Sometimes, I really don’t make life easy for myself. It’s very hard to know what to say about this record. There are two 18-minute tracks, but each is in several apparently unrelated parts. Along the way it incorporates (in no particular order) melodic synth music, sparse modern classical using a variety of different piano sounds […]
Tag: genre_classical
I have to admit, this isn’t what I was expecting. I’ve heard Erik K Skodvin in contemplative mode as half of Deaf Center, and in doom-drone mode as Svarte Greiner. This is a much looser business, with open, clattering percussion, abstract cello scraping and clarinet tootling, half-prepared-sounding piano, and on the one-minute-long near-title-track Flames a big […]
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Kreng: Grimoire (CD, Miasmah, June 2011)
So, yes, first of all: Pepijn Caudron has chosen to record under the name Kreng; the album is called Grimoire; the label is Miasmah; the sleeve is entirely black and grey, has a grainy headshot of what might well be a corpse on the front, and makes extensive use of a blackletter typeface… if you […]
This is the Icelandic composer’s soundtrack to Bill Morrison’s film about the Durham mining industry, focussing particularly on the pageantry of the annual Big Meeting, a combination of a family day out, a political rally, and a concert for the pit bands. This melting pot theme is echoed by the music, which is a blend […]
People laugh at me when I describe A Winged Victory For The Sullen as a post-classical/ambient/drone supergroup. Not quite sure why. To be fair, the description is stretching the point somewhat: both pianist/composer Dustin O’Halloran and Stars Of The Lids’ Adam Wiltzie are pretty super, but two hardly makes a group; however, the record does […]
Norbury combines delicate piano and soaring cello, and does so in a charmingly melodic fashion. He shows no ambition to soar to the heights or plumb the depths, but the music is sincerely emotional. If I sound restrained in my praise, it’s because this is possibly a little restrained for my taste. Reviews have compared […]
I was pretty much sold on this compilation from the first three artists: Goldmund, Leyland Kirby, and Svarte Greiner are all favourites around these parts. The (previously unreleased) tracks are all as lovely as you’d expect. The downside is that lovely tracks is just what they are: call me an old rockist, but I find […]
You’ve got to love Matthew Herbert for going the extra mile. Whereas Carl Craig and Moritz von Oswald, say, used Ravel and Mussorgsky as source material for their Recomposed offering, Herbert has clearly used Mahler as text for his. The work in question is the unfinished tenth symphony, a work which seems to be particularly obsessed by […]
So, let’s start with the facts. This consists of ten works for string quartet, composed by Gavin Bryars and performed by the Balanescu Quartet, over which the Spanish sculptor Juan Muñoz reads instructions on how to cheat at cards. In some of the later segments, occasion phrases are repeated by a confused-sounding Japanese man (Yukio […]
In which the 2nd-generation Detroit deity and the more famous half of Basic Channel rip apart Ravel’s Bolero and Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition, chuck in some old-skool drum machines and synths, and create a 64 minute techno megamix. It’s possibly too easy to call this symphonic techno. Also slightly misleading, as neither of the […]
dogrando writes about some records 