Back catalogue: Classical

Review: British crime television series Sherlock has proved hugely popular in recent years. The latest adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's writings have also been hugely enhanced by the soundtrack. That score has been composed by David Arnold and Michael Price, and has won the pair numerous awards including a 2014 EMMY as well as two further nominations for an EMMY and a BAFTA nomination. Their contribution to Sherlock is immeasurable as exemplified by this soundtrack which is thrilling and sinister, playful and suspenseful in equal measure. The music from all three of the first series is captured here on this limited blue vinyl.

Review: Nothing by Louis Cole, a collaboration with the Metropole Orkest conducted by Jules Buckley, blends classical orchestration with dance music, pop, and jazz, showcasing Cole's unique and ultra-flexible production style. The album features 17 tracks, 15 of which are brand new, avoiding orchestral renditions of his hits and instead presenting fresh compositions. The lead single, 'Things Will Fall Apart,' highlights Cole's feather-light vocals over an exciting orchestration of funk percussion, strings, horns and barbershop backup vocals. Recorded during live performances, Nothing captures the energy and emotion of Cole's multi-date sold-out European tour with the Metropole Orkest. The project emphasises Cole's desire to create music with deep emotional impact while remaining straightforward and accessible. Cole meticulously mixed the album himself, ensuring his pure vision was realised.

Review: If you're keyed into the modern classical stretch of the contemporary ambient world, you'll have likely discovered Kali Malone before. Her works have been largely focused on the organ, which she has pushed into all manner of experimental realms as a vessel for life-affirming drones, but don't be misled into thinking that's the only tool in her kit. Malone is a constantly evolving, inquisitive artist and her new album All Life Long confirms this with specific pieces for voice and brass performed by Macadam Ensemble and Anima Brass. Rewarding the patient listener and breaking new ground in her compelling, studious approach to music, this is another firm reminder of Malone's formidable presence in contemporary experimental music circles.

Review: Kali Malone's The Sacrificial Code stands as a defining work of 21st Century minimalism, shaped by years of intensive study. Originally released in 2019, the album emerged from her time at Stockholm's Royal College of Music, where she explored sound, space, and alternate tuning systems under the guidance of organ tuner Jan Borjeson. Stripping composition down to its starkest form, she embraced canons and slow-moving harmonic shifts, slowly but surely stepping into a sound emphasising monumentality. Now, six years later, The Sacrificial Code is reissued via Ideologic Organ, featuring a new 2023 recording of the title track on a 16th-century organ. Malone's self-taught recording techniques bring out the instrument's spirant resonance, creating a time-dilating sound. Less mournful, more tranquil, the new version mirrors the concurrent transformations of music and listeners in step, over time.

Review: This is the first-ever reissue of Gianni Marchetti's 1978 LP Solstitium, which was originally released as part of RCA's "Original Cast" series in limited promo copies and has long been considered one of the most rare and enigmatic pieces of Italian library music. Library music was primarily created for television, radio and film but often yielded hidden gems that fused jazz, lounge and soul into storytelling vignettes of sounds. Marchetti's wonderful Solstitium is a prime example of innovation within this space which rightly remains a classic in the history of Italian music.

Review: Debuting on Soda Gong, Memotone aka. Will Yates brings new album Fever Of The World to our ears. Sporting a high temperature and a brain foggy pall, the world today is indeed insalubriously feverish, and Memotone crafts an arresting record in tribute to the Earth, serving as both an elegy and an elixir for it depending on how you hear it. Built on and around a set of compositional and live techniques fashioned over years, Yates' newest output is amorphous and palliative, putting our symptomatic souls at rest, with softly truck caresses by gong and pan; twinkles on the piano; real, boughed, and fed back mic-ups. The whole thing plays out like a half-hypnoic reverie, in which dream-images coalesce with engrams of the past and made manifest in the auditory field; be these the deja entendus of the abstracted children's laughter on 'Fever Of The World' or the sense of mobile, civic, automatic movement, via a continual textural wash, on 'The Bus'.

Review: Steve Moore's Cursed Objects is a thrilling return to the library music realm, presenting a masterful blend of prog-synth-wave with chamber and symphonic elements. Released on the limited-edition Fold label, this album is a feast for fans of epic electronic explorations as Moore, known for his work with Zombi, Miracle, and Titan, delivers a captivating solo effort under his own name. The LP opens with 'The Uninvited One,' where serene arpeggiated synths intertwine with sweeping strings and plucked harp, creating a mystical atmosphere. The title track escalates into dark, brooding territory with a blend of synths, piano, and strings. 'Evolutionary Steps' showcases epic synthwave with expansive strings and driving rhythms, while 'The Icarus Feather' and 'Daily Affirmations' offer cinematic and meditative textures, respectively. Side-2 begins with 'Mesmer's Bauble,' a track imbued with introspective dread, followed by 'Quiet Springs,' which builds to a hopeful and panoramic scope. 'Festival Of Samhain' delivers a slow, desolate piano melody layered with dark synths, and 'The Icarus Feather (Revisited)' revisits epic synthwave themes. The album concludes with 'Shard Of Medusa,' combining a dark piano melody with harp and strings for a suspenseful finale. Featuring Steve's signature Prophet 6, Moog Minitaur, and Korg Polysix, and with a cover by Chris Stevenson, Cursed Objects is a standout in the library music genre, meticulously mastered and pressed for optimal enjoyment.

