For the Record: October 4, 2024.
Lifting up Linda Catlin Smith on Bandcamp Friday… plus dozens more new arrivals and upcoming releases.
For the Record rounds up details about new and pending recordings of interest to the new-music community: contemporary classical music and jazz, electronic and electroacoustic music, and idioms for which no clever genre name has been coined, on CD, vinyl LP, cassette, digital-only formats… you name it.
This list of release dates is culled from press releases, Amazon, Bandcamp, and other internet stores and sources, social-media posts, and online resources such as Discogs. Dates cited typically correspond to initial U.S. release, and are subject to change. (Links to Amazon, used when all else fails, do not imply endorsement.)
These listings are not comprehensive—nor could they be! To submit a forthcoming recording for consideration, email information to nightafternight@icloud.com.
All opinions expressed herein are solely my own, and do not express the views of any employer.
Topspin.
It’s Bandcamp Friday, and you know how this works: Bandcamp waives all fees today, putting a bit more cash into the pockets of the artists and labels that use – and quite possibly depend on – the site. Don’t let the corporate-looking Roland partnership put you off; it’s less a hustle than a giveaway of some sort.
I’ll confess I didn’t have the discipline to wait until today to get the three superb new releases from Another Timbre – one apiece by composers Eden Lonsdale, Adrián Demoč, and Linda Catlin Smith, all featuring the versatile chamber ensemble Apartment House – but if you’ve not yet grabbed them, now’s the time.
Speaking of Linda Catlin Smith, whose music has provided profound pleasure to so many, a note of concern: Rick Sacks, Smith’s husband, posted on Facebook last month that she has been diagnosed with kidney disease, leading to kidney failure. He notes that Smith will need a kidney transplant within the next months to year, and that he recently discovered he is ineligible to donate. I don’t presume that most readers of this newsletter will be in a position to offer the most necessary assistance, but now would be an ideal time to show support by purchasing Smith’s new album and those that came before it.
Smith’s prior Another Timbre releases are sale-priced through the end of October, on Bandcamp and on the label’s official website. This label was almost wholly responsible for a major surge in awareness of and interest in Smith’s work, and all of its LCS recordings are recommended without hesitation. Admirers should also hear and acquire these selections from other labels:
Thought and Desire - Eve Egoyan (World Edition)
Ballad - Eve Egoyan, Andrew Smith (World Edition)
Meadow - Mia Cooper, Joachim Roewer, William Butt (Louth Contemporary Music Society)
FOLKS’ MUSIC - Chamber Choir Ireland/Paul Hillier (Louth Contemporary Music Society)
Dark Flower - Thin Edge New Music Collective (Redshift Music)
Should your appetite and budget stretch further still, you’ll find pieces by Smith on mixed-recital albums by Julia Den Boer, Eve Egoyan, Isak Goldschneider, Leslie Ting, Richard Valitutto, Rebecca Wenham, Infusion Baroque, and Evergreen Club Contemporary Gamelan with Quatuor Bozzini—available individually or in context.
If the general aesthetic Another Timbre preserves and promotes is something that resonates with you, then grab yourself a copy of Distances Bending, a sublimely still, patient new release by the duo of Clara de Asís on synthesizer and Rebecca Lane on quarter-tone flute, joined by violinist Sarah Saviet and cellist Deborah Walker. It is a quiet place unto itself; pay a visit.
The album is out today on Discreet Editions, an imprint run by de Asís. This brings the label’s total output to seven titles – including one by the aforementioned Adrián Demoč – all on Bandcamp for you to investigate.
Further don’t-miss releases from Darius Jones, Leilehua Lanzilotti, Jessica Pavone, Joshua Roman, and James Romig are listed below, along with the finale of an enigmatic sound-art trilogy by Toshiya Tsunoda and Taku Unami.
I’m very taken with Rewild, the engrossing new album by Ben Richter—but must reveal that I wrote the liner notes for that one. And while I’m only just hearing it for the first time as I type these words, I’ll happily urge anyone interested in drone-oriented, electronically abetted cello music to investigate Le Jardin des Plantes, new today from Apartment House mastermind Anton Lukoszevieze.
