Chris Abrahams * John Luther Adams * Michael Begg / Black Glass Ensemble
Acoustic piano, contemporary classical and expressions of ‘Solastalgia’: works by Chris Abrahams, John Luther Adams, Michael Begg and the Black Glass Ensemble.
Acoustic piano, contemporary classical and expressions of ‘Solastalgia’: works by Chris Abrahams, John Luther Adams, Michael Begg and the Black Glass Ensemble.
Year Zero is Gideon Wolf’s 4th album since 2012. It’s a solo album, in a way, but it could not have come to life without the contributions of a small ensemble of artists that played improvisations or ‘incoherent and strange phrases/notes’ that were later reassembled into the resulting pieces.
Working the other way around – composing pieces from instantaneous improvisations and a collection of short phrases – has given this music a refreshing element of surprise.
And it’s exactly that element that makes this album stand out among many others.
This is not exactly your average enjoyable ‘contemporary neo-classical’ music, and it definitely isn’t ‘romantic’ either.
Though there are quiet parts, most of the piece is quite unnerving.
It is not an ‘easy’ Requiem to listen to. And it shouldn’t be, of course, because it seems there’s not gonna be a happy ending to this story soon.
“The greatest fear that I have….. is that nothing will change.”
Edward Snowden
Soundtracks are hot. And quite a lot of them border on ‘ambient’ music because of their inherent atmospherics. Or on ‘post-classical’ music because of their instrumental arrangements.
‘The Revenant’ combines the best of both worlds!
The sound of current state of affairs is not particularly reassuring: Thomas Köner presents an Opéra Digitale based on the Futurist Manifesto, Machinefabriek and Anne Bakker keep you alert with alarming string glissandi, and Multicast Dynamics adds some glacial Scandinavian cold.
Different kinds of “Landscape Music” from three duo’s and one ensemble.
With releases from From The Mouth Of The Sun (Aaron Martin and Dag Rosenqvist), Christina Vantzou, Mark Lyken & Emma Dove, and Jón Ólafsson & Futuregrapher.
After they met when working together on Cloud Ensemble, Michel Banabila and Oene van Geel extended their collaboration which resulted in 2014’s “Music for Viola and Electronics”.
Both were so very enthusiastic about the new musical world that they had opened up, that they kept working on “Music for Viola and Electronics II”, which is released this month.
Judging by the (strikingly beautiful!) aerial landscape photography by Gerco de Ruijer on the cover, their collaboration will probably not end here: the crop of the (geometric) landscape on the Volume I cover photo is only partially harvested – by hand, line by line… a difficult, strenuous, but most rewarding work.
Barely one month after the DVD (re-)release of “Escapement”, Poppy Ackroyd pops up again with her newest full album release “Feathers” . Time for a quick update, an ‘addendum’ to the previous post.
A Winged Victory for the Sullen (AWVftS) is often referred to as a duo consisting of Adam Wiltzie (core member of the legendary Stars of the Lid – guess there’s no further introduction needed) and pianist/composer Dustin O’Halloran. But AWVftS would not be AWVftS without the (now 7-member) string section and the additional modular synth sounds created by Francesco Donadello. Together they present a full orchestral sound with a fascinating balance of string arrangements, melancholic piano melodies and (somewhat unsettling) synth embeddings.