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 Continue Reading
United States
Jeff Gburek – Trans Beskid Radio Volume 4 Extended
The last week I was in the United States before heading off to China, I watched MEV (collecting Alvin Lucier with Frederic Rzewski and Richard Teitelbaum, may their names be ever remembered) and Kayhan Kalhor the weekend before. It was an incredible week of music before heading to more surreal Continue Reading
CMC – CMC/Now
Hungarian band CMC have been recording albums since 1989, and, had they received their fair due during the heydey of post-Industrial Electronic Body Music (EBM), they would have been recognized as competitors of such luminaries as Front Line Assembly and Front 242, but with a darker groove. The band’s main Continue Reading
Scott Lawlor – The Mountains Cast Long Shadows
Scott Lawlor is an incredibly prolific composer out of Corinth, Texas. He’s collaborated with scores of musicians and has many fine albums under his belt, but this is a one-track piece clocking in at a bit over 1 hour and 14 minutes. It’s drone laden, cavernous in sound, and surprisingly Continue Reading
miserable.noise.club – Frost Confinement
miserable.noise.club is a collective of incredibly talented musicians based in Jordan, China and the US + other collaborators in East Asia and the Middle East. The music they make is, by some miracle, a solid blend of experimental music, a paean to post-punk and lo-fi psychedelic rock. It’s hazy enough Continue Reading
James Ross / Jim Goodin / Joseph Benzola – Ross Drone: 2nd February 2014
Joseph Benzola is an electroacoustic composer, drummer and percussionist whose work I had the pleasure of reviewing on my old blog, but it’s time to catch up on his work. He has been joined by James Ross, who composed this 33-minute track and plays guitar and electronics, and Jim Goodin, Continue Reading
Jeff Gburek – Works Within the Upright Ruins of the Kaszubian Piano, 2015/2021
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 Continue Reading
Various Artists – Canary Records: To What Strange Place: The Music of the Ottoman-American Diaspora, 1916-30
Ian Nagoski’s stunningly and consistently impressive Canary Records releases a giant collection of songs from immigrants of the, by then, collapsing Ottoman Empire. These songs span the time period between the First World War and the Great Depression, and are lovingly transferred and curated by Nagoski, whom you can hear Continue Reading
Oceanic Vibrations – Vol. 1
This is one I’ve been waiting to hear for some time, and it did not disappoint. American poet Shane Beck (who happens to be a very old friend) paired up with British electronic musician Dave Onley as Oceanic Vibrations to join their worlds together elegantly. Beck’s voice lends itself to Continue Reading
Alejandra and Aeron – España 1998-2004
Alejandra Salinas and Aeron Bergman have been working together as sound and multimedia artists since at least 1997, and perhaps farther back, though their prodigious corpus vitae isn’t so clear on when, exactly, they began recording together. One can surmise that they have been collaborating on CD since 1998, if Continue Reading