Given the fact that Matteo Pagamici and Michael Künstle have already composed for TV and film, it’s no surprise that their debut album is cinematic. The bonus is a 92-piece orchestra, which makes every piece sound like a film trailer or theme.
Together, the tracks form a “Musical Travel Diary,” excerpts of which are found in the accompanying book; each is accompanied by a photo and a brief essay.
This being said, one may wish to make their own associations, especially in the opener, “Abstract 2.0.” The tone is Jurassic Park, widescreen large, bursting when the drums and brass advance. Inspired by the overstimulation of a big city, the piece also promises adventure and teems with possibility. In this world, anything…
Category: ***
Imagine you were a collector of folk songs in 1970s Kyiv, a student at the Conservatory, and a member of the Leninist Youth League (obligatory if you wanted easier access to higher ed). Coming back from weekend expeditions to rural villages, you would deposit your field recordings in the archive, but not before you edited them — excising references to gods, Christian or otherwise, or songs too tragic for the Communist Party, which expected optimism from the folk. Composers in the Conservatory might draw from your collections and adapt them for the saccharine folklore ensembles sponsored by the Soviet state.
Imagine you wanted to sing like the women you heard in the village, with the full gritty materiality of your body, even though…
Tight and Loose is an artifact of a time before San Francisco became a bedroom community for the tech empires. Back in the late 1980s, it was still possible for people living there to work in record stores and other non-advancement enterprises to invest their time in creative endeavors that mocked the notion of redeeming values. World of Pooh was one such endeavor.
The band comprised Barbara Manning (voice, guitar, bass), Brandan Kearney (voice, guitar) and Jay Paget (drums). While it was considerably closer to conventional rock ’n’ roll than many of the other combos its members played in (Caroliner, Archipeligo Brewing Co., Glands of External Secretion), World of Pooh was no one’s ladder for pop success. Therein lies some of…
Buyers of the physical version of this album, which made classical best-seller charts in the summer of 2025, will get an explication of the contents, much of it from composer Hannah Kendall, that contains a good deal of language aimed at the ideological environment of Columbia University, where Kendall received a PhD; one hears of “creolised sites of connectivity” (not to mention “créolité”), “the Plantation Machine and its ongoing feedback loop system that continues today,” and more in this vein. The deployments of the instruments in Kendall’s compositions reflect these ideas and embody imagery associated with them (“The timbral qualities of the radio feedback and interference” in the opening shouting forever into the receiver, for example, “serve to emulate…
Though Leo Records has previously documented Quartet (London) 1985 (1988); Quartet (Birmingham) 1985 (1991); and Quartet (Coventry) 1985 (1993), Burning Ambulance Music is proud to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the tour with this set of previously unreleased recordings from Liverpool, Sheffield, Leicester, Bristol, Southampton, Leeds, and Huddersfield.
…With a brazen logic all its own, Quartet (England) 1985 is not, by any means or definition, for those whose algorithms prescribe soothing puppy and kitten videos or languorous spa music. Maniacal, undaunted, unflinching, Quartet (England) 1985 place the brave listener in the eye of the cacophonous tornado fury that was Anthony Braxton, pianist Marilyn Crispell, bassist…
There are possibly two key reasons why musicians take on other professional tasks – they need a number of personal channels to express their talents and ideas or, they simply need more money. Or both. Whatever is the case with Max Alper, who as a musician goes under Peretsky, he tries to express himself as a composer (and performer), as well as an educator (there he is La Meme Young), and technologist.
For the case in hand, his most recent album It Doesn’t Get Cold in October Anymore (and he’s got over 30 of those), he maybe can stick to music, as the one he makes works on a number of levels. While previously he spread his musical palette from noise, sound art, and free improvisation, this time around he decided to work…
There are few musical outfits whose music creates such a warm glow as instrumental super-trio Leveret. Accordionist Andy Cutting, concertina player (who also recorded this album), Rob Harbron, and violinist Sam Sweeney are at the top of the pile in each of their departments, and their work as Leveret has been consistently excellent through six albums and eleven years.
For Lost Measures, the band unearthed several old tunes and melodies that had lain dormant for many years and combined them with originals from Andy and Rob to result in eleven pieces of beautiful music showcasing the strengths of these musicians, both as individuals and as one of the best instrumental groups operating.