Lastly: I’m with George Grella, who waxes fantastic today about the late, lamented label New Albion: “This is tremendously vital stuff, and I hope Foster Reed thinks about opening up a Bandcamp storefront.”
New this week.
John Butcher, Florian Stoffner, Chris Corsano - The Glass Changes Shape (Relative Pitch)
Anna Butterss - Mighty Vertebrate (International Anthem)
Peni Candra Rini - Wani (New Amsterdam)
Cool Person (Josh Tippery) - Free Person (self-released)
Clara de Asís & Rebecca Lane with Sarah Saviet & Deborah Walker - Distances Bending (Discreet Editions)
Adrián Demoč - Zamot - Apartment House (Another Timbre)
Ben Diamond - Voyage: Music for Guitar and Electronics - compositions by Luke Blackmore, Krists Auznieks, Andrew Staniland, Amy Brandon, and Marco Neri (Redshift Music)
Devin Gray - Melt All the Guns II (Rataplan)
Concepción Huerta/Hara Alonso - towards the melancholy of a future (Superpang)
Darius Jones - Legend of e’Boi (The Hypervigilant Eye) (AUM Fidelity)
Leihelua Lanzilotti - forever forward in search of the beautiful - performances by Leihelua Lanzilotti, Gahlord Dewald, Brian Horton, Roomful of Teeth, Argus String Quartet, and more (New Focus)
Audrey Lauro - Prose Métallique (Relative Pitch)
Eden Lonsdale - Dawnings - Apartment House, Oerknal, Ensemble Ipse (Another Timbre)
Anton Lukoszevieze - Le Jardin des Plantes (The Trilogy Tapes)
Megafortress (Bill Gillim) - Adversary (Strategy of Tension)
Jessica Pavone - What Happens Has Become Now (Relative Pitch)
Ivo Perelman/Nate Wooley - Polarity 3 (Burning Ambulance Music)
Reid, Kitamura, Bynum, Morris - Geometry of Phenomena (Relative Pitch)
Samuel Reinhard - Movement (Hallow Ground)
Ben Richter - Rewild - Ghost Ensemble (New World)
Joshua Roman - immunity - compositions by Joshua Roman, Allison Loggins-Hull, Caroline Shaw, Mark Summer, George Crumb, Johann Sebastian Bach, Krzysztof Penderecki, Leonard Cohen, and Kerry Livgren (Bright Shiny Things)
James Romig - The Fragility of Time - Matt Sargent (a wave press)
Linda Catlin Smith - Flowers of Emptiness - Apartment House (Another Timbre)
Taku Sugimoto - Bowed Guitar (self-released)
Andrew Tholl - The River Above, The River Below (Populist)
Toshiya Tsunoda/Taku Unami - Wovenland 3 (Erstwhile)
Tungu - Irrational Thinking of the Subject (Burning Ambulance Music)
Sharlene Wallace/Frank Horvat - Trees.Listen (I Am Who I Am)
Weird of Mouth (Craig Taborn, Mette Rasmussen, Ches Smith) - Weird of Mouth (Otherly Love)
Jamison Williams - The Lesser Key of Solomon-Bael (Relative Pitch)
Upcoming releases.
October 8
John McCowen - Mundanas VII-XI - John McCowen, Madison Greenstone (Mengi)
October 18
Sylvie Courvoisier - To Be Other-Wise (Intakt)
Dennis Gonzalez Legacy Band - Live at the Texas Theatre (Astral Spirits)
Günter Schlienz - Software (Muzan Editions)
November 1
Žibuoklė Martinaitytė - ALETHEIA: Choral Works - Latvian Chamber Choir/Sigvards Kļava (Ondine)
Berke Can Özcan & Jonah Parzen-Johnson - It Was Always Time (We Jazz)
November 8
claire rousay - The Bloody Lady (VIERNULVIER)
November 15
Ka Baird - Ictum Exercises (Polyrhythmic Studies) (Astral Spirits)
Ava Mendoza - The Circular Train (Palilalia)
November 22
Human Error (Jeremy Barnes) - Human Error (Astral Spirits)
December 6
Peter Brötzmann/Paal Nilssen-Love - Butterfly Mushroom (Trost; recorded 2015)
Find many more upcoming releases in For the Record: The Master List, here.
Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.