• Music

    Various Artists – Blackford Hill: Transmissions / Volume One

    January 2, 2022 - By 

    Welcome to the first proper release promotion of 2022, and it’s quite a lovely way to begin the year.  Blackford Hill is a record company out of Edinburgh, Scotland, and they offer up a compilation of ethereal independent music from bands like Ultramarine, Emily Scott, Kate Carr, Jake Tilson and a host of others, providing 31 tracks. From the Blackford Hill Bandcamp site: The prospect from Blackford Hill is wide-ranging and far-reaching. This recently established label, curated by designer/publisher Simon Lewin, is based in Edinburgh and shares its name with a prominent topographical feature of that city. This compilation, ‘Transmissions…

  • Music

    Jagath – Samadhi

    December 27, 2021 - By 

    Jagath is a field-recorded ritual ambient act from Perm, Russia who use handmade instruments, scraps and metal to make their dark, dank industrial sounds. As quoted from their Bandcamp site, “We do this to share our vision of decaying postindustrial age, to unleash the spirit of deep beyond-world and unveil life in the abyss.”  

  • Music

    Alif – Aynama​-​Rtama

    December 26, 2021 - By 

    I trust you, my friends, had a lovely Gregorian-Calendar Boxing Day. I spent mine listening to a Lebanese experimental band called Alif. At least as the liner notes on their Bandcamp site explain, it looks to be a collaboration between Lebanese and Egyptian musicians, and features the talents of the following musicians: Khyam Allami (Oud) Tamer Abu Ghazaleh (Vocals/Buzuq) Bashar Farran (Bass) Maurice Louca (Keys/Electronics) Khaled Yassine (Drums/Percussion) The music is so rich and complex that I’m having a bit of trouble putting to words how to describe it, but the best crack I can give at the moment is…

  • Music

    Sufjan Stevens – Songs for Christmas

    December 24, 2021 - By 

    Sufjan Stevens released this album in 2006, and it manages to hold up well.  He does a fine job interpreting classic Christmas tunes that are charming, sometimes irreverent and silly, but it makes a fine listen as we prepare for the coming of the Savior of the Universe this snowy evening.

  • Music

    Jeff Gburek – Gendhing Rebaban

    December 23, 2021 - By 

    As we near the close of a challenging 2021, we’re graced with a release by composer Jeff Gburek which features a rebab, a spiked fiddle.  It’s an instrument he studied in Indonesia under Pak Suhardi, blended with synthesizers and electronic bloops and bleeps which left me feeling like I was listening to some remarkable sound experiments out of the old BBC Radiophonic Workshop.  Jeff mentions below that there is no tradition of rebab-playing in Western electronic music, so he should be congratulated on consistently breaking new ground in this release. From his Bandcamp site: There aren’t many traditional compositions (if…

  • Music

    The York Waits & Deborah Catterall – Christmas Musicke

    December 22, 2021 - By 

    The York Waits are a group out of York, England (no surprise there, right?), who specialize in Renaissance music from the 14th Century.  This album is a reissue of a 1996 album where they paired with vocalist Deborah Catterall, who, 25 years after the release of this disc, served as Choral Director at Higham Hall, Cumbria and Voice Teacher at the Royal Northern College of Music before embarking on a private career.  The music is not badly recorded – perhaps a bit compressed for choral music, and not as bright as it could be, but otherwise, the tunes are well-played…

  • Music

    Kiyoshi Yamaya, Toshiko Yonekawa, Kifu Mitsuhashi – Wamono Groove: Shakuhachi & Koto Jazz Funk ’76

    December 21, 2021 - By 

    Traditional Japanese instruments meet rare groove??  Yes, please! From Wamono’s Bandcamp site: Following the already classic Wamono A to Z trilogy, we are delighted to present an exceptional collection of jazz funk / rare groove tunes recorded in the mid-seventies at the Nippon Columbia studios by three giants of Japanese music: arranger Kiyoshi Yamaya, koto legend Toshiko Yonekawa and shakuhachi master Kifu Mitsuhashi. The album is slated for release on January 28, 2022.

  • Music

    Tindersticks – No Treasure But Hope

    December 20, 2021 - By 

    What a beautifully bleak, baroque piece of pop-music.  You don’t hear too much of the Tindersticks‘ soul-inflected sound on this album,  What you get, instead, is music that pulls from folk, goth (yes, if you can believe it), and even hints of work from Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds.  The orchestration is deep, Stuart A. Staples‘ voice is filled with pathos, and as heartbreaking as the songs feel, it makes for a glorious listen.