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39
Album Review

Aviva Endean: cinder: ember: ashes

Read "cinder: ember: ashes" reviewed by Glenn Astarita


Aviva Endean's debut album for the Norwegian label SOFA is heady and gleams with interesting abstracts. In addition to her improvisational acumen, she is a shaper of sound. Endean toggles between various clarinet types on each track. With asynchronous minimalist parts and microtonal aspects, she also executes darkly weaving passages, iterated with an alien dichotomy. This outing should also whet the appetite of music scholars and avant-garde adventure seekers: it is not “Sunday afternoon music" by any stretch.

68
Album Review

Streifenjunko: Like Driving

Read "Like Driving" reviewed by Glenn Astarita


The artists' first venture into the world of electronics is quietly mesmerizing and off the beaten path as some would say. Espen Reinertsen (saxophone) and Eivind Lønning (trumpet)'s previous albums, No Longer Burning (SOFA, 2009) and Sval Torv (SOFA, 2012), were acoustic sound-sculpting endeavors. And both musicians have performed together in pianist Christian Wallumrød's ensemble. On this release they rewind the clock and come up with a solid game-plan during the album inception, while not totally entrenched in a conventional ...

77
Album Review

Muddersten: Playmates

Read "Playmates" reviewed by Glenn Astarita


The amusing cover art is a take-off on a 16th and 17th century Flanders and Netherlands tradition of still life themes known as vanitas (vanity) paintings that basically portray aspects not deemed important when it comes down to living a fruitful life. Somehow, this experimental Scandinavian trio ties all of these connotations into four distinct tracks, “Private Pleasure 1--4." Akin to life's endless trail of diversions, moods, and routes to happiness, these four pieces are executed with largely ...

12
Album Review

Miguel Angel Tolosa: Ephimeral

Read "Ephimeral" reviewed by Glenn Astarita


Spanish sound designer Miguel Angel Tolosa is a Renaissance man, performing on all instruments and / or devices while demonstrating his audio engineering prowess on his inaugural solo album for the Norwegian experimental record label, SOFA Music. Moreover, he's been an integral part of this label's output while also recording for other US and European entities and having his compositions interpreted by flutist Allesandra Rombala and Trio Arbus among others. Per Tolosa, the premise for this outing is ...

7
Album Review

Keith Rowe and John Tilbury: Enough still not to know

Read "Enough still not to know" reviewed by John Eyles


It was back in late 2011 that the last collaboration between Keith Rowe and John Tilbury was issued, E.E. Tension and Circumstance (Potlatch, 2011), having been recorded live in Paris in December 2010. As that was their second duo recording, following the double CD Duos for Doris (Erstwhile, 2003), and they had not played together since Rowe left AMM in 2004, it was not unduly pessimistic for the review of it to conclude, “[W]e know from Duos for Doris that ...

11
Album Review

Mural: Tempo

Read "Tempo" reviewed by John Eyles


The most significant thing about Tempo is that it was recorded live in concert at the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas. This octagonal space (pictured on the album cover, right) opened in 1971, a year after Mark Rothko's death. It is sparsely furnished and painted white, with fourteen of Rothko's late works--large black canvasses--displayed around its walls. All of this gives the chapel a unique ambience that is conducive to quiet contemplation, if not prayer. It has inspired musicians ranging ...

93
Album Review

The Pitch: Frozen Orchestra (Amsterdam)

Read "Frozen Orchestra (Amsterdam)" reviewed by Glenn Astarita


Frozen Orchestra (Amsterdam) is an appropriate moniker for these two works performed live at an Amsterdam venue by the core Berlin-based quartet The Pitch, with assistance from a combination of six woodwinds and strings performers. With inadvertent semblances to minimalist composer Morton Feldman, the music is largely about ever-so-subtle shifts in sound design and pitch. As a whole, the program is difficult to pigeonhole. Yet the trancelike and undulating attributes tender curiously interesting timbres, abetted by Boris Baltschun's reverberating electric ...

5
Album Review

Bergljot: Solen avløser regnet som avløser solen

Read "Solen avløser regnet som avløser solen" reviewed by Eyal Hareuveni


The Czech-Norwegian trio Bergljot is now at its third incarnation. The trio--Czech pianist Vojtěch Procházka, whose musical background includes experimenting with extensive work with electronic keyboards, classical Indian music, as well as jazz--along with Norwegian double bassist Adrian Myhr, who explores the sonic vocabulary through preparations and extended bowing techniques, and drummer Tore Sandbakken, who plays with Myhr in a trio with French saxophonist Michel Doneda. This trio began working as the Vojtěch Procházka Trio, playing ...

475
Album Review

Sidsel Endresen: One

Read "One" reviewed by John Kelman


While those around her were busy exploring the nexus of technology and conventional instrumentation at the 2006 Punkt Festival in Kristiansand, Norway, Sidsel Endresen was demonstrating just how much could be done with one unaltered human voice. One documents the advances she's made in stretching the potential of voice and articulation. It's a record that eschews, for the most part, conventions like melody, pulse and lyric. Still, despite its improvised nature, this brief 32-minute set is not without form or ...

280
Album Review

Point4: Panopticon

Read "Panopticon" reviewed by Glenn Astarita


Arguably, this 2008 release stands as one of the more comprehensive and, plainly speaking, finest albums this avant-garde Norwegian record label has issued thus far.

However, that statement unto itself might seem a bit bold, especially when considering its impressive discography and largely exuberant acceptance from global avant-jazz and New Music aficionados. With this double duo piano and drums lineup, the band shows how the sky's the limit.

Recognized for his recordings for ECM Records, pianist Jon Balke ...


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