Keyboards and Strings
Albert Alan Owen was born in Wales in 1948 to parents of Welsh and Latvian heritage. His family later moved to Zimbabwe, where his father took up a teaching position. There, Owen was deeply influenced by local music and culture, while also exploring American RnB and jazz. It was during this period that he became acutely aware of the harsh inequalities under British colonial rule, which instilled in him a lifelong aversion to discrimination and racism.
In 1967, Owen returned to Europe to pursue h…
Motor Tapes
Closing the achingly long four years wait since her last full-length, the American composer/percussionist Sarah Hennies returns with “Motor Tapes”, her second release with New World Records. Comprising three astounding new pieces, made in collaboration with three acclaimed ensembles - ensemble 0, Talea Ensemble, and Ensemble Dedalus - that simultaneously encounter her moving into new uncharted territory, while remaining rooted in her singular practice, exploring musical, sociopolitical, and psyc…
Reverse Bloom
On the evening of July 13th, 2023, I trekked up to Arnold Hall for a very special performance at The Stone. I sat in the front row and took out my notebook then turned to my right and looked around the space. The dimly lit room buzzed with quiet activity and conversation. After a few more minutes, the lights went even lower and out walked three shadowy figures. Each clicked on a small bulb that lit their individual music stands. This was my third time seeing the Jessica Pavone String Ensemble. T…
Piano
Piano is an album of three pieces, 'A Luca Marenzio ll', 'Ma fin est mon commencement', and 'Gebrechlichkeit', written by Slovak composer Adrián Demoč between 2018 and 2023. 'Ma fin est mon commencement' and 'Gebrechlichkeit' were written with three performance options in mind: specific instrumentation, open instrumentation with a similar quality of timbre and register, and a "monochromatic polyphonic" instrument, preferably the piano. 'A Luca Marenzio ll' was originally written as 'A Luca Maren…
Renewal Manifestation
Builder’s anticipated 2024 release is a unique blend of contemporary classical and ambient music. Renewal Manifestation approaches the organ like a living creature - being taught to breathe and sigh. Written for organ, alto saxophone, and Crush string trio, the music brings forth an immense wave of spirit and sound that washes over the listener. As author and critic Tim Rutherford - Johnson writes (The Wire, Tempo, Positionen, Nutida Musik) : “In Renewal Manifestation, Calum Builder, an Australi…
Organic Music Tapes Vol.3
*100 copies limited edition* In keeping with tradition, the new year brings another offering from Portuguese pianist and composer Tiago Sousa. "Organic Music Tapes Vol.3," the third instalment in Tiago’s ongoing series, continues to develop a freeform dual approach to organic and fluid compositions for Piano and Organ - this time adding a real church tube organ to the proceedings.
Evolving from the foundation laid in the first two volumes, Sousa introduces the pipe organ into his signature piano…
A Curving Abacus
In 1968, Steve Reich coined the term Process Music to describe compositional designs that resemble “pulling back a swing, releasing it, and observing it gradually come to rest,” explaining that “once the musical process is set up and loaded it runs by itself.” In the mid-1970s, Brian Eno began using the expression Ambient Music to refer to atmospheric compositions that “must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular,” music that “must be as ign…
Vanishing Points / A Cappella
CD digipack. In his “Pulse Music” compositions of the mid-1970s, composer John McGuire forged a unique interpretation of European serialism. A student of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Krzysztof Penderecki and Gottfried Michael Koenig, McGuire moved to Cologne, Germany in 1970, where he become associated with the world-leading Studio for Electronic Music at Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) in Cologne. Like Stockhausen, McGuire found his musical imagination both constrained and inspired by the technology tha…
his master's voice / aus den fliegenden blättern eines fahrenden waldhornisten / lose verbunden -- Performed by Kei Kondo and Takahiro Kuroda
*300 copies limited edition* Eva-Maria Houben (born in 1955) is a German composer, organist, pianist and musicologist. She is a member of the Wandelweiser Group. Her compositions, performed by herself and many other musicians, have been released on CDs and LPs as well as digitally by Edition Wandelweiser and other international labels. On May 15, 2023, composer Takahiro Kuroda (born in 1989) presented the concert "Square of Thoughts Vol. 2: Eva-Maria Houben and Horn + x" in the performance space…
echo fantasy lI -- Performed by Takahiro Kuroda and Kei Kondo
*300 copies limited edition* Eva-Maria Houben (born in 1955) is a German composer, organist, pianist and musicologist. She is a member of the Wandelweiser Group. Her compositions, performed by herself and many other musicians, have been released on CDs and LPs as well as digitally by Edition Wandelweiser and other international labels. On May 15, 2023, composer Takahiro Kuroda (born in 1989) presented the concert "Square of Thoughts Vol. 2: Eva-Maria Houben and Horn + x" in the performance space…
