modern composition
See: Adam Stafford – ‘Threnody For February Swallows’: grand avant-classical minimalism cautions against climate change
FALKIRK’S Adam Stafford, the film-maker and folk artist whose lockdown notebook album Diamonds Of A Horse Famine we warmly embraced here last summer – not least because it contained the free-associating “Erotic Thistle” and its fantastic line, surely worthy of some kind of award (and culled from a real life story), “melt down my death …
News: Arandel announces ‘InBach vol.2’, a new set of reinterpretations for InFiné; hear a first single, the neo-cosmic soul of ‘Nos Contours’
ARANDEL, the French artist whose album of expansions and reinterpretations of the works of the great Johann Sebastian, InBach, received deserved acclaim upon its release early last year, is looking to repeat that cultural success with a second volume to be released by the excellent InFiné at the beginning of next month. The first single …
Track: Gabriella Smith and Gabriel Cabezas’ ‘Lost Coast III’ brings the wonder, the awe and the anger at Californian climate change for cello and solo vocals
BOTH a composer whose place in the great American musical annals seems pretty much assured and a passionate environmentalist, Gabriella Smith is set to release an album at the end of this month in tandem with the renowned cellist Gabriel Cabezas, which seeks to capture in fine music the fire-borne destruction which has become a …
See: Laura Masotto and Roger Goula – ‘Refugees’: highlighting the daily tragedies playing out in the Mediterranean in modern compositional evocation
AT THE beginning of last year, the supremely talented Italian violinist and composer Laura Masotto had just began a residency at the former textile mill turned centre for the arts Fabra I Coats, in Barcelona, where she was planning on beginning the process which would lead to her new album, WE, which is due out …
Premiere: Olec Mün – ‘Paloma’: locked down in Barcelona, the Argentinian pianist finds beauty taking flight
BORN in Argentina in 1985, Marcelo Schnock aka, for the purposes of the world of composition, Olec Mün, has been playing the piano since the age of 6. For him, the piano has been his first and lifelong affair; a fluid symbiosis of expression in sound that a non-player such as me can only wonder …
News: 7K! announces the latest in its series of digital ambient compilations, ‘Wind Layers’; hear a taster in Colin Stetson’s ‘Beyond The Break’
!K7’S mirror-image modern compositional and ambient offshoot label, !7K, has announced the latest in its ongoing series of digital-only, wide-ranging, thematic compilations, and this time the focus will be on wind instruments. Following Piano Layers, Strings Layers and last winter’s erudite and necessary Ambient Layers (read our review of that one, here), Wind Layers gathers …
EP review: James Heather – ‘Modulations: EP2’: the journey through grief articulated with beauty for solo piano
CONTEMPORARY composer James Heather is set to release his first collection of original works in four years in the shape of Modulations: EP2, which will be out on Coldcut’s other label besides Ninja Tune, Ahead Of Our Time, come May 28th. Recorded in his homebuilt studio during lockdown, each track on Modulations: EP2 was performed in a single …
Track: Masayoshi Fujita – ‘Morocco’: audiophile, jazzy, ambient brilliance on Erased Tapes
A MUSICIAN who deals with a nuanced ambient beauty that audiophiles should surely treasure, and to my mind lining up alongside fellow countrymen Ryuichi Sakamato and Chihei Hatekeyama in making music not only of a bewitching delicacy, but with a really empathetic understanding of sound in space, Masayoshi Fujita is set to release a new …
News: Yann Tiersen announces an album for August, ‘Kerber’; see the video for a first track, ‘Ker Al Loch’
BRETON composer Yann Tiersen, the man behind the soundtrack for Amélie and Good Bye Lenin! and modern classical genius has announced he is to release a new album, Kerber, for Mute on August 27th, for which there’ll be a few lovely limited vinyl options (see below); and it comes with a first taster today, with …
Album review: Conrad Clipper – ‘Heron’s Book Of Dreams’: a pseudonymous, textural ambient gem
Heron’s Book of Dreams is glorious. It knows what to do, it knows what you need, and never aims for cheap and maximal when stripping back, excellent arrangement and contrast can do the job. Think a slightly more abrasively edged, more intimate A Winged Victory For The Sullen. A very beautiful record for people who love the interstices where ‘flesh and blood’ instrumentation gets it on with drones. Delightful.