Contemporary composers working with just intonation tend to have an affinity for early music, when Pythagorean tuning was mainstream and before equal temperament became the standard. Léo Dupleix is no exception, and he takes the connection one step further, putting the harpsichord at the center of much of his music.
Round Sky is Dupleix’s latest, a close cousin of his 2024 release, Resonant Trees. Both albums place the composer’s harpsichord within a small chamber ensemble including flute, guitar, and in the case of Round Sky, double bass. (Resonant Trees called for clarinet and viola instead of bass). Dupleix also plays analogue synthesizer, a color that is particularly central to the longest piece on the new album, the nearly 20-minute…
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Back in the early nineties, when Kevin Shields and My Bloody Valentine came up with their Loveless album, they practically broke the back of Creation Records, which soon after went bankrupt. Yet, nobody at the time envisioned what kind of influence that album would have decades after its initial release.
Its ripple effects keep washing up on listeners to this day, and the latest proof comes in the form of Come Back Down, the new album by Nashville (yes, that Nashville) duo Total Wife. It is too easy to say that Luna Kupper and Ash Richter, who comprise Total Wife, are just ‘simple’ fans of MBV and all things that were good about the original shoegaze for two reasons.
First of all, following in the footsteps of…
Bug Teeth’s debut full-length arrives softly, building and scrutinising loss down to its fine veins, even as it gazes upward to the skies.
With a title drawn from Robert Hooke’s 17th-century scientific text magnifying the minutiae of living forms, Micrographia zeroes in on the subtleties of grief, familial memory and the burden of loving someone who is gone.
At the heart of the album is the rupture of PJ Johnson’s life when their mother died suddenly in 2021 which left them unmoored and desperate to make sense of the absence. “Tapeworm” questions if her mother would prefer no children if she were to live her life over, “With time again would you give it up / A sacrifice / Would you give me up?” It’s a crippling place to begin.
Backtracking a bit from previously issued volumes of the series, Musik Music Musique 1979: The Roots of Synth Pop functions as a sort of prequel, mapping out the blueprint of the new wave revolution of the ’80s, from synth-heavy post-punk and art rock to some of synth pop’s earliest chart-toppers. It’s not as if electronic instruments weren’t prominent in popular music before 1979, but synthesizers were clearly well on their way to being a defining characteristic of the musical landscape. The set starts with the Buggles’ “Technopop,” proposing a name for the music of the future — Kraftwerk would later give a song a similar title on 1986’s Electric Café, which originally had the working title Techno Pop as well, and decades later, a reissue retroactively bore…
Formed in 2020, toso toso is made up of producer, drummer, and sound designer Kabir Adhiya-Kumar; synth and keyboardist Rahul Carlberg; producer and guitarist Celia Hill; and interdisciplinary artist Isabel Crespo Pardo, the group’s vocalist and wordsmith.
Essentially a wide-ranging supergroup of left-field solo acts from across a plethora of musical forms as classical pianists sit beside sound designers and improvisational vocalists, toso toso forge these disparate crafts into something dense, emotional and properly distinctive on their self-titled debut album.
Opener ‘cLAcLAcLA’ serves as a microcosm of the record; bounding out in a flurry of micro-sampled chaos, like the contents of your…
Sonico is the only ensemble in the world dedicated to the music of Eduardo Rovira. The bandoneonist was one of the most revolutionary figures in the history of tango. However, the experimental nature of his compositions, his taciturn personality and his early death have largely consigned him to history’s margins.
To commemorate the centenary of his birth and to celebrate a decade of their own existence, the Sonico quintet have recorded a work that recreates two of Rovira’s albums: Sónico and Que lo paren. During six of the eight tracks on the first volume, Lysandre Donoso uses a distortion pedal on his bandoneon, a technique pioneered by the honoree himself. On the second, the delicate ‘Majó majú’ and the impetuous title-track…
Founded in Berlin in 2019, the Leonkoro Quartet is no stranger to the UK having won first prize and nine special awards at the 2022 Wigmore Hall international string quartet competition. In their new disc they explore three composers who embody the musical cutting-edge that might have been encountered in the Austrian capital either side of the Great War.
