Ajaeng Ajaeng
To be heard with ears half bent, or with one side facing what Maryanne Amacher calls “the third ear”. The great reverence in which the Tanpura is held by Indian classical music, its transcendental but occulted place in the tradition alongside its normal function as a drone, made a strong impression on the composer such that it has taken decades to formulate even a simple Tanpura Study.
The fundamentals, the Om, as well as the overtones, the music of the spheres -all these have their valid rights…
BOW
Brussels-based string quintet BOW celebrates musical freedom. Juggling between their own written music and pure improvisation, the ensemble has worked since its creation on a personal and modern approach, digging into their instruments' capabilities and blending a large scope of influences.
Its debut eponym LP, due to be released on Sub Rosa, gathers five instantly-composed pieces that were recorded live by Christine Verschorren in the Echo Collective studio in Brussels. During the day, BOW repe…
The Lightest Words
The "The Lightest Words" by Kirsten Reese is now available at World Edition. Kirsten Reese studied flute, electronic music and composition and lives in Berlin, where she teaches electroacoustic composition at the University of the Arts. In her works Reese often focuses on performative and narrative aspects, as is the case in the three pieces on this CD.
The first track "the lightest words had the weight of oracles" features the historical and specific tone colour of the Fairlight CMI Synthesize…
Cantus, Descant
The new double album from artist Sarah Davachi is an 80 minute, 17 track meditation on impermanence and endings, framed by minimalistic organ études and careful harmonic layering, with two tracks featuring the artist’s own vocals for the first time.I spent a lot of time while working on this album thinking about impermanence and endings, which led me to change my understanding of “vanitas” and “memento mori.” These concepts arise allegorically across classical antiquity and Buddhist thought, amo…
Chanteuse
Since the early 1970s, Jacqueline Humbert has collaborated as performer, visual artist, and designer with leading innovative artists, filmmakers, choreographers and composers worldwide. Her approach to vocal performance has influenced many composers, and the works in Chanteuse represent a new and exciting extension and reinterpretation of the "song" genre. Humbert on the release: "Chanteuse is a collection of new or previously unreleased songs, many of which were written for me by a broad range …
Anadyomene
The eclectic sensitivity of the composer Roberto Laneri (Prima Materia) looks unparalleled in the Italian avant-garde context. Anadyomene, published for the first time in 1987, shows the myth of Venus in a dystopian and dreamlike world. Laneri conceives a sound poem that opens up to the archetypal dimension of the water creation, through the symbol of bivalve conch, the myth of the feminine power is narrated thanks to the verses of the renaissance poet Angelo Poliziano. Creating a daring connect…
Painted Screens
**Edition of 250 copies in tipped-on sleeves with Japanese obi, insert and postcard. Entirely handmade sleeve edition of Painted Screens – designed & assembled at Impression Lointaine.**
Music box : intimate music with a large palette of instruments ; Voices and sounds, mixed feelings and mysteries…A window opened on travelling memories, half-awakened thoughts and shared moments – dreamed and nocturnal wandering atmospheres, with undulating rays sporadically lighting a subconscious painting.
In …
Mine Is the Heron
“Mine is the Heron” is the new Tom James Scott record, the first document of his solo work since 2017. Over the past decade, the UK-based composer has released a diverse body of recordings via labels such as Bo’Weavil, Carnivals, Where To Now?, and his own impeccably curated Skire imprint.
Laced With Rumour: Loud-Speaker of Truth
Weaving an intricately detailed tapestry of meditative, spiritual jazz and dream electronics, Maxwell Sterling’s astonishing second album "Laced With Rumour: Loud-Speaker of Truth" blooms in the cracks between Alice Coltrane, Talk Talk and Kara-Lis Coverdale, gently coaxing us into a trance-like reverie where the real and artificial morph into one pulsating organism.
Negoum
The music on this album was recorded in the studio the day after Frances-Marie Uitti and Ayman Fanous spent ten minutes improvising together in concert, in a first meeting. It represents bidirectional ideas in music often and erroneously thought to be opposites: western vs. eastern, improvised vs. through-composed. In this recording they are stood on their head, examined, dissected, tortured, and ultimately reconciled. Fanous says: “Musically, Frances and I came from two distinct sets of emphase…
Do. So
Tommaso Rolando and Jean Renè met thanks to Paul Goodwin (front cover painter) and Paolo Bonfiglio. After some live experiences together, in June 2018 they decided to try to record something: the result of a short term session eventually ended with a full album recording.
