In which Christian Fennesz applies the techniques he usually uses on his guitar to a bunch of recordings of fellow Austrian Gustav Mahler (and his guitar). This inevitably invites comparison with Matthew Herbert’s working over of the composer’s tenth symphony for Deutsche Grammophon’s Recomposed series. I have to say, the comparison does this work no favours: […]
Author: dogrando
This is Keith Kenniff’s first album as Goldmund since 2011’s Civil War song cycle All Will Prosper, although this harks back more to 2010’s Famous Places. Which is to say that these are short improvisations for solo piano (17 tracks here in 46 minutes), swathed (to a greater or lesser extent) in ambient swooshiness and backed […]
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My albums and tracks of 2015
For some reason, I found picking my top 5 albums of the year particularly hard this time around. My long-list was 18 records long, and it was a struggle to get it down to 14, then 10, then 6. And in the end, I dropped the lovely Xerrox (Vol. 3) only because Alva Noto had made the […]
I have a bone to pick with the normally impeccable Sub Rosa concerning their re-release of Broken Music. They describe these pieces as being “widely regarded as important sound art documents”, which suggests that they are of only historical interest, and risks obscuring the important fact that they sound freaking amazing. As a rule, I […]
There seem to have been a lot of new releases recently from artists whose previous records were big favourites of mine. Francis Harris’s Minutes Of Sleep was one of my albums of 2014, and Aris Kindt are Harris and his childhood friend Gabe Hedrick. This record is much more stripped back: the trumpet, cello, and piano […]
This release was pretty exciting to me, given my feelings about all the protagonists: Jóhann Jóhannsson’s The Miners’ Hymns was one of my albums of 2011, Hildur Guðnadóttir’s Leyfðu Ljósinu was one of my albums of 2012, and Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe’s FRKWYS collaboration with Ariel Kalma, We Know Each Other Somehow, is bound to be on the […]
If I have one complaint about this album from (sorry) the less well-known half of Yellow Swans, it’s simply that at 31 minutes it’s too short. Otherwise, it’s magnificent. It’s primarily guitar drones and percussion, although for much of the first part of the record it sounds like the guitar is being bowed or scraped […]
So, yeah, a few things we have mention is that this is over 8 hours long, it was developed in collaboration with the celebrity neuroscientist David Eagleman, and you’re meant to sleep through it. Also worth mentioning is that it’s bloody lovely. There are 31 compositions for piano and string ensemble (which still average over […]
Harold Budd’s double CD Avalon Sutra was on the shortlist for my albums of 2014, and the highlight was the second disc’s 69-minute ‘remix’ by Akira Rabelais, As Long As I Can Hold My Breath (By Night). So I was really looking forward to this, a collaboration between the same artists, only now with Rabelais’s name on […]
Over the last twenty-odd years, there have been many heinous crimes committed in the name of post-rock. This, however, is unashamedly post-rock, and it is stonkingly brilliant. It has quiet bits, with echoey guitars and ominous pianos and field recordings (including the obligatory street chatter with distant siren). It has loud bits, with heavy drumming […]
dogrando writes about some records 