Alban Berg and Anton Webern took Schoenberg’s theories of free atonality and the 12-tone system in rather different directions. Berg’s Lyric Suite was a fervent outpouring to his mistress, and the quartet aptly captures the moody sensuality of this intense, intricate music. The Andante Amoroso swoons; the Allegro Misterioso tiptoes on muted strings; the Presto Delirando is positively…
The music of David Moore’s Bing & Ruth has typically resembled cloud systems, ocean waves, swarming shoals of fish. In the spirit of compositions like Terry Riley’s In C and Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, each of his pieces stirs diminutive patterns into unfathomably vast forces. But over the long sweep of his career, Moore gives the impression of an artist steadily clearing away cobwebs, determined to get at the essence of something. There were 11 players on 2010’s City Lake, his post-classical ensemble’s breakout album, and then seven on 2014’s Tomorrow Was the Golden Age; by 2020’s somber Species, he had stripped his materials down to Farfisa organ, clarinet, and double bass. Moore recently dropped the Bing & Ruth alias for a duo…
Nils Landgren marks his 70th birthday with Love of My Life — an album that reflects not only the scale of his achievement, but also the astonishingly wide range of roles his life in music has embraced. As one of the most successful European jazz musicians of the past few decades, Landgren has long been more than a trombonist or singer: he is a connector, a mentor, a bridge-builder. Recorded with close friends and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra under the opulent arrangements of Vince Mendoza, the album spans from Landgren’s own tender compositions to reimagined works by Cat Stevens, Leonard Bernstein, Herbie Hancock, and others — yet it remains unmistakably Landgren: open, warm, and full of humanity. “The most important thing in music for me is:…
The Nordic landscape contains stillness as well as near-invisible movement. Danish composer Jesper Thorn brings this idea to his music on Stille. But don’t fret, the record isn’t some brumous and chilly soundscape. A generous warmth sweeps through the pieces. In collaboration with Marc Méan on piano, saxophonist Cecilie Strange, Maj Berit Guassora on trumpet and violinist Andreas Bernitt, the project holds many moments of intimate clarity and chilling beauty. The Danish bassist leads the group as more of a background player, while still retaining an undeniable presence and holding the reins with a generous hand.
“Run” covers a whole narrative in under six minutes. The piece is a look through a window; though what is seen may change from viewer…
First Light, Sean Taylor’s latest release, is like a collection of broadside ballads; song sheets with the ink still wet, hawked on street corners from the 16th century for some 300 years.
As immediate as news bulletins, the songs were meant to provide information and insights into the happenings of the day. Taylor is the modern equivalent of the songmonger, the travelling troubadour who writes to inform, inspire and challenge his audience. He has been at it for decades. First Light is his 15th album.
While Taylor may be the continuation of an old tradition, his music evinces a multitude of influences. He is a multi-instrumentalist who focuses primarily on piano and guitar. His music has elements of blues, jazz, folk and…
Born to Haitian parents in New York and now a proud resident of the Big Easy, Sabine McCalla brings a bewildering variety of influences to this debut release. The miracle is how seamlessly she weaves these threads of Caribbean folksong, Motown soul and New Orleans funk into a lush and satisfying whole.
The nine songs here – all but one originals – range from the languid, Latino title-track to the joyful groove of ‘Louisiana Hound Dog’ and the creeping hoodoo menace of ‘I Went to the Levee’. Best of all is the steadily building intensity of ‘Baby, Please Don’t Go’, one of several tracks where Craig Flory’s belching bass sax helps to conjure the atmosphere of a sweaty Bourbon Street bar. Guests on the album include Sabine’s sister Leyla,…
In 2024, Georgia-based guitarist, composer, and improviser Shane Parish released Repertoire, an album of 14 covers on solo acoustic guitar. The songs were mostly from forward-thinking jazz composers – Ornette Coleman, Charles Mingus, Alice Coltrane, Sun Ra, among others – along with interpretations of songs by the likes of the Minutemen, Captain Beefheart, and Aphex Twin thrown in for good measure. The result is a gorgeous puzzle of acoustic recordings that brought together unique compositions interpreted by a fearless soloist.