One of the most rewarding aspects of…
It’s not foregrounded, but as Strangest Feeling beds in after repeated listens it becomes clear that one of its core traits is The Pixies-originated quiet-loud, soft-hard dynamic which oozed into grunge. The second LP from the Irish-born, Sydney dwelling Bonnie Stewart isn’t a grunge album, but it has a kindred sensibility. Take third track “Bittersweet”. It has a My Bloody Valentine / Pale Saints haziness but as a verse gives way to the chorus – boom, an explosion. The voice is folky, lilting, the melodies honeyed. Yet Stewart likes offsetting this with flare-ups indicating that – presumably – she likes to give listeners a surprise.
Some of Strangest Feeling is less structured, more abstract. Opening track “Dragon” is diffuse, goth-ish, evoking the percussive aspects…
Knowing when to stop is a much-undervalued attribute, particularly in the music industry. So rare is the artist who calls it a day – and doesn’t renege on the decision – they are exceptions that prove the rule. Syd Barrett, Mark Hollis, Meg White… Even rarer is knowing how to stop – David Bowie of course set the benchmark for career-concluding swan songs with 2016’s Blackstar.
But fellow New York resident JG Thirlwell has made a similar creative choice with the release of Halt, his tenth album under the Foetus nom de plume – satellite, remix and live releases notwithstanding. The record brings to a close a project that spans 45 years of exceptional creativity, and at times controversy.
There’s an apocryphal story about Thirlwell…
Every field recording is a virtual reality. Joshua Bonnetta understands that precept: The Canadian artist eschews “authentic” reproductions of any space, openly embracing subjectivity. “I abstract the sounds,” Bonnetta has said of his 2016 album Lago, “so that they would align more with my experience and the feeling of what I got from that place.” A personal perspective comes to the fore in his experimental documentaries, too. El Mar La Mar, his 2017 collaboration with director J.P. Sniadecki, placed oral histories alongside audio of the Sonoran desert, painting the U.S.-Mexico border as a landscape of trauma and bureaucratic racism. In 2020’s The Two Sights, he portrayed the epistemological reality of clairvoyant townspeople in the Outer Hebrides by eschewing…
Broadly speaking, shredders are the pro wrestlers of music, trafficking in overwrought drama but devoid of soul, the realm of finger-tappers, fretboard lubricators, and those prone to viewing music as a competitive brawl.
As such, the axe-slinger of conscience steers clear of shredding behavior, albeit every-so-often dexterously running the neck to tip listeners off that, you know, they “really know how to play.” But for the typical avant-string consumer, shredding is beyond the pale.
Which brings us to Cyrus Pireh‘s new Palilalia release Thank You, Guitar, his latest stab at “transcendental shred electric guitar music.”
…this album has many surprises to the somewhat untuned ear. ‘We Can’t All Be Alive at the Same…
Six years after 1987’s celebrated Wings of Desire, German director Wim Wenders released Faraway, So Close!, an examination of the differences between the angel figures and humans inhabiting Berlin and the myriad social and political factions within the newly unified city. A sequel of sorts to 2023’s Summer Chronicles, the similarly titled second collaboration by David Cordero and Rhucle references both the pronounced physical distance between the ambient producers’ respective home bases in Cádiz and Tokyo but also how musically connected the two feel when collaborating. By sending each other tracks and adding to them in their separate studios, the two have developed a file-sharing methodology that for them functions smoothly. As research on social…
One of the best West Coast folk-rock/psychedelic bands, Love may have also been the first widely acclaimed cult/underground group. During their brief heyday they drew from Byrds-ish folk-rock, Stones-ish hard rock, blues, jazz, flamenco, and even light orchestral pop to create a heady stew of their own.
Love’s The Complete Elektra Albums includes the definitive selection of Arthur Lee and company’s inimitable work. In addition to newly remastered versions of 1966’s Love and Da Capo and the landmark Forever Changes (1967), this box also includes the CD debut of Lee’s original mix for 1969’s Four Sail plus a disc of single sides and rarities that appeared on a series of early ’00s CD reissues of these albums.
You might think you’re busy, but are you busy like Arnold de Boer of Zea? In addition to being the Ex’s mouthpiece for the past decade and a half, he’s been the singer, guitarist, songwriter, booker, driver, etc., of Zea for 31 years. Throughout that time, the project has continually morphed, operating as a one-man show, a stylistically chameleonic ensemble and a multi-continental, collaborative endeavor that often projects its messages in more than one tongue.
