Gideon Wolf – Year Zero

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.

Matthew Collings – A Requiem for Edward Snowden

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

Michel Banabila & Oene van Geel – Music for Viola and Electronics

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.

A Winged Victory for the Sullen – Atomos

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.