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Music

Thomas Köner: Tiento De La Luz (LP, Denovali Records, March 2016)

This is a superbly stately piece of ambient classical. It’s centred around piano and electronics, with a touch of strings (early music favourite the viola da gamba, I gather), brass, and tuned percussion. Köner thinks nothing of leaving a single piano note hanging for five or ten seconds, echoing into the ambient wash. From time […]

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Goldmund: Sometimes (LP, Western Vinyl, December 2015)

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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Music

Max Richter: Sleep (Digital, Deutsche Grammaphon, September 2015)

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 […]

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Music

Bing & Ruth: City Lake (CD, RVNG Intl, November 2015)

I utterly swooned over Bing & Ruth’s Tomorrow Was The Golden Age last year, and I wasn’t the only one. So I was pretty excited to learn that RVNG were re-releasing their 2012 debut. The same elements are present here: David Moore’s wonderful piano playing ranges from intense torrents of alternating notes to delicate simple melodies, […]

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Music

Lau Nau: HEM. Någonstans (CD, Fonal, July 2015)

There are some records I like because they challenge me. There are some records I like because, from the first notes, I feel like I’m at home. This record falls into the latter category. Which is not to say it’s uninventive, ‘cos it’s far from that… just that this combination of modern classical, ambient effects, […]

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Harold Budd + Eraldo Bernocchi: Music For Fragments From The Inside (2xLP, Sub Rosa, December 2014)

Combining classical music and electronica sounds like a great idea in theory, but in my experience it’s often pretty underwhelming in practice. Not so this collaboration, recorded live at the Palazzo Delle Papesse Centro Arte Contemporanea in Siena, Italy, initially released in 2005, and here re-released on beautiful double LP. Bernocchi’s electronics — at times straight-up […]

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Music

Ghost Harmonic: Codex (CD, Metamatic, June 2015)

I’m pretty excited about this record, which is doing something genuinely new with the modern classical / ambient form (which, while basically my favourite thing in the world a few years ago, was starting to show signs of becoming just a little bit tired recently). This is collaboration, recorded over two years, between Diana Yukawa on […]

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Music

Jasmine Guffond: Yellow Bell (LP, Sonic Pieces, Jan 2015)

This one is right on the cusp of the modern classical / ambient thing. Strings and electronics blend seamlessly together to shimmering, atmospheric effect. The sleeve notes explain that the title refers to “an ancient Chinese tradition… of a fundamental tone that relates to society’s place in the cosmic order”: while I don’t think there […]

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Music

Bing & Ruth: Tomorrow Was The Golden Age (2xLP, RVNG Intl, October 2014)

I’m going to find it tough writing about this without going all swooningly lyrical. This gorgeous double LP is swathed in warm, twinkling piano which gives me a lovely warm feeling right from the first notes. Then there’s the contrastingly simple but beautiful melodies played on either piano, clarinet, or strings. The harmonies and the […]

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Music

A Winged Victory For The Sullen: Atomos (CD, October 2014, Erased Tapes)

I loved Adam Wiltzie and Dustin O’Halloran’s self-titled debut as A Winged Victory For The Sullen. At the time, I indulged myself by describing them as “a post-classical/ambient/drone supergroup”, based on contributions by Peter Broderick, Hildur Guðnadóttir, and Nils Frahm. This album, of music originally written for a modern dance piece, features no such big-name contributors. […]