Going through Twitter contacts on my account (which will be changed soon, as I want an account that will only concentrate on music and not any other of my pursuits), I came across the name of a label whose work always left me impressed, but whom I had forgotten about, Erstwhile Records. Jon Abbey and Yuko Zama have run this label for years, but it looks like Yuko is branching out and running a new label called elsehwere music. Perusing the catalog, I found a release by Dutch pianist Reinier van Houdt which left me suitably impressed. From the release’s…
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Pogus Records has released a treasure from Belgian electroacoustic composer Leo Kupper, who is finally being recognized as a master of his field.
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Tegh & Adel Poursamadi are a duo from Tehran, Iran, who are bringing a new spin to electroacoustic and experimental music. Sadly, only one track is available for the moment, but it shows how the duo meld string instruments and electronic soundscapes together seamlessly.
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In honor of returning to lovely Belgrade, I salute the occasion with Serbian electrostatic composer Manja Ristić, now based in Croatia.
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Dutch composer and experimental musician Michel Banabila is joined on this one-track release by duduk player Cengiz Arslanpay and violist Oene van Geel for a warm, haunting take on improvisational music.
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With the death of Richard H. Kirk last year, my hopes are dashed for new material from Cabaret Voltaire. However, Stephen Mallinder is carrying the torch of mid-period Cabs by combining a dark soundscape with rough electro-funk. From his Bandcamp website: “Cabaret Voltaire co-founder Stephen Mallinder’s second solo outing for Dais further distills his signature fusion of minimal synth, oblique wordplay, and “wonky disco” into a riveting rhythm suite ripe for our age of escalation: tick tick tick. Channeling the temporal malaise of lockdown through a lusher palette of modular electronics and stereo strings, the songs embrace ambiguity and plasticity,…
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Within the next few weeks, I will conduct an interview with pianist Alessandra Celletti, a dear friend and one of Italy’s most colorful musicians. This one is her latest, and its centerpiece is based on the Lemhi Shoshone teenager who not only led the American explorers Lewis & Clarke in their exploration of the Louisiana Territory but also became a symbol of women’s suffrage in the United States.
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When I hear the words Avant-garde in relation to contemporary classical music, I think normally of some me composers who pull out old, clichéd tropes. This release from Kenyan composer Nyokabi Kariuki is so stunningly weird that the album has given itself the right to be termed Avant-garde correctly.
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Chris Child & Micah Frank are two incredible composers out of the New England area of the United States. From this particular release’s Bandcamp site: Tape Pieces Vol. 3 represents the final installment in the collaboration between composer/producer Chris Child (Kodomo) and sound artist Micah Frank. Volume 3 culminates in a rich cacophony of noise and emotional charge while still remaining subdued in a contemplative state. Chris and Micah continue exploring simple asynchronous micro loops, layering upon them until what emerges becomes a rich ecosystem of interwoven parts, embracing unexpected noises and sounds disintegrating. It is perhaps the most experimental…
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Our dear friend Raffaele Pezzella is not only a label empresario of note, whose works are featured here frequently due to the incredibly high quality – he is also an amazing composer. Interdimensional is bleak and heavy, with heavy drones throughout. If you like artists like Lustmord, this will appeal to you.