Dark UrrrU/Waterfinder - cassette split (via the sadly now defunct Peasant Magik): A generous helping of drones, post-psych reverberations, spoken word and caterwauling from Portland, Maine supergroup.

Caldera Lakes - “arranged” (via Ecstatic Peace): see Sunday’s review.

Long Distance Poison – The Shores of Titan: free download via their Soundcloud page (thanks to Steve Smith for the tip!)

Sharon Van Etten – Tramp (Out this week via Jagjaguwar). Her last album was indeed Epic; and this one has breakout hit all over it. Check out L Magazine’s article on Sharon: she’s interviewed by Wye Oak’s vocalist Jenn Wasner.

Sharon Van Etten

Tim Berne - Snakeoil (ECM Records): Also out this week, alto saxophonist Tim Berne’s most “chamber music”  flavored foray to date. Ches Smith, Oscar Norieaga, and Matt Mitchell join Berne on his first studio recording in years, creating supple, dynamic, and adventurous renditions of a set of new original compositions.

Johann Johannsson - The Miners’ Hymns (FatCat): From February 8-14 at Film Forum on West Houston Street in NYC, there will be screenings of Bill Morrison’s film The Miners’ Hymns: a portrait of the inexorable winds of change that beset a British mining town, forever changing its residents’ way of life. The score was released last year, but its evocative mixture of organ, brass ensemble, and string textures is well worth revisiting, even sans Morrison’s touching cinematography.

Today I interviewed saxophonist Tim Berne in Brooklyn for a feature article that will appear in the next issue of Signal to Noise Magazine, the journal for improvised and experimental music. In a beleaguered market for print publications, particular for music magazines, I’m so pleased that StN editor and publisher Pete Gershon is working hard to keep the publication alive. The hope is that there will be two issues this year.

Snake Oil, Tim’s first CD on ECM as a leader (he’s supported David Torn and Michael Formanek on other ECM releases) is out this week (2/7/12). A quartet date, the personnel includes Berne playing alto saxophone, Oscar Noriega playing clarinet and bass clarinet, Matt Mitchell playing piano, and Ches Smith playing drums and a number of other percussion instruments.

An enthusiastic collaborator who has been in many more bands than a blog post can contain, Berne brings a “chamber jazz” aesthetic to this project, with gig-tested charts that have rigorous compositional structures but leave plenty of room for improvisation and on-the-spot inspiration. A gracious interviewee, Tim spoke about this project and several other current endeavors. Pete has given us a generous word count (how often do writers get that these days), and I’m really looking forward to covering Snakeoil and a host of other subjects in the article.

Below, you can see another incarnation of this group, the Los Totopos band, playing live via YouTube.  We’ve also included dates for the tour Berne is undertaking in support of Snakeoil on both sides of the Atlantic.

Tour dates

Feb 16 Boston, MA Regattabar

Feb 17 New York, NY Rubin Museum

Feb 18 Baltimore, MD An die Musik live!

Feb 19 Washington DC Bohemian caverns

Feb 24 Austin, TX

Feb 25 Los Angeles, CA Blue Whale

Feb 27 Santa Cruz, CA Kuumbwa

Feb 28 Oakland, CA Yoshi’s

Feb 29 Eugene, OR The Shedd

Mar 1 Seattle, WA Seattle Asian Art Museum

Mar 2 Portland, OR Alberta Rose Theater

Mar 14 &15 London,Vortex, United Kingdom

Mar 16 Munich, Unterfahrt, Germany

Mar 17 Forlì—Italy

Mar 20 Ljubljana Cankarjev Dom, Slovenia

Mar 22+23 Paris, Triton, France

Mar 24 Bergamo—Italy

Mar 25 Cologne, Stadtgarten,  Germany

Mar 26 Berlin A-Trane, Germany

Mar 27 Rotterdam Lantaren Venster, Netherlands

Mar 28 Amsterdam, Bimhuis, Netherlands

Mar 29 Dublin—Ireland

One of our favorite out indie songstresses, Julianna Barwick, guests on An Album By Korallreven, (out now on Acéphale), the debut LP of Swedish electronica duo Korallreven. Marcus Joons and Daniel Tjäder (of The Radio Dept) incorporate Barwick’s soaring layered vocals alongside droning guitars, synth brass stabs, and chanting refrains, all mixed over a bed of warm keyboard pads and acidic drum beats. Hear the single below as an embed via Soundcloud. The band is promoting the CD with their first US tour dates (below).





