minimalism
Track: Vanessa Wagner presents the first ever acoustic interpretation of the Enos’ ‘Celeste’, with an album following in March for InFiné
BRETON pianist Vanessa Wagner, who began her long romance with the piano aged 7 and who, earlier in her career, released albums tackling the works of Ravel, Rachmaninoff, Scriabine and Mozart, came to something of a crossroads in her musical development in 2016; that year she recorded a collaborative album with Leaf Records’ Mexican electronicist …
News: Roedelius and Tim Story will enter into a four-handed piano conversation for Erased Tapes in January; hear ‘Spirit Clock’
A GENUINE, gilt-edged musical legend, German electronic and ambient music pioneer Hans-Joachim Roedelius, now into his eighth decade with us, is to enter into a two-way piano conversation with American composer and friend of 40 years Tim Story for Erased Tapes in January. The 11-track album, entitled 4 Hands, allows the pair to explore an …
Album review: Bruno Bavota – ‘For Apartments: Songs And Loops’: protection against those days of lockdown in warm piano vignette and glorious modular sweep
WE LOCKED the door; we waited. We waited, we combed the airwaves; we counted the days some more. The experience is nigh on universal, save those of you lucky enough to be reading in Taiwan, Christchurch, Auckland and elsewhere. Italy was caught by the pandemic earlier than many, and as it swept across the country, …
See: Rachika Nayar explores the brittle, fleeting beauty of looped guitars on ‘clarity’ ahead of her EP for RVNG Intl
HERE at Backseat Mafia, we’ve loved the brittle, pretty guitar experimenta of New York’s Rachika Nayar for a good while; check our write-ups for a brace of single drops from her album for NNA Tapes at the beginning of the year, the otherworldly fire of “Losing Too Is Still Ours” and the potency of “The …
Live: Gavin Bryars and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra perform ‘Jesus’ Blood Never Fails Me Yet’ – Dark Mofo Festival 2021
Dark Mofo has been through an abyss, assailed at all sides by a potent cocktail of challenges stemming from its prescient cancellation last year due to COVID, missteps on the way to curating a challenging agenda this year, the virtual ban on overseas tourists and the ever present threat of lockdowns domestically (in fact one …
See: Bruno Bavota – ‘Apartment Loop #6’: a personal experience of lockdown captured in modular electronics
WE LOCKED the door; we waited. We waited, we combed the airwaves; we counted the days some more. The experience is nigh on universal, save those of you lucky enough to be reading in Taiwan, Christchurch, Auckland and elsewhere. Italy was caught by the pandemic earlier than many, and as it swept across the country, …
See: Theo Alexander’s ‘Bright-Eyed Hunger’: London composer targets the dream state with his dazzling minimalism
LONDON pianist Theo Alexander likes to loop, to evoke the dreamstate, to explore the beauty of harmony and melody and repetition. He’s an album coming up on Toronto’s lovely Arts & Crafts imprint in late May that looks to seal his reputation as one of the most interesting people working in the minimalist end of …
NEWS: experimental composer and Cocteaus collaborator Harold Budd reported to have passed, aged 84
SAD NEWS this evening as reports began to circulate across social media that the poet, avant-garde composer and pianist Harold Budd, a progenitor of the modern ambient piano style, has died at the age of 84. Budd was born in May 1936 in Los Angeles, but was raised in Victorville, in the Mojave desert. He …
ALBUM REVIEW: Dmitry Evgrafov – ‘Surrender’: fashioning post-classical into new shapes
FATCAT’S boutique 130701 imprint is neck and neck with Erased Tapes as the stable of the sometimes rarified, always immensely listenable world of modern- and post-classical; especially the piano-based end of the colour wheel, the arena from which Dmitry Evfragov springs, and at which imprint he releases among the esteemed company of Max Richter, Johann …
Album Review: Adam Stafford – Fire Behind The Curtain
Oh bollocks. I lack the vocabulary to do justice to this record. Any knowledge of minimalism I have is, well, minimal. That BBC4 documentary a few weeks back was enough to whet the appetite and draw out the musical and historical threads between things instinctively liked over the years. From the more direct lines running …