The album is published by Torto Editions, a label run by Rolando and Bonfiglio.Two people, two musicians, two generations, two instruments. Music as a language, a common language."It takes two to know one" - Gregory BatesonPer…
L'Inattingible
With L’Inattingible, Delphine Dora’s music unfolds by drawing upon a new palette of colors. It will not escape anyone, that after having sung, in foreign, invented languages, or through extended vocal techniques, the musician resorts for the first time, to solely using the French language; and that after having often set texts and poems by other authors to music, she authorizes herself here to sing her own texts and fragments.But beyond these formal enrichments, the new musical ambitions develop…
Vive
**CD version** "This is Annie Barbazza’s first solo album. She was a young drummer in love with progressive rock when Greg Lake discovered her talent as a singer and wanted her on stage with him for the concert which would later become the posthumous “Live in Piacenza”. Again Lake produced Moonchild, the duo with pianist Max Repetti for Manticore Records where she sang many songs formerly sang by Lake with ELP and King Crimson. If these were the beginnings of Annie’s career, now she is a rising …
Earth Leaps Up
The Giving Shapes is a collaborative project between harpist/vocalist Elisa Thorn and pianist/vocalist Robyn Jacob that formed in fall 2017 at the Banff Centre for the Arts. This is the duo’s first release. This project triangulates aspects of new music, creative music, and song-writing, combining their classical training and their involvement with the Canadian creative and indie music scenes. Though they originally met while both pursuing degrees in classical music at UBC in 2007, they share an…
Gratitude
Martina Verhoeven has been working on the development of her own photographic style for about 20 years, almost parallel to this process Martina took up the electric fretless bass when recording the two criticaly-acclaimed 3 Seconds Of Air albums (with Dirk Serries). As her photography continues to grow, expand and develop, slowly mutating into collages on canvas, so does her approach to music. Switching from electric bass to double bass to piano, she slowly mastered a technique that's exceptiona…
Today, The Organ Has Played Beautifully Again
William Engelen (born 1964 in Weert, The Netherlands) is a sound and visual artist living and working in Berlin. After having studied visual arts, his focus shifted over time from solely visual to multi-disciplinary works that oscillate between sound and visual arts, between exhibition and performance, and incorporate installation, sculptural, and compositional elements. He now considers himself a conceptual artist who works with sound. Many of his works are site-specific and have been presented…
Piano I
“The Piano has been an instrument that has woven its way in and out of my life since I was a child. I grew up listening to great classical and jazz players, prepared piano and electronic experiments, extended techniques and later the incredible works of Boulez, Stockhausen, Cage, Ligeti, Ferrari, Feldman, Xenakis and Scelsi. I had written for and worked with many great pianists and created ensemble works with piano and electronics where I was given the freedom to write complex pieces for gifted …
Liebestod
Liebestod, by Polish composer Stefan Wesolowski, consists of repetitive compositions written for piano, brass instruments, strings, and electronics. The title itself is derived from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, which says a lot about Wesolowski's primary inspirations. Liebestod shows a tremendous amount of respect for classical music but Wesolowski is far from making literal references to it. He shows his own unique musical language; rough and radical at some points, yet full of intense nos…
Tryptichs: Variations On A Melody
Aidan Baker's (Nadja) Triptychs takes inspiration from Erik Satie's compositions Gymnopédies and his notion of "furniture music," which many consider a precursor to contemporary ambient music. Each "triptych" is based around a simple, slow-moving melodic line, which repeats three times with the addition of a harmonic line upon each repetition, culminating in a three part harmony. Various musicians from different ensembles and musical backgrounds -- Peter Broderick, Julia Kent, Leah Buckaref…
Klavierhelm
Conrad Schnitzler is a genuine legend in the krautrock and electronic music worlds. Schnitzler studied under Joseph Beuys before joining an early Tangerine Dream. Their first album Electronic Meditation shows a band highly influenced by Schnitzler's unique, singular approach. Schnitzler left Tangerine Dream to form Kluster with friends Dieter Moebius and Hans Joachim Roedelius. When Schnitzler left Kluster they changed their name to Cluster, eventually merging with Michael Rother (of Neu!) to fo…