‘What does it mean to listen? I mean, really to listen to the infinite possibilities of every moment of our sonic lives? No composer in 20th and 21st century music asked the question more sensitively, or more profoundly than Eliane Radigue, who has died at the age of 94.
‘Radigue was a sonic pioneer. Pre 2001, her music was made exclusively for synthesisers, because the technology allowed her to get inside the world of sound, stretching individual pitches into seeming infinities of slowness and concentration, in a way that traditional composition didn’t. Listen to the epic scales of ever-changing changelessness — a paradox that makes sense when you encounter her music — of her Trilogie de la Mort to experience what I mean. As Pascal Wyse wrote in his interview with her, Radigue’s use of synthesisers meant that ‘the music didn’t contain sound: the sound contained the music’ (The Guardian).

Two spellbinding extended improvisations referring to meteorological and planetary phenomena: evocations of light, wind, clouds, and tidal cycles as shimmering, roaring, rubbing, coalescing and diverging environments of sound; consistent and yet in perpetual flux. The quartet’s signature, singular, honed minimalism subsumes flashes of chaos into winding paths of musical detail; hushed but suspenseful.

Quietly ravishing, stunning music from Norway, by trumpeter Torstein Lavik Larsen, double bassist Adrian Fiskum Myhr, guitarist Fredrik Rasten, and drummer Jan Martin Gismervik.
Gorgeously presented, in a tiny run.
Warmly recommended.
Something else.

Spectral, nostalgic, highly evocative, sometimes-desolate reflections — alone on the piano, and together with saxophonist and flautist Finn Peters —  soaked in Satie, Ravel, and Mompou. Expressive and enchanting, but mournfully distracted, with a tentative, exploratory wonderment which reminds you of Paul Klee’s well-worn idea of a drawing as a line taking a walk. Easy to recommend to those of you who recently enjoyed Mashu Hayasaka’s Etudes LP, on All Night Flight. This is lovely stuff from Jesse, in an unexpected departure from his work with Elmore Judd, the Gorillaz, Nyege Nyege Tapes…

‘To start with, disorientating; something you can’t quite grasp. Further listening discerns a futuristic, unsteady metropolis. At times, the music is soft and expansive; at others, sharp and distorted. Folk and pop sensibilities emerge, suspensively. Voices thread in melodic, indistinct, sirenic messages, guiding us through.’

‘Mariolina Zitta began working with natural sounds at the end of the 1980s, developing a passion for speleology. Her encounter with Walter Maioli was fundamental, guiding and influencing her definitive research into sound archaeology and the primitive sources of musical acoustic phenomena. In these recordings Mariolina conducts a magical ritual as a cave priestess, celebrating the icons par excellence of the mysteries of the night: bats. The specific frequencies of the calls of these fascinating creatures are recorded with special detectors used by ecologists, creating an organic synthesizer. The fusion with the sounds of natural objects (stones, stalactites, logs, bone whistles, Tibetan bells, mouth bows, trumpet shells) and the vocal modulations of harmonic singing allow us to travel into a still unexplored sound dimension, through an evocative experience of total sensory listening. It is an arcane landscape filled with pure vibrations, magnetic resonances and aquatic sounds; an ancestral enchantment on the border between consciousness and dreams, a symbolic liturgy of primordial reverberations, echoes and whistles.’
An edition of 200 copies.

Two long-form pieces of modular minimalism. Both sides unfurl fifteen minutes of urgent, high-octane loops, repeating patterns, and distorted vocal frequencies, drawing on Terry Riley, Suicide, no wave and synth pop — not to mention the history of modern Lebanon.

‘A psychoacoustic odyssey through the American South, influenced as much by Dock Boggs as by Luc Ferrari. This isn’t ‘avant-folk’ as per, but more expansive avant-garde compositions using components of traditional music as tools for storytelling. There are banjos, but they bounce around the stereo field in hypnotic patterns; there are autoharps, but they’re bowed, left detuned by time and humidity, and augmented with sounds of screeching cicadas.
‘Check out the haunted, ambient interpretation of the murder ballad Omie Wise, featuring fourteen different versions of the song time-stretched and overlaid with pedal steel by Tongue Depressor’s Henry Birdsey. It’s a wild listen!’

‘Bubbling tones, processed field recordings, and shifting electronic layers evoke the rhythms of atoms, molecules, and micro-organisms.
‘While grounded in experimental technique, The Vertical Luminous avoids the academic or austere, instead embracing a mischievous sense of melody and curiosity - a reminder that exploration and joy can coexist in sound.
‘A record that is both meditative and playful, equally suited to deep listening or casual drift.’