Review: Yumiko Morioka's Resonance was originally released in 1987 on Akira Ito's Green & Water imprint. Album, artist and label would all trifect to help along the enviro-ambient sound of which Ito was to become a part. For its quiescent but heartrending chamber pianos, Resonance was known for its use mostly in documentaries and as background music for spas, which hardly befitted the weight of Morioka's actual achievement at the time. By 1994, Morioka had moved to California, where she had shifted her focus to family life, unaware that Resonance had gained a new following outside Japan via online platforms. In 2017, when Morioka learned of this, she was recovering from a devastating California wildfire that destroyed her home and belongings. Despite the tragedy, she returned to Japan, worked in commercial music, and later opened a chocolate shop in Tokyo. Resonance, recorded on a Bosendorfer grand, blends improvisation with calm, introspective beauty, influenced by both Japanese environmental music and Western composers such as Erik Satie. The album was remastered in 2023, preserving its serene quality.

Review: The makings of Murcof's new album Twin Colour were first germinated in 2020, shaped by the early days of the pandemic lockdowns. The first volume in a new multidisciplinary project between Fernando Corona (Murcof), his daughter Alina Corona, and his colleague Simon Geilfus, Twin Colour is born of less conception and more studio heuristics, though it draws many of its inspirations from some of the 80s material that Murcof had laid down at the start of his career. As such, an impressive combo of tape-hissed coldwave and modern, progressive ambient is heard here, straying from Murcof's trickier material for something much more roughshod, tawny and dramatic.

Review: This new one from our favourite US ambient outlet takes the form of a selection of long-form compositions from artists who are close to the label. As such it's a perfect reflection of its signature sound - deeply immersive soundscapes, slowly shifting synths and meditative moods made with a mix of hardware tools, guitars, pedals and even baritone vocals. It's named after a Norwegian term for warmth and intimacy, which certainly plays out from the evolving loops of 'A Whisper' to the textured melancholy of 'Canaan' and the reverberant drift of 'Coronation Ring'.

Review: Deep Valley is a new collaborative work by Australian artists Seaworthy aka Cameron Webb and Matt Rosner and they came together for it during a week-long residency at Bundanon Art Museum in New South Wales. The property which was gifted to the Australian public by artists Arthur and Yvonne Boyd in the 1990s offers a unique landscape along the Shoalhaven River and is surrounded by sandstone cliffs and diverse wildlife. Drawing inspiration from Boyd's belief that "you can't own a landscape," Deep Valley combines the inspiration of that setting with environmental recordings, guitars, piano, and electronic processing all of which aim to highlight the transient nature of ecosystems and encourage you to reconnect with the sounds of nature.

Review: Joseph Shabason, Matthew Sage, and Nicholas Krgovich form a harmonious triangle, both musically and geographically. Hailing from Toronto, Colorado, and Vancouver respectively, they converged at Sage's barn studio nestled at the foot of the Rockies to explore their shared talent for finding beauty in life's mundane moments. Shabason, known for blending late 80s adult-contemporary and smooth jazz aesthetics into ethereal soundscapes, joins forces with Sage, who combines instrumental prowess with synthesis and field recordings to evoke the natural world's whimsy and profundity. Completing the trio is Krgovich, whose observational poetics add a relatable touch to their calm expressionism. Their collaborative album, warmly Shabason, Krgovich, Sage extends the wry and melancholic micro-miracles established in their previous works.

Review: Fluxus drone pioneers La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela present the latest reissue of 31 VII 69 10:26-10:49 PM/23 VIII 64 2:50:45-3:11 AM The Volga Delta, a historic and mesmerizing soundworld which captures the '60s pioneers' twin paths through the worlds of performance art, sculpture-based acousmatic music, and an overall real alternative beatnik lifestyle . Made between 1964 and 1969, the album has gone down in history as a captivating fusion of dreamy electronic sounds and Eastern-influenced vocalization, with techniques such as microtonal tuning and extended repetition laying its experimental groundwork.

Review: La Monte Young is one of the most important figures in the development of American minimal composition and performance, having explored the science of sound at an atomic level through his use of just intonation and rational number-based tuning systems. His wife Marian Zeeler was also one of his closest collaborators, and in 1974 they released their second album Dream House 78'17" as a demonstration of the ideas they had been proposing in their work. Side A was recorded at a private concert which also features Jon Hassell and Garrett List, while Side B is an extended tonal study via a bowed gong, which was monitored precisely through oscilloscopes for an exacting immersion in harmonic interplay and its physical and psychoacoustic properties.

Review: American minimalism pioneers La Monte Young and Marian Zeeler released their second album in 1974, when they were already well-established in the US avant-garde. This serves as a document of their work and ideas at the time, with two very different sides on offer. The first side was recorded at a private concert, in which Young and Zeeler's voices interact with sustained drones and some occasional trumpet from Jon Hassell and trombone from Garrett List. The second side focuses on a bowed gong study, ruminating on the particulars of frequency and harmonics and their potential effects on the listener and the space in which they're heard.