conscious projects. I’m far from a bleeding heart,…