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We're in business for the long haul!
To celebrate our first anniversary, with over 17,000 readers, we're continuing our line of musical discoveries from all horizons.
What better way than with a playlist to highlight the creativity and singularity of the artists who delight us.
Tour de piste by Anne Montaron, Guillaume Kosmicki and Suzanne Gervais.
Anne Montaron's tour de piste
Tomoko Sauvage, guest at the Barbican sessions, January 7, 2022
Japanese sound artist Tomoko Sauvage has toured the world with her ceramic bowls and hydrophones (microphones immersed in water, electroacoustic transducers). Here, she dialogues with the sculptures and lighting fixtures of Japanese artist Isamu Noguchi, whose retrospective is on show at the Barbican Center.
During her performance, she makes two of Noguchi's sculptures sound: "Tsukubai" (granite & water, 1964) & "Mountains Forming" (1982-83, galvanized steel). The musician's marvellous sense of space and the fluid, poetic interplay between sculpture, sound and space - a dance of sound!
Gyorgy Ligeti, "Lamento du Trio pour cor, violon et piano", 1982
With Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano, Saschko Gawriloff, violin, Marie-Luise Neunecker, horn
On Thursday March 10, 2022 in Paris, while the Russian government is dropping bombs on the Ukraine, the marvelous soloists of the Court-Circuit ensemble perform a deeply moving version of Ligeti's trio.
As the last movement of the piece, a Lamento of unheard-of expressive force, resounds under the vault of the Sorbonne chapel, images of this 21st-century war emerge, with their cohort of lies, death, suffering and exile.
It's as if Ligeti, in the early 1980s, wanted to set to music the image of nothingness that swallows up human lives in every war.
An incredibly deep, uncluttered page in the form of a passacaglia, within which chromatic vines "weep and lament", as in a JS Bach passion, cross each other.
Jonas Kocher and Luc Ferrari, "Perspectives and Echoes / Tautologos III", 2021
Ensemble -bRt- Label Bruit (Switzerland)
Face to face in this album proposed by Swiss accordionist, improviser and composer Jonas Kocher, two types of collective process that reformulate the question of interpretation and collective improvisation, and render the distinction between the two processes obsolete.
" Perspectives and Echoes" by Jonas Kocher" (2019) takes as its starting point a graphic score by Jonas Kocher, with a temporal and spatial framework, within which the musicians of the ensemble -bRt- improvise.
" Tautologos iii " by Luc Ferrari (1969) is a textual score: a set of explanations and instructions based on the idea of tautology. The instrumentation is free. Duration too. Interpretation is based on a preliminary collective discussion. Each participant chooses to play a cycle, which he or she repeats. Each cycle consists of a sound action, followed by a silence longer than the action. The music generated (superimposed on individual cycles) could last indefinitely...
Guillaume Kosmicki's tour de piste
Melaine Dalibert, "Shimmering", out May 20, 2022
From album to album, pianist Melaine Dalibert oscillates between rigorous algorithmic compositions and freer pieces tinged with minimalist romanticism, sonic pearls of gentle melancholy, suspended in time, inciting ecstatic listening. Such is the case with this new album, just released by Ici d'ailleurs, the first collaboration between the artist and the label. As the tracks unfold, the listener is constantly surprised by the resonance and filtering effects applied to the piano, the instrumental or electroacoustic complements, and even the appearance of a discreet beat . Everything is perfectly balanced, without any exaggeration, leaving the piano as master of ceremonies. What's more, I believe Melaine Dalibert has the rare talent of incorporating into her records compositions that remain forever linked to personal situations experienced at the time of listening, which are inscribed in the memory like indelible memory traces and generate a feeling of precious intimacy with her music.
Iva Bittová, "River Of Milk", 1991
During my long techno years, when I was verging on musical exclusivity for the trance and decibel avalanches ofelectronic dance music, nourished by the strong emotions of rave parties and their thundering beats , and by the libertarian ideals of sound-system travellers, a few rare records still made me cling to more acoustic sound realities. River Of Milk byIva Bittová was one of these (1991, Eva records). This was her first solo album, originally recorded in 1990 in Czechoslovakia under her own name (Pavian Records). The playful assurance and emotional power of her voice and violin stand in stark contrast to the apparent fragility of the ensemble. In my opinion, this recording expresses what would be the quintessence of music, in its simplest form.
Plastikman, "Closer", 2003
Electronic music is the subject of what has long been my bedside album: Closer (Novamute, 2003), the record by one of Detroit's greatest techno producers, Plastikman (aka Richie Hawtin), even though he didn't live in Detroit but in the neighboring Canadian city of Toronto, and had just moved to Berlin when this opus was released. The irreproachable quality of the sound and the fine work on the ever-present beat, made organic and often discreet (as on his previous album from 1998, Consumed ), bring these chiselled compositions, all unstoppable, closer to the work of American minimalist music. We are, however, very much in the dance music culture with this record between two worlds. Another album, just as fascinating, addressed the same issues, then passionately debated between the two artists: Jeff Mills' soundtrack for Metropolis (Tresor, 2000).
Suzanne Gervais Suzanne Gervais
Anna Meredith, "Nautilus", 2012
MoshiMoshi Records
What a spirited, wildly chaotic track from Scottish composer Anna Meredith. A slap in the face! She made her name composing classical music in the symphonic tradition - reminiscences of which can be heard in the electric fanfare of this haunting "Nautilus" - before reincarnating herself, time and again: first with her EP "Black Prince Fury", in 2012, then with her debut album: Varmints, of which Nautilus is the opening track.
Caroline Shaw, "Partita for 8 voices: Passacaglia - Roomful of Teeth", 2013
New Amsterdam
The passacaglia, a famous dance of the 17th century, is here revisited by American composer Caroline Shaw: eight voices a capella, with phrases that border on the sighing, to the point of crying out: purity and sensuality all at once. A work full of surprises... and humor!
Philip Glass, "The American Four Seasons" - 4th movement, with Gidon Kremer and films by Jonas Mekas, 2015
Lyricism and theatricality characterize this concerto by American minimalist master Philip Glass. A mischievous, caustic nod to Vivaldi's hit.
