Sophia Jani is a Berlin-based composer of modern classical music who seems to be part of a wave of a creative new generation coming out of Europe. This collection of string quartets is elegant, yet the music has a mournful quality to it.
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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…
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As the world is in a state of free-fall at the moment, it is nice to take some time to listen to something mellow, perhaps saccharine to some tastes, but calming nonetheless. Mattia Cupelli’s release is an appropriate one to share today considering the album’s title, most recognized as the date where Roman emperor Julius Caesar was assassinated.
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According to Midori Hirano’s Bandcamp site, “this album was initially released on staaltape by Rinus Van Alebeek in 2015 as a very limited edition of cassette tape.” It’s a gem of experimental music because Hirano’s background blends a classical music, a commercial music background, and what would end up being termed as “Japanoise,” the beautifully violent experimental music which exploded in Japan and worldwide throughout the late 80s and early 90s. Hirano crafts 24 sound vignettes on this album, and the end result is something akin to John Cage going mushroom hunting with Aki Takahashi while listening to Hijokaidan on…
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Iceland is one of those countries who seem to produce musicians at an incredible rate in comparison to the size of its population. Atli Örvarsson is one of a handful of gifted soundtrack composers to hail from the island nation, and is the first one I can think of who doesn’t originally come from the capital, Reykjavik. He is now a Los Angelino pursuing a career in composition, and is becoming well-known for his scores. The standout track for me on this album is one titled Anka & Robert, which reminds me of a meaty slab of post-Industrial ambient. The…
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Raphael Weinroth-Browne is a fine cellist from Canada. He weaves together contemporary classical music, post-rock, post-metal and even some hints of ambient. From Raphael’s Bandcamp site: “Realizing Worlds Within in the studio was more of a process of discovery rather than one of conscious creation. Long after its release, I felt that I was still getting to know the music and understand its nature. Learning to recreate the album live was an extension of this process which has taken me full circle, back to the initial impulse from which this music took seed, much in the same way that the…
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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…
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Michał Jacaszek is a Polish composer joined by the Kwartludium, a contemporary classical music quartet who, until coming across this recording, I had never heard of previously. Jacaszek, the quartet, and the musicians who supplement this recording make a very tense, yet totally organic series of an electroacoustic series of soundscapes, which, as he says, are “forgotten songs performed secretly by my beloved trees.” He lists his inspiration as coming from the legendary French composer Olivier Messiaen’s seminal work, “Catalogue d’Oiseaux.” A stunning work to be inspired by, and the ensemble have done justice to Messiaen’s memory.
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Our first review on returning to Brno is a burner, naturally. Our friend, man of the world, and experimental music composer Jeff Gburek comes by these pages again with a droning masterpiece. This is not the ordinary drone you hear reviewed on these pages, though, truth be told, nothing I review is even remotely ordinary. The backstory is almost as impressive as these waves of hypnotic (in the best of senses) drones are. To catch the whole story, read Jeff’s writeup on how this fine album came to be. When he advised me of the album the word Kaszubian brought…
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Sophia Shen and Lemon Guo work together as Southeast of Rain (东南有雨), an electroacoustic/field recording project based in the United States, with one living in New York and the other living in the San Francisco Bay area. The album is the result of 42 days of mixing avant-garde experimental music, natural sounds, traditional Chinese instruments and improvisational techniques and sublime vocal work into a gentle, though very experimental album. I request this of everyone, but specifically of my former students in Beijing – take the time to listen to this. It is a stunningly beautiful piece of work.