For the Record: Sept. 22, 2023.
Dutch organs, other timbres, and dozens of listings for new 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.
Album of the week.
Ivan Vukosavljević
Slow Roads
Tineke Steenbrink, Francesca Ajossa, Jan Hage, Lise Morrison
(Elsewhere; CD, DL)
Slow Roads, the Elsewhere debut by Serbian composer Ivan Vukosavljević, originally was scheduled to arrive in early November, alongside new albums from Jürg Frey and Michael Pisaro-Liu on the same label. The grouping made sense, because each of these albums features performances on historical period instruments: the Frey album features fortepiano, one piece on the Pisaro-Liu set includes viola d’amore, and Vukosavljević focuses on historical organs.
Perhaps paradoxically, given its title, Slow Roads has turned up early. Vukosavljević is a composer new to me. According to his website, “his music often explores hidden potential of instruments using amplification, amplified instruments, unorthodox playing techniques, improvisation, combining western and non-western instruments, electric guitars, electronics, etc.”
That’s a pretty huge area to summarize, but Slow Roads is tightly focused: eight pieces for solo 1/4 comma meantone organ, recorded on 16th- and 17th-century instruments scattered around the Netherlands. The Dutch organ tradition is strong and distinctive, something the composer acknowledges: “The Netherlands has one of the liveliest organ cultures in the world, which unfortunately doesn’t communicate too much with the culture of contemporary music, and vice versa.”
Vukosavljević’s music is modest and plainspoken in structure, yet achieves beguiling effects through patient repetition and shrewd use of each instrument’s tonal identity. The performances – five by Holland Baroque founder Tineke Steenbrink, and one apiece from Francesca Ajossa, Jan Hage, and Lise Morrison – are focused and lucid.
What results is both human in scale and otherworldly in effect, achieving a kind of secular spirituality that complements and extends the Elsewhere aesthetic.
Start here, and then for a sense of Vukosavljević’s range, check out The Burning, an slow-mounting, cathartic roil for five tabletop guitars with amplified winds and percussion, as written for and recorded by Ensemble Klang.
Bonus tracks.
Pressed for time this week – and having missed Friday’s street date altogether as a result – I’ll take the liberty of quoting something I casually posted on Facebook three weeks ago about the four beautiful albums just released by Another Timbre—which, like the Vukosavljević album cited above, have turned up ahead of schedule, and thus caught me slightly unprepared:
I say this about virtually every new batch from Another Timbre, but here is an especially compelling quartet of new recordings… and it's so gratifying to see the wonderful duo andPlay join the roster. I’m halfway through a first listen, and eager to hear it all. This is among the very few labels from which I insist on hearing literally everything it puts out… a real tribute to the artists, to the composers, and to Simon Reynell’s exceptional quality of discernment.
You can buy the new batch at a discount through the Another Timbre website. But if like me you’re inclined to buy through Bandcamp for the high-quality downloads and convenient streaming app, I’d recommend bookmarking the new releases now, and then purchasing them during the next Bandcamp Friday sale on Oct. 6.
Playlist (Sing forth a chant for wings).
The latest tally of memorable things that got stuck in my ears includes:
A gripping pair of recent compositions by the consistently fascinating London-based Canadian composer Cassandra Miller, new on Black Truffle…
The third collection from composer Kory Reeder of pieces he’s written in Texas, and arguably the best one yet…
The latest raging slab from Canadian death-metal life force Tomb Mold, out now on the mighty 20 Buck Spin…
And a recent release from S.A.W., an electronic trio featuring former Tangerine Dream keyboardist Johannes Schmoelling…
Details here.
