I’m writing back-to-back posts about solo works for cello, electronics, and occasional voice, but this is very different to the Dobrawa Czocher album last week. We’re in much more experimental territory. From the start, the cello is thumped and scraped as well as bowed. Two- or three-note motifs repeat, mutate, stretch, fade in and out. […]
Tag: genre_modern_classical
In which your humble blogger, once again, falls for a nice bit of neoclassical cello. Czocher’s style leans to the dramatic: there is an urgency to the pacing, and a pulsing rhythmic element to her playing, alongside some stirring melodies. Apparently she was inspired by a recent move from Warsaw to Poland’s Baltic coast, and […]
David Moore is well-loved around these parts as the main fella out of Bing & Ruth. Here he is in a solo guise, tickling the ivories rather delightfully. In places, he is rather restrained, allowing the chords to hang in space. More often, we get the dense clouds of arpeggios which B&R fans will know […]
I am on record as being a sucker for a nice bit of cello, and this is a very nice bit of cello indeed. (I read that this marks return to the centering of the instrument for Jensen, although it was also at the core of the last record of hers I bought, 2018’s For […]
Chevaliers, the last LP from this French–Israeli duo (okay, they say they are from “Jerusalem and Lotharingia”, the latter of which existed in some form between 855 and 959 C.E. and straddled modern-day France and Germany… but they also say that they’ve lived in Lorraine, which ended up in the French side… and she sounds […]
Skodvin has been a favourite in these parts for yonks, whether under his own name, as Svarte Greiner, or as half of Deaf Center. This short is album of short tracks, 9 of them in 23 minutes. His juddering strings and floating analogue synths are at their darkly atmospheric best, and supplemented here by sighing, […]
The “postcards” of the title is quite apt here. We have ten tracks, each with something of the feel of a sketch, of modern classical music leaning towards drone. Instrumentwise, this Belgian ensemble have dug up some deep cuts from musical history, featuring (according to the blurb) hurdy gurdy, recorders, chalumeau, violone, the splendidly bonkers […]
Christina Vantzou’s No. 4 was really impressed me back in 2018, and it remains a firm favourite. So I was obviously excited to hear No. 5. It wasn’t really what I was expecting, and at first I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I found this much less accessible: to be honest, if it […]
I want to talk about just intonation. I know you can look this up on the internet, but most lay-person explanations tend to be all “oh no, maths is hard” and run away from it, whereas it’s really nothing more than a bit of multiplication, and it’s quite interesting. So let’s do it. Sounds consists […]
This opens with a delicate melody played by Jonny Nash on piano and a plucky-sounding thing which turns out to be Dani Luca on cimbalom, and is soon joined by Ana Stamp singing a Romanian folk-song in a simple, intimate tone. And that, basically, is the album. Isn’t that enough for you, you monsters? Well, […]
dogrando writes about some records 