Review: A release that honours the centenary of Alessandro Alessandroni's birth with a collection of previously unreleased tracks from the iconic composer and multi-instrumentalist. This album uncovers a hidden chapter of Italian film scores and library music, featuring Alessandroni's lesser-known work between 1969 and 1978 for war documentaries and films. Paesaggio Bellico isn't just a military march through battlefields but a deeply nuanced exploration of war's human and existential facets. Alessandroni expertly balances sweeping, cinematic themes with moments of tension and unease. His compositions juxtapose stark, unsettling imagery with softer, more hopeful tones that has a poignant counterbalance to the brutality of conflict. The maestro's signature whistle floats over gentle 12-string guitar melodies, while his fuzz-laden Fender Stratocaster electrifies more intense passages. The Cantori Moderni, Alessandroni's trusted vocal ensemble, contribute haunting vocals that delve into the psychology of warfare. An elegant string section adds layers of drama and sentiment, enhancing the album's orchestral weight. With 18 tracks in total, the release is visually enriched by Eric Adrien Lee's cover art, which reimagines the bold design of 1970s Italian war-themed records. With a tip-on hard cover and a unique inner sleeve, the vinyl is a fitting tribute to Alessandroni's enduring legacy, blending sonic and visual storytelling into a truly special release.
Review: Oren Ambarchi and Eric Thielemans' latest collaboration emerges from a recorded performance in Poitiers, France, in November 2023, showcasing their extraordinary duo chemistry. The single continuous performance, spanning over 45 minutes, encapsulates their shared language and willingness to push boundaries, blending meditative calm with unexpected melodic and rhythmic moments. 'Kind Regards' (Beginning) opens with Thielemans' entrancing tom patterns, which provide a steady undercurrent for Ambarchi's guitar, transformed into swirling tones by a Leslie speaker. As the music unfolds, it moves between introspective calm and more forceful bursts of energy, with Ambarchi's guitar eventually taking on an electric organ-like quality, echoing the soulful depth of Alice Coltrane. Later, 'Kind Regards' (Conclusion) takes on a more jazz-oriented direction, as Thielemans' delicate rhythmic shifts showcase his mastery of accents and cymbal work. Ambarchi counters this with jittery delayed tones, and a more active use of his fretboard, weaving through dissonant harmonics before concluding with a massive, yet detailed, climax of distorted guitar and crashing cymbals. The performance, free from any flashy tricks or filler, draws power from the deep intuition between the two musicians, and their shared commitment to exploring the limits of their instruments.
Review: This new record from Black Swan evokes a desolate post-collapse world that is detailed with haunting choirs, mangled tapes and distant industrial sounds. The album unfolds like a requiem by pulling beauty from the ruins of a collapsed society. With an hour-long narrative, it shifts between rippling hums and plaintive quivers of old cassettes, slowly revealing a heart that beats beneath the crimson haze. Tracks like 'Overture' and 'Back to Dust' offer cinematic grandeur and mournful exploration, while 'Pseudotruth' and 'New Gods' introduce eerie uncertainty. In the end, the album serves as a haunting meditation on loss, memory and the fragility of civilisation.
Review: Newly ordained keyboardist Volodja Brodsky, from Estonia, has described his music as an exploration of the transformative power of minimalism, the art form and compositional approach in which he is trained. Brodsky's second LP lacks the contextual elucidations that accompanied the first record that 2024, but we sense that this may be because the career ball is already rolling, and no further explanations may be needed for now. Raindrops is a precipitous record, as Brodsky wrenches piano and vibraphone motifs from romantic scale meanderings we didn't know possible; widescreen voicings and compound intervals help earmark these standout moments. Elsewhere, the mood is downcast, as on 'Fogbound Streets Of Maardu' or 'Raindrops'; the left hand basso is almost always moody in feel, while the right hand always produces tearful and romantic sound.
Review: Jefre Cantu-Ledesma's latest album Gift Songs has an omnipresent sound: a homunculus with both instrumentalist's and naturalist's ears, it works field recordings against phonic mudra, consummating Cantu-Ledesma's spiritual and musical practices, which have grown together in recent years. Recorded against the backdrop of the Hudson Valley, the record comes source-trickled by the now-streamable 'The Milky Sea', an oceanic, lactose ambient number which honours the luminous optic phenomenon known as the milky seas effect. Refractive, fading piano flurries underscore a 20-minute jazz-ambient sound-surf, as seafoam collects around our sand-caked earlobes.
Review: Lawrence Englsh's new album was born out of a commission by curator Jonathan Wilson to create a sound environment for the Naala Badu building at the Art Gallery of NSW. It is a deeply atmospheric album that explores the relationship between sound and architecture and reflects the building's design, with its name meaning "seeing water" in the Gadigal language. The piece was crafted with a collaborative spirit by incorporating contributions from a diverse group of artists including Amby Downs, Claire Rousay and Jim O'Rourke. The resulting composition blends ambient textures and long-form sound prompts that capture the essence of place as an evolving, subjective experience. It's a work that highlights the porous nature of sound, and as a standalone work also succeeds in sinking you in deep.