Now, with Solo at Café OTO, Parish has created something of a companion piece, swapping out the acoustic guitar for a Squier Telecaster electric, and covering a variety of compositions…
Dinamarca has a soft spot for vocalists. In 2019, he invited a host of artists to perform vocals on his LP Sol De Mi Vida, then went on to record a reggaeton EP with Bay Area singer La Favi, a trap single with rising Chilean rapper AKRIILA, and now this hyperpop/reggaeton hybrid with Ángel Ballesteros — lead singer of pop-perreo trio Meth Math. Earlier Dinamarca productions would have spoken to the hard and fast dembow of Meth Math tracks like “Mermelhada” from their last LP Chupetones, which was co-produced by Nick León. But as of 2018, Dinamarca has been kneading out the harder edges of his reggaeton rattle into something generally mellower and happier. His first foray with Meth Math leaned towards trap, while his solo debut album soñao pulled…
Equipment Pointed Ankh is a truly bizarre collective. While the profile of Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band has risen precipitously over the last few years, the same gang of adventurers has continued to make strange, colorful, mostly instrumental music as Equipment Pointed Ankh behind the scenes — of which Eggs a Little Late is the latest taste. It sounds as though this fresh batch of music has been influenced by the collective’s recent recording and touring experiences as The Roadhouse Band, stirring in more honky-tonk, country-rock influences, and it’s certainly more accessible than their last couple of efforts, 2023’s excellent From Inside the House and Downtown!
The clearest throughline from past EPA recordings is the two spoken-word pieces,…
Spinnen (“Spiders”) is the Munich-based duo of Sophie Neudecker (drums/vocals) and Veronica “Katta” Burnuthian (bass/keyboards/vocals), and although this is technically their debut album, they have been active in Munich’s experimental noise-rock scene for some time, working alongside groups like Friends of Gas. Pushing the spider theme, they say this album consists of two body parts (i.e. side one and side two) and eight legs (songs), but this is just a witty way of pointing out that Warmes Licht (“Warm Light”) is, structurally, entirely conventional. The music, too, is far more accessible than you might expect, with eight disciplined songs, the longest under six minutes long and the shortest just one minute and forty-four seconds. But the relative…
…Originally envisioned as a fake band, Dirt Buyer have been searching for an identity to call their own since their 2019 self-titled debut. Joe Sutkowski hasn’t quite circled the bases, but he’s getting closer. Emerging from a stormy period in Sutkowski’s life, III’s blend of emo, slowcore, and folk works great as a cathartic emotional exercise thanks to its visceral themes and weighty sound, even though the record seldom adds anything new to an ever-evolving emo canon.
III is best at its heaviest, when traumatic tales drowned in waves of distortion and instrumental layering are surrounded by subdued passages that bridge their corrosive cores. “Bullshit Fuck” frontloads its grating guitars and percussion as Sutkowski delivers a wearied rant, and its…
In the early 1990s, Stephen McCarthy and Kevin Pittman holed up together for a year in a 100-year-old bungalow. McCarthy is well known as a guitarist and vocalist for The Long Ryders, but has also played for The Jayhawks on tour and on some tracks on their latest album Xoxo. Pittman, originally from Reedville, on the coast of Virginia, toured up and down the East Coast with his first major band, The Dogs. This high-energy outfit had some success, for example, opening for The Kinks and Culture Club. He lived in LA for a while but then returned to Virginia, where he still lives. He formed a ’70s R&B band, NRG KRYSYS, which lasted for seven years, but never released an album. In recent years, he has released solo albums “Victrola Mouth” (2019) and “Sundog” (2023).
…The long-standing duo of percussionist George Barton and pianist Siwan Rhys, hereafter GBSR and augmented here by flautist Taylor MacLennan, offers Morton Feldman’s homage to his erstwhile artistic comrade Guston, along with Why Patterns? (1978) and Crippled Symmetry (1983) in a wonderfully annotated six-disc set commensurate with the label’s other Feldman and Cage boxes, for which all involved have been justly lauded. The label has made a specialty of these two composers who are, clumsily and too often, still associated with the New York School, a designation that does the individuality of their work no justice. It is, however, music for which performance traditions are still in formation, making these sets doubly important for the deep dives…
Spectralism is a type of composition that is organized by taking as its basis aspects of the harmonic series, or the overtones resulting from a sounding pitch. From the ’70s onward, composers, many of them residing in France or Romania, have looked at spectrograms of sounds to plot out the harmonies that they will deploy over time in a piece. This may sound rarified, but it is also one of the oldest traditions in music. Early humans listened for resonances, particularly in caves, some even using conch shells (brought in from many miles away) to create loud enough sounds to hear lots of reverberating overtones. Throat singers manipulate their voices to sound more than a single pitch at a time. If you have ever heard a bunch of higher sounds…