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Domenique Dumont – People on Sunday

I came across a “composer” (really, a duo) based in Riga, Latvia called Domenique Dumont. The pair consist of Latvian multi-instrumentalist and producer Arturs Liepins and vocalist, ethnomusicologist Anete Stuce, and they have produced a shimmering, gentle piece of electronic music.  From the release’s Bandcamp site:

“People On Sunday is an original soundtrack to the 1930 silent film variously known as Menschen am Sonntag, Les Hommes le Dimanche and People On Sunday. The film is a key work of interwar German cinema, based on a screenplay by Billy Wilder.

Part documentary, part fiction, People On Sunday follows a group of characters going about their business in Weimar-era Berlin over one weekend and shows normal life in Germany before dictatorship.

Domenique Dumont was invited to compose the score for a special screening and live performance at the Les Arcs Film Festival in the French Alps in December 2019.

“Working on this score strengthened my belief that the time we currently live in, although far from perfect, might be the best time to be alive. All the bells and whistles, all the advantages that we have the opportunity to enjoy in the 21st century, are things people couldn’t have dreamt of only a hundred years ago. At the same time, we haven’t yet transformed away from our sense of humanity. As absurd and optimistic as it may sound, we are living in a utopia compared it to what came before and, perhaps, what is to come. Somehow this movie made me think of the present more than the past.””

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The Jagaloons – Ruin The Party

The Jagaloons are an instrumental surf/garage-rock band out of Albany, New York.  They have the energy of a punk band, the suaveness of those who play exotica, and can work in spaghetti western themes into their music.  Brilliant stuff.

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Philip Jeck & Chris Watson – Oxmardyke

There’s little I can say to introduce you to the work of Philip Jeck, the turntablist who passed away in March of 2022, nor would I with Chris Watson, the maestro of field recordings and one-time member of Cabaret Voltaire.  This release is a project that the gentlemen were working on before Jeck’s untimely passing.  From the Touch Records release Bandcamp site:

“In 2017 I was recording along the north bank of the Humber estuary and one morning driving back from Faxfleet I was stopped at the Oxmardyke rail crossing. The gates were down. After setting up a microphone array by the tracks for a passing freight train the signalman shouted an invitation to climb up into the gate box to make some more recordings.

Over the following weeks I made several return trips to Oxmardyke and gathered a broad palette of recordings. I discussed the sounds, stories and history of the site with Philip after a show and we were both excited by the potential of making a work together.

Philip was drawn to the ancient history of the area from 6th century Anglo Saxon times to the Knights Templar and how the sounds, rhythms and textures from those periods may still inhabit the contemporary landscape. My thoughts took inspiration from ‘The Signalman’ by Charles Dickens and the painting ‘Rain, Steam and Speed’ by Joseph Turner. We agreed to share ideas and exchange tracks.

Oxmardyke gate box has now passed into history

It was only when Mike Harding at Touch informed me of Philip’s condition that we began a final exchange of pieces and I sincerely hope that my contributions may frame Philip’s exceptional work.

Chris Watson August 2022“

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Szilárd Mezei Trio – Ink​á​bb (Rather)

Serbian-Hungarian multi-instrumentalist and composer Szilárd Mezei is perhaps the most adventurous musician coming out of Hungary these days, and that’s saying a lot, considering the great quality of improvisers who have come from that country (think of the legendary A.E. Bizottság, for example).  This is a trio album from 2008 where he plays viola while Ernő Hock handles the double bass and István Csík plays drums.  Unique.

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øjeRum – V​å​gnende Jeg Ser De D​ø​de

Danish composer øjeRum has recorded for and with some of the best ambient and electronic music labels active today, and this latest release is published by the estimable Room40 Records out of Australia.  From the release Bandcamp site:

“While recording, radio waves and static electricity interfered with the signal – sometimes subtly, sometimes more pronounced – supplying the recording with an accidental ghost accompaniment. This chance encounter let me to contact Scanner as I knew of his use of radio waves and police scanners. The result was the two remixes accompanying my piano recording.

“Vågnende Jeg Ser De Døde” is a line from a Danish Easter Psalm; “Awakening I See The Dead, in an Easter morning red”.”

A beautiful quote, so appropriate for the end of darkness that is Easter.  It seems a ghost accompanied the artist on this release.

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Fallen – The Floating World

I’ve been a fan of ROHS! Records out of Italy (HT: Ivo Petrov – thanks!) for some time.  They put out consistently good ambient music and organic electronica every month, it seems, and this release from Lorenzo Bracaloni, who goes by the monicker Fallen, is a delight to listen to.  It’s not a normal album for ROHS! – rather, it shifts a lot.  The music starts with what sound like processed field recordings and blend their way into more structured electronic music soundscapes, then drift back into a spacious bit of guitar playing.  There’s a slightly rough edge to the recording – it’s not saccharine or too ‘new age-y’.  Nor is it haunting or depressing.  It’s a rather uplifting album, and it was nice to feel a sense of calmness after finishing the listening session.

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Yunchi Ensemble – Aleksandrovka, Milyanfan: Dungan Music from Kyrgyzstan

Yet another amazing collection has been released by Antonovka Records, now based in Moldova.  This collection features a Chinese Muslim ethnic group called the Dungan who live in the passes between Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, and surprisingly, they don’t write in Chinese, but in Cyrillic!

From Antonovka’s Bandcamp site:

“Most of the members of the ensemble Yunchi (“Happiness”) live in two Dungan villages in the Chuy region of Kyrgyzstan – Aleksandrovka and Milyanfan. Aleksandrovka is located in the Moskva district to the west of Bishkek. The village was named after the Emperor Alexander II of Russia, during whose reign the Dungans came here. The name Milyanfan means a place where rice grows in Dungan language. Milyanfan is located in the Ysyk-Ata district northeast of Bishkek, not far from the Kazakhstan border.”

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Meitei (冥丁) – Kwaidan (怪談) (5th Anniversary Edition)

Meitei made its debut in 2018 with this freakishly disturbing, yet beautiful, experimental album.  It was a revelation for a lot of music critics, and each listen makes you feel like you’re locked in some disjointed Kurosawa film.

Kitchen Music and Evening Chants have combined to reissue this seminal album on its 5-year anniversary, and they have included LP and CD reissues.  From Evening Chants’ Bandcamp site:

“In 2018, Meitei shook the ambient world with the release of his debut album “Kwaidan”, a transposition of Japanese folklore into intricate compositions, capturing what he would coin as the “lost Japanese mood”. The album almost instantly received critical acclaim from the likes of Pitchfork, where it was included in their Best Experimental Albums of 2018, Bandcamp, calling it “different than some of the ambient music that has been coming from Japan in recent years”, The Wire and more. Outside of press, he has also received nods from the likes of Rosalía and has collaborated with contemporaries Anthony Naples, DJ Python, Tourist, Chitose Hajime and more.

Cementing his name in the ambient and experimental spheres, Meitei has since continued to cultivate devoted fans globally, with monumental follow-up albums as part of his unique musical canon – Komachi, Kofu I and Kofu II, showcasing his immense musicianship in building a unique sonic world of his own.“