Avant-garde
See: Matt Evans’ ‘Firn’, an evocation of geology, loss, piano and violin wound in tape decay, comes abstracted with VR visuals
THE LOSS of a life partner, an intimate; for many of us an unimaginable experience, and one that words would fail to convey, either in the expression of or the condolences to the mourning. Multi-instrumentalist and composer Matt Evans was left devastated by the death of his partner, Devra Freelander; and as the composer of the …
Album review: Peace Flag Ensemble – ‘Noteland’: intelligent, warm and melodic jazz improv from Canadian collective
LADIES and gentlemen of the more recherché musical persuasion: introducing a new act to especially intrigue the weird jazzers among you, Peace Flag Ensemble, an experimental collective drawn from various points across the verdant central Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The quintet are set to release their first venture into long-playing recordings this coming Friday, June …
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 …
Album review: Mind Maintenance – ‘Mind Maintenance’: Chicago rhythm masters produce a deeply contemplative, mantric set to guard against the world
TAKE one of the finest and most intuitive leftfield-into-indie jazz rhythm sections of past decades, Chicago drummer Chad Taylor and bassist Joshua Abrams, who between them amass waay over a couple hundred performance credits to their name on Discogs: for artists such as the Chicago Underground Trio and all its various spiralling iterations, Brokeback, Sam …
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 …
News: Stefan Christensen announces an August album for World of Echo; hear a first reveal, the intense out-blues of ‘Cheap Things (For Adam and Hannah)’
A LEFTFIELD guitarist of renown on the American East Coast experimental scene and owner of the C/Site imprint, home to edgeland explorers such as Alexander, Pieces of Fruit, xNoBBQx and Secret Treaties, among others, Connecticut’s Stefan Christensen has announced that his latest album, his third of the year so far, will be with us in …
News: Bureau B announce a Faust half-century boxset – dive into eight CDs or seven LPs in October; hear the previously unreleased ‘Fernlicht’
HAMBURG’S excellent imprint Bureau B, one of whose investigative strands in recent years has been bringing forth unheard works from the Krautrock archives, is to mark the half-century of Faust, the seminal band who formed in the pastoral surrounds of Wümme, near Bremen, in 1971; and whose bargain-priced “The Faust Tapes”, compiled for the UK …
Track: Dau – ‘The Death Of Smut’: intimate, beautiful pump organ drone introspection for Spirituals
A MEMBER of rather fine instrumental quartet yndi halda alongside James Vella, whose album Sleep Through The Storm under his A Lily persona we received rapturously last October, Phil Self has emerged with a forthcoming mini-album of corresponding beauty and bliss under the moniker Dau, due out this very Friday. Whereas A Lily played with …
See: Sally Decker incants the learning of detachment on the feedback exploration of ‘The Loss’
BASED in Oakland, California, composer Sally Decker, who’s previously recorded as Multa Nox, is stepping out under her own name with her first solo album for NNA Tapes due later in the summer; and in the moving towards which she has been learning to let go. One of the main sonic strands of her new …
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 …