• Music

    Liang YiYuan (梁奕源) – Those That Die In A Dream. A twenty years retrospective

    July 2, 2022 - By 

    It boggles the mind that our friends at Unexplained Sounds Group continue to scour the earth for the best ambient music around. From the label’s website: Liang YiYuan was born in Wuhan (China, 1977), and now living in Lijiang, Yunnan Province. He painted in his early years, and later turned to make music. So far, he has published more than twenty albums, frequently using instruments such as guitar, yangqin, violin, guqin, bawu, and showing a natural attitude to unconventional playing techniques and original timbre. He also creates music for films, plays, modern dances, architectural and environmental scenes, and exhibitions. “Those…

  • Music

    Roger Doyle – Oizzo No

    March 17, 2022 - By 

    Roger Doyle, like his equally talented countryman (and friend) Daniel Figgis, doesn’t get his fair shake inside of his home country of Ireland, yet is better regarded in the U.K. and the European continent as a master of electroacoustic music.  This version of Oizzo No is a reworking of the original album (which you can hear here) and it has a rather fascinating back story: “Originally part-recorded and subsequently aborted when the would-be label vanished without trace overnight, Oizzo No was shelved indefinitely until a scholarship at the prestigious Institute Of Sonology at the University Of Utrecht in Holland afforded…

  • Music

    Nick Sudnick – Opera of the Fifteenth Hour

    March 10, 2022 - By 

    24 Rush Hours is a series done by Zga composer and multi-instrumentalist Nick Sudnick, and this is #15 of 24.  The two long pieces are a pastiche of art-rock (think Rock-In-Opposition like Art Bears or the composers Alfred ’23’Harth and Heiner Goebbels).  Add an element of Bertolt Brecht-like lyrics for theater and you have a fine series of avant-opera Sudnick keeps producing..

  • Music

    Jeff Gburek + George Christian – Thrown Extremes

    January 14, 2022 - By 

    During the next few weeks, I’ll be catching up on releases I could not get to in 2021.  This one is really a gem that I’m surprised I didn’t get to earlier, but thanks to Jeff Gburek reminding me of it, I can happily present this release he did in collaboration with another one of the blog’s dear friends, George Christian. The two tracks which go under the name The Charles Ives Observatory (Parts 1 and 2) bookend the centerpiece of the album, the 28-minute opus Magellanic Clouds.  The CIO tracks have the feeling of classic-era electroacoustic music imbued with…

  • Music

    Bérangère Maximin – Land Of Waves

    December 12, 2021 - By 

    Land Of Waves, the 6th album by French electroacoustic composer Bérangère Maximin, came out in June of 2020, and when I first heard it, was was left utterly impressed, but I have not had a chance to review it until today.  Maximin has an incredible talent to blend together nature, minerals, plant life, animal life, city life, and make it speak in one warmly organized opus.  I will have to check if she has released something since then, but, as this is the latest work I can find from her, I can say with some measure of confidence that she’s…

  • Music - Qobuz - Spotify

    Alexei Aigui & Arkady Marto – DA

    November 11, 2021 - By 

    This should be a breakout year for Alexei Aigui, who has released his fourth album of the year in collaboration with pianist Arkady Marto. The album is absolutely sublime. Each track has a gentle touch, balancing violin and piano perfectly. The cornerstone of the album for me is this track, Nocturne No. 0: It is a tango that would have made Ástor Piazzlla proud. The whole album is engaging, and would have made for perfect music for a dramatic film (something Alexei has been making for several years now, with great success). As I’ve mentioned in previous reviews, if you…

  • Music

    Flora Yin-Wong – Holy Palm

    October 20, 2021 - By 

    After coming across an interview over at The Quietus with the London based composer Flora Yin-Wong, I wasn’t quite sure of what to make of her work.  The new album they discussed, Holy Palm sounded fascinating, less so by the interviewer’s rather tepid questions but more so by the evocative answers Flora was giving.  I cannot say that she is or isn’t a religious woman (though as a rationalist, perhaps she would enjoy the works of the Cappadocians), but her fascination with sacred spaces adds something interesting to this album, where drone, field recordings, and a warm take on something…

  • Music

    Santiago Fradejas – The Light Through The Springs

    September 29, 2021 - By 

    The guitar, all by itself, can serve as tool for making a haunting orchestra’s worth of sounds.  My good friend Santiago Fradejas, now resident in Kent, of all places (!) presents a mini-LP’s worth of brooding, swelling, lilting soundscapes.  There is a menacing element tying the album together, as though one was taking a stroll near the 6th ring of Dante’s Inferno.