Avant-garde
See: Tristan Kasten-Krause – ‘From Thin Air’: high choral grace with stunning visuals lead us to a liminal better place
TRISTEN KASTEN-KRAUSE, the intensely collaborative dronescaper who’s all set to release his debut album come late April, has dropped some beautifully tailored visuals to accompany his second teaser for that record – you can watch that below. “From Thin Air” follows the delicious drones of “Dawn Looming”, his first reveal from late last month; a …
See: Ben Seretan – ‘Fog Rolls Out Rabun Gap’: beautiful piano and environment ambience from the New Yorker heralds an April must-have for NNA Tapes
BEN SERETAN, the New York composer whose song-based and folksy album from last year, Youth Pastoral, made massive waves Stateside – earning itself a spot in Pitchfork’s 35 Best Rock Albums of the Year list – and whose 2018 My Life’s Work was 24 hours long, recorded over three consecutive nights from sunset to sunrise, is …
See: SORBET unveils a video for his theatrical tale of our lived purgatory, ‘I Heard His Scythe’
IT WAS just a fortnight ago that Chris W Ryan, the Irish producer and veteran of many bands on the Emerald Isle scene, unveiled the palate-cleanser of his new project, SORBET; and he did that with the widescreen, theatrical sweep of “I Heard His Scythe”, featuring the Einar-like declamatory tones of Chris entwined with Galway …
Track: Mischa Blanos unveils a debut album of percussive piano for InFiné with ‘Silicon Road’
INFINÉ, the French label which has a catalogue for which the adjective ‘eclectic’ is truly justifiable – there really can’t be many (any?) labels which can boast releases by both Mozart and Carl Craig – is debuting an exploratory new album by Romanian pianist and producer Mischa Blanos, venturing out under his own sail away …
See: The video for claire rousay’s ‘Peak Chroma’: Texas improviser’s hazy, wonk-pop collage heralds an April album for American Dreams
LAUDED San Antonio improviser of deep, moving complexity claire rousay has announced she has a new album out in early April for American Dreams, a softer focus, which news will certainly be firing up and down the bush telegraph for those of us who like our music weird and delightful and interrogative; and by way …
See: The video for Naoko Sakata’s ‘Improvisation 2’: another fluid, free-flying expression at the solo piano from next week’s album
NAOKO SAKATA, the free improvisational piano talent who Anna von Hausswolff just knew she had to sign to her Pomperirossa Records imprint, has released another flowing, epic, impressionistic improvisation from her forthcoming debt album for the label, “Improvisation 2”, which you can hear right here. Based in Gothenburg, Sakata is a good fir for Pomperipossa, …
See: A live video for French post-rockers BRUIT ≤’s ‘The Machine Is Burning’: the fire and the fury in the Église du Gésu
BLENDING the longform, addictive unfolding blueprints of postrock with a more pastoral chamber quartet aesthetic and thus very much bringing to mind the lately little-visited territories established by the gorgeous Rachel’s, BRUIT ≤ have released a video of them performing the title track of their forthcoming album, The Machine Is Burning, in the hallowed acoustics …
News: Marisa Anderson and William Tyler announce an album together for Thrill Jockey; hear the title track, ‘Lost Futures’
TAKE two of the best instrumental guitarists currently working in instrumental Americana, Marisa Anderson and William Tyler; put them together in a studo; press record. It’s a simple idea, but an idea as brilliant as the results. In some ways it’s a surprise the two haven’t married their winding, mesmerising aesthetics before. In fact they …
Track: Denver dronemeister JENNIFER announces longform cassette release, ‘SINCERELY’; hear side A in full
JENNIFER is the avatar adopted for the world of music by Denver’s Zach Spencer, an artist who read an interview with instrumental guitar legend John Fahey in which John did away with the reputation garnered by his own work in one pithy couplet: “cosmic-sentimentalism” he called it. But that phrase stuck with Zach not as …
Track: Fougère – ‘Leap Of Faith’: piano delicacy radiates hope of a brighter place
FOUGÈRE is the modern compositional project of Jamie Norton, an artist who’s quietly gone about helping fashion some of the biggest songs of modern times as a musician and arranger; he’s worked with The Brand New Heavies, Brett Anderson and Take That. But as Fougère his work sits in the bright melodic shimmer of artists …