In Lichem Fol Beloften (“a body filled with promises”) is sung entirely in Frisian, the language spoken in de Boer’s northern Netherlands neck of the woods. He wrote some of the lyrics, taking others from poems translated into the dialect. If you get the CD or LP editions,…
Some albums take years to make. The Stone Roses famously took their sweet time over The Second Coming, while Guns N’ Roses made fans wait for over a decade before finally delivering Chinese Democracy. Tugboat Captain? They made Dog Tale in a week, mate – done and dusted in seven days, it’s a refreshing testament to creative brevity.
Recorded at South London studio Ctrl P – run by Sox and Josh from the band – there’s a pervading comfort to the material on Dog Tale. As time has gone on, Tugboat Captain have added baroque flourishes to their songwriting, and while the arrangements here testify to that, they equally refuse to be smothered by ad hoc additions.
As a result, it’s a beaming grin of a record, a witty series of quips, diversions, and…
The reappearance of These Were The Earlies for its 21st-anniversary is a surprise. Although The Earlies‘ debut LP received a maximum-marks review from NME on its 2004 release – and widespread praise in general – it is not an album instantly shouting “cult item.” Nonetheless, as the reissue and a tie-in reformation of the band show, there is a residual affection.
Playing These Were The Earlies confirms why. From its opening seconds, it sets itself up as top-notch modern psychedelia, with references – some overt, some subtle – to The Beach Boys, Love and, more contemporaneously, Mercury Rev. A lyric with the words “Mother Mary” cannot have been written without knowing The Beatles would instantly spring to mind.
Charlie Bruber started out slowly, building a name for himself in Minneapolis music circles (and elsewhere) primarily as a multi-instrumentalist and engineer. As is often the case, there is always an extra personal drive there to do your own music, in most cases as a singer-songwriter, whatever the results may be, for better or for worse.
Judging by Prized Burden, Bruber’s second solo outing and luckily for both him and all the listeners that venture into it, better is the direction he is moving in as a solo artist. No, Brugber is definitely not sticking to what is considered the ‘standard’ singer-songwriter formulas, although the album has that slow-building, often languorous feel.
The difference lies in the fact that Bruber has the ability to build his songs…
Listening to Excess of Loss, the new album from Xol Meissner, one can’t help but be transported to a different time and place, where the haunting baritone vocals recall Scott Walker, Nick Cave, and Jacques Brel, and the instrumental accompaniment consists of a hammered lap steel. The combination invokes a dream-like state that is dark and mysterious but oddly intoxicating. Excess of Loss draws inspiration from many places, but still sounds like absolutely nothing else.
Xol Meissner is the alias of New York City-based composer Mauro Hertig. Classically trained and the 2019 Laureate of the Voix-Nouvelles Académie in France, Hertig had regularly used text in scored works prior to writing songs full-time. His unique style of lap steel was previously…
Manslaughter 777 are powerhouses of forward-thinking rhythmic music and production. The duo, composed of drummers/programmers Lee Buford (The Body, Sightless Pit, Dead Times, Everyone Asked About You) and Zac Jones (MSC, Nothing, Braveyoung), combine their prowess as percussionists and producers into beat-centric music that delights in turning unexpected sounds into razor sharp rhythms. Buford and Jones, along with engineer/producer Seth Manchester of Machines with Magnets (The Body, Model/Actriz, Liturgy), have collaborated for nearly two decades, consistently shattering genre boundaries and redefining the role of the studio in the process. God’s World uses innovative sound sampling to create expansive sonics driven…
Anyone approaching this album unawares needs to be warned that its playing time of 36′ 34″ is divided into sixty nine tracks ranging in length from six seconds to a minute and 41 seconds, and that the tracks are labelled as Roman numerals from one to 69 with 10 of the track titles being extended by dedications to unidentified individuals (for example, “XXXIV to Sisa Wandeler”). For anyone keen to know more, the track titles are printed on the rear sleeve. Given the album’s release day, this is not an elaborate joke…
The clue to this mystery is in big blue letters on the front of this album sleeve — “Yet Dish” “Gertrude Stein.” Born in Pennsylvania in 1874, Gertrude Stein was a renowned American novelist, poet and playwright who moved to Paris…