New this week.
andPlay - Translucent Harmonies - compositions by Catherine Lamb and Kristofer Svensson (Another Timbre)
John Aylward - Oblivion - Lukas Papenfusscline, Cailin Marcel Manson, Tyler Boque, Nina Guo, Laura Williamson, Issei Herr, Greg Chudzik, Daniel Lippel, John Aylward, Tianyi Wang, Stratis Minakakis (New Focus)
Seamus Cater - A History of Musical Pitch (Another Timbre)
Moniek Darge/Vanessa Rossetto - Dream Soundies (Erstwhile)
Eventless Plot - Schemata (tsss tapes)
Jürg Frey - String Trio - Apartment House (Another Timbre)
Madison Greenstone - Resonance Studies in Ecstatic Consciousness (Relative Pitch)
David Grubbs - From Red Black to Black, from Blue Black to Black (Corbett vs. Dempsey)
Yotam Haber - Bloodsnow - performances by Taylor Ward, Don-Paul Kahl, Talea Ensemble, and American Wild Ensemble (Sideband)
Laurel Halo - Atlas (Awe)
International Contemporary Ensemble - New Moons I: Music from Luna Composition Lab 2023 - compositions by Lucy Chen, Hannah Chen, Lili M. Namazi, Elaina Stuppler, and Isabelle Tseng (Luna Composition Lab)
AF Jones and Andrew Weathers - Stewburner (Gertrude Tapes)
Catherine Lamb - parallaxis forma - Lotte Betts-Dean, Exaudi, Explore Ensemble (Another Timbre)
Graham Lambkin/James Rushford - Gondolas (Erstwhile)
Bruce Levingston - Without Words - compositions by Felix Mendelssohn and Price Walden (Sono Luminus)
Norman W. Long - Re-Membering/Re-Presencing (Rural Situationism)
John McGuire - Vanishing Points/A Cappella (Unseen Worlds)
Weston Olencki/Anna Webber - Several (Astral Spirits)
Taku Sugimoto - 4 Improvisations (self-released)
Ivan Vukosavljević - Slow Roads - performances by Tineke Steenbrink, Francesca Ajossa, Jan Hage, and Lise Morrison (Elsewhere)
Upcoming releases.
September 28
Filera (Wilfrido Terrazas, Carmina Escobar, Natalia Perez-Turner) - Filias/Fobias (Infrequent Seams)
September 29
Marja Ahti - Tender Membranes (Black Truffle)
Assembly Quartet - (RE)Mix - compositions by Avner Dorman, Alfred Schnittke, and Bill Ryan (AMP Recordings)
Tender Crust - Convexity (Full Spectrum)
October 13
Diego Caicedo - Seis Amorfismos (Burning Ambulance)
October 16
Adam Pultz - Wade (Carrier)
October 31
James Ilgenfritz Quintet featuring J.D. Parran - Museum of Invisible Things (Infrequent Seams)
November 3
Sarah Davachi - Long Gradus (Late Music)
Nicole Rampersaud - Saudade (Ansible Editions)
November 10
Susan Alcorn Septeto del Sur - Canto (Relative Pitch)
François J. Bonnet & Stephen O’Malley - Cylene II (Drag City)
Celia Hollander - 2nd Draft (Leaving)
Sunny Kim, Vardan Ovsepian, Ben Monder - Liminal Silence (Earshift Music)
David Lee Myers & Toshimaru Nakamura - Elements (Surface World)
Mareike Wiening - Reveal (Greenleaf Music)
November 17
Daniel Bachman - When the Roses Come Again (Three-Lobed)
ellen o - sparrows and doves (Gold Bolus; new vinyl issue of 2014 release)
Joshua Van Tassel - The Recently Beautiful (Backward Music)
November 28
Luc Vitk - Environment (Infrequent Seams)
December 1
Guy Klucevsek - Hope Dies Last - performances by Guy Klucevsek, Todd Reynolds, Alan Bern, Nathan Koci, Will Holshauser, Jenny Lin, Bachtopus, The Smudges, and Jerome Kitzke (Starkland)
Dave Wilson - Ephemeral (Thelonious)
December 8
JJJJJerome Ellis - Compline in Nine Movements (NNA Tapes)
December 12
Lily Guarneros Maase - teeth::bones (Infrequent Seams)
Photographs by Steve Smith, except where indicated.