There’s something about the pipe organ that keeps experimental musicians going back for more. No other acoustic instrument pierces and shakes the air in quite the same way.
…Infinity Gradient is the latest in a growing canon of initially serene organ music that later reveals depth and grit. An hour-long piece for organ and 100 loudspeakers, it was composed in 2021 by New York-based composer Tristan Perich, and performed with James McVinnie at London’s Royal Festival Hall in 2024.
After an opening flourish, the piece is arranged in seven sections but, in essence, it works through a handful of stretched crescendos.
Perich’s breathing, warping electronics feel like a natural addition to the organ’s…
Tag Archive: Erased Tapes
Ryan Lee West’s ninth studio album continues his exploration of analogue synths and complex programming, though now with a greater emotional appeal, an open-hearted love letter compared to the occasionally opaque avant-gardisms of previous work.
Catherine speaks directly to the object of the album’s attentions, and the song’s expansive synths pre-empt the ingenuity that makes Landscape from Memory endlessly intriguing. Each note feels considered, bleeds and overlaps into the next, creating an intricate cross-hatched series of interlinked sounds. Like a pattern in the sky formed of chemtrails, it has the feel of an organic or divine process, while clearly being the work of carefully constructed pre-planning.
…Qasim Naqvi built Endling as a kind of solo prequel to God Docks at Death Harbor, which the BBC Concert Orchestra premiered in 2023. With its title and concept inspired by a phrase his wife remembered from a dream, God Docks at Death Harbor imagines the Earth’s landscape long after humans have slipped off the planet.
Endling documents the tragic hero’s journey as the last of a species tries to hang on to humanity a bit longer. It is at once draining and uplifting, a terribly beautiful and beautifully terrible vision of self-made extinction.
For more than a decade, Naqvi has made grand tones feel subtle and suggestive. Inspired by his explorations of the ARP Odyssey, the voices on his 2014 choral album, Fjoloy, quiver…