Algumas Pessoas Olharam O Sul E Viram Deserto (6:04)
Um Som, Seguido De Uma Cena Negra E Malva (6:16)
This Is Music, As It Was Expected (11:02)
O Verao Nasceu Da Paixao De 1921 (10:37)
Review: Holuzam reissues Toze Ferreira's groundbreaking 1988 sound art LP Musica de Baixa Fidelidade long after it has been heralded as a pivotal release in Portugal's experimental music scene. It was created during Ferreira's time at the Institute of Sonology and plays with musique concrete, noise and abstract sound across masterful compositions like 'More Adult Music' and 'This Is Music, As It Was Expected.' With elements of piano, bells, and processed voices, it creates a tactile, immersive experience that challenges conventional music structures. This first-ever vinyl reissue includes the original artwork and a new insert with remastering done by Taylor Deupree. Ferreira's blend of technical skill and emotional depth is mesmerising here.
Nocturne No 12 In E Major Nocturne Caracteristique: Noontide
Nocturne No 13 In C Major Reverie-Nocturne
Nocturne No 14 In G Major
Nocturne No 15 In D Minor Song Without Words
Nocturne No 16 In C Major
Nocturne No 17 In C Major
Nocturne No 18 In F Major
Review: Alice Sara Ott is a German-Japanese pianist and her new album finds her sinking herself down deep into the world of John Field, the creator of the beloved 'Nocturne' sound. The Nocturne is a widely cherished musical form yet its creator remains largely unknown today. An Irish composer who lived during Beethoven's time, Field's work profoundly influenced Chopin and generations of musicians since and with this album, Ott highlights Field's historical significance as well as offering up a standing album full of merit. It is a great way to get into the origins of the Nocturne."
Review: Flutter Ridder is the collaboration between Norwegian artists Espen Friberg and Jenny Berger Myhre, and both are key figures in Oslo's contemporary art and music scene. Their creative bond formed during the production of Friberg's 2022 debut album, Sun Soon, and in November 2023 they recorded their debut self-titled album in a historic wooden church in Hvisten, Norway. The duo created a unique sound influenced by the flow of air and electricity by combining Friberg's Serge modular system and the church's pipe organ. The result is a whimsical, cinematic album that smudges liturgical, microtonal drones with unpredictable timbres that reflect their environment and vision.
Review: In recent years, traditional instrumentalists have gained many more new fans then in years past. Why music scholars can debate why, we just think it's because of the great composers like Germany's Nils Frahm being found. His latest titled Day, presents six pieces that stride between poignant and melancholy. The placement of microphones to record lend itself to the depth of each piece. Picking up room sounds and even a dog barking in the background, help add to the depth and mood of each program. Nils is effortless on the piano as he gently paints with his fingertips. The beauty in these mostly piano compositions like 'Butter Notes', 'Changes' and 'Hands On' are breathtakingly peaceful, stark and ultimately, very moving. Memory provoking music. When you get a Nils Frahm album, you aren't just buying an album. You are buying peace on earth in the form of music.
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Review: Gajek's latest album takes his experimental sound even further than ever before. It finds him blending pop and jazz with distorted dub textures all inspired by memories of the Berlin Wall falling and old West German gabber. The album warps familiar sounds into something entirely new and tracks like 'Dig It All Up Again' mix deep bass with glitchy guitar and vocal snippets, while 'Until It Was Nomore' loops strange melodies over abstract pads. At times, it hints at Krautrock influences, but the result is more freeform and immersive. This is an album best experienced in full, multiple times, so its many layers are revealed over time.
Review: Elliot Galvin is a leading figure in UK jazz with four solo albums that have topped year-end lists in respected media outlets. He is also a member of the Mercury-nominated Dinosaur and has collaborated with key jazz cats such as Shabaka Hutchings, Emma-Jean Thackray and Norma Winstone. Known for his improvisational prowess, his latest solo album taps into that skill once more and is an entirely improvised record that takes in quiet beauty like the opener, more theatric drama on 'Still Under Storms' and world jazz sounds on 'High & Wide'.
Review: To say there's a meditative quality to Golem Mecanique's third album would be like saying air is something we breathe. The nom de plume of French multi-instrumental Karen Jebane, the album title directly quotes the final comments made by Pier Paolo Pasolini in his last ever interview, given just days before his body was found on an Italian beach after being brutally murdered. "We are all in danger", he quipped. From what, or who, we are still trying to figure out, 50 years on. Siamo Tutti In Pericolo doesn't look to answer the great mystery of what happened to the great filmmaker and auteur. But it does look to feelings of tension, quiet unease, and opaque mystery for its incredibly atmospheric tomes. This is deep dive stuff, reliant on a combination of refrained notes, echoes, and sombre, spiritual voices inviting us to push through into some other state of consciousness. Whether that will shed any light on anything is, of course, the real question we need to answer.
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