Turzets
The latest in a prolific string of solo and collaborative releases by James Rushford, Turzets collects a pair of new works primarily created and recorded last year while the Australian composer-performer was in residence at La Becque, an art center on Lake Geneva in Switzerland. The side-length piece “Fallaway Whisk” explores hesitation in its many forms—reticence of speech, sonic restraint—using live, abstracted translations of text from English to German against a lush and swelling soundscape.…
Maniera
With yet another striking and forward-thinking work of contemporary composition, Another Timbre returns with “Maniera”, their second outing with the Italian composer, Marco Baldini, following on from last year's brilliant “Vesperi” which sold out within weeks. Comprising seven works for various configurations of string ensemble, masterfully executed by Apartment House, that nod across time toward Italian polyphonic compositions of the 16th and early 17th centuries, the diverse history of Minimal…
Distant Musics
American composer Paul Paccione makes a welcome return to recording with this portrait album featuring five chamber works originally composed between 1980 and 1990, all performed by the acclaimed Apartment House ensemble. Born in New York in 1952, Paccione studied with legendary minimalist pioneer Harley Gaber and later at the University of Iowa, developing a distinctive voice deeply influenced by Morton Feldman, John Cage, and Anton Webern.
The album includes Exit Music for string trio, Gridwor…
shades
Boston-based composer Nomi Epstein makes her debut on Another Timbre with this portrait album featuring three chamber works composed between 2011 and 2023. Influenced by the New York School, Fluxus, Pauline Oliveros's Sonic Meditations, and the Wandelweiser collective, Epstein has developed a distinctive compositional voice centered on sonic fragility and textural subtlety.
The album opens with the title piece shades, a 20-minute string quartet written specifically for Apartment House in 2023. T…
Things that Happen Again
Things that Happen Again offers a panoramic entry point into the lucid, evolving world of Paul Newland. Recorded by Apartment House at Goldsmiths in 2023, the album presents compositions written across a fourteen-year span. The title alludes to Newland’s fascination with recurrence and reworking - tracks such as “Difference is Everywhere (altered again)” or “Things That Happen Again (again)” are not only marked by repetition but by acts of subtle reinvention, echoing Newland's habit of dismantli…
Music for Save Rooms 1 & 2 (2CD)
* Double CD set containing both albums - Music for Save Rooms 1 & Music for Save Rooms 2. First edition of 150 copies * John Also Bennett’s Music for Save Rooms 1 & 2 compiles two volumes of minimal music conceived as infinitely looping and morphing compositions for “save rooms” - temporary safe spaces within video game maps. The compositions primarily stem from a week spent at work in a former military barn in the Marin Headlands just north of San Francisco, spurred on by multimedia artist and …
Whistle Posse
Louie Rice and Luciano Maggiore work together performing score-based works - both acoustic (without a PA system) and amplified (with a PA system). The duo was originally conceived to perform works by other artists as part of an event series at Cafe OTO in London. This series acted as a research period that went on to inform the action-based pieces that Rice and Maggiore are now writing themselves. These pieces explore physical actions and vocalisations in response to pre-defined prompts or rules…
Mapping the Valleys of the Uncanny
Daniel M Karlssons Mapping the valleys of the uncanny is an investigation into a process and method, colliding with questions relating to what can be known to be real, within the field of algorithmic composition. This music and text-based work examines the roles and signifiers of instrumentation and timbre as they unwittingly conspire to designate access, power, status, work and ultimately class. Paradoxically, Karlsson uses this critical-analytical standpoint as a means to build a large-scale i…
Arbos
*2024 stock. Deluxe packaging* "This CD features some great performances by Pärt specialists of a variety of shorter works. The clamorous Arbos for brass makes a startling opening for those who expect abstracted reverence; the lament, An den Wassern, has a startling ending that builds in intensity and volume only to break off mid-phrase. The static Pari Intervallo for organ leads into De Profundis, with its sense of slow but unstoppable movement (every note the same length, every measure the sa…
Miserere
*2024 stock. Deluxe packaging* For reasons perhaps too numerous to list here in full, Arvo Pärt’s Miserere remains my most cherished of the Estonian composer’s ever-growing book of masterworks. Suffice it to say that its magic lies in its stillness. For such an expansive piece—scored as it is for choir, soloists, organ, and ensemble—it is remarkably introspective. Its opening invocation of Psalm 51 fleshes out a corpus of spoken language made melody. A statement from the clarinet follows every w…