You can also hear Julianna’s new song “Never Change” via Soundcloud (courtesy of Asthmatic Kitty).

Korallreven Live in Concert

3/4 – New York, NY – Bowery Ballroom
3/5 – Washington DC – Black Cat
3/6 – Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall
3/7 – San Francisco, CA – Independent*
3/8 – Los Angeles, CA – Echoplex*

*Guest appearance by Victoria Bergsman

Philip Glass is 75 today. The American Composers Orchestra gives the American premiere of his 9th Symphony at Carnegie Hall tonight.

My interview with Dennis Russell Davies, who is conducting the ACO concert, is up on Musical America’s website (subscribers only).

If you’re looking for a terrific way to celebrate PG’s birthday, Brooklyn Rider’s latest CD on Orange Mountain Music includes Glass’s first five string quartets. The earthiness with which they play the music may surprise you at first, but it provides a persuasive foil for some of the more motoric, “high buffed sheen” toned performances of minimalism that are out there.  In a 2011 video below, they give a performance of a more recent work, a suite of music from the film Bent.

In 2011, William Fitzsimmons released a sleeper, but one with staying power on Nettwerk. Gold in the Shadow is an incandescent recording that should have been on many more year-end lists as a noteworthy entry in the indie folk category.
Noisetrade is offering a free Fitzsimmons sampler (say that three times fast!). Embed is below.

One of my favorite projects this past Fall was writing the program essay for American Composers Orchestra’s SONiC festival. I had the chance to interview several composers (though only a small sampling of the many fine participants) featured on SONiC, including Hannah Lash, Anthony Cheung, Keniji Bunch (an old friend – one of my classmates at Juilliard), and the National’s Bryce Dessner.

All of the interview subjects proved diverting. But I was particularly glad to have a chance in the essay to spotlight Ensemble Klang, a Dutch new music group that performed Oscar Bettison’s O Death on SONiC. Their performance was critically acclaimed as one of the highlights of the festival. And if you weren’t fortunate enough to be there, my recommendation would be to get thee hence to the group’s web store for a copy of the O Death studio recording (with liner notes by Alex Rose!).

While you’re there, I’d recommend checking out Ensemble Klang’s other studio recordings. Cows, Chords, and Combinations a portrait disc of minimalist composer/theorist/critic Tom Johnson has proved to be an extraordinarily valuable recording to me. It has reframed my thinking about the process-based components of minimalism: how they can be crafted into quite complicated structures and how they remain a vital component of whichever post (post post?) incarnation of minimalism we’re currently experiencing. The slowly evolving, spectral-inspired structures found on Waves, a disc of music by Peter Adriaansz, is equally engaging: a collection of soundscapes that require, nay demand, immersively intensive listening. (I haven’t yet heard Ensemble Klang’s recording of music by Matthew Wright; an oversight I hope to correct shortly).

Below, I’ve included an excerpt of my interview with Bettison, in which he discusses his creative process and the collaborative genesis of O Death.

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Traditional instruments are one way to go in new music. Another is to find or create new instruments altogether. Such is often the pathway of composer Oscar Bettison. He enjoys incorporating unconventional instruments, such as those made from found objects or junk metal, into his scores.

Bettison says, “This was all a result of moving to Holland to study in the early 2000s. Before that, I had written a lot of music for traditional forces and I wanted to get away from that: to stretch myself as a composer. So, I started to play around with things, even going as far as to build some instruments; percussion mostly, but later on I branched out into radically detuning stringed instruments – there’s some of that in the guitar part of “O Death.” These things I called “Cinderella instruments: the kind of things that shouldn’t be ‘musical’ but I do my best to make them sing. And I suppose as a counterpoint to that, I shunned traditional instruments for a long time.”

Cinderella instruments, as well as references to popular music of many varieties, are signatures found in his work O Death, played on SONIC October 19, 2011 by Ensemble Klang.

Of O Death, Bettison says, “It was written for Ensemble Klang between 2005-7 and is my longest piece to date. It’s about 65 minutes long and I wrote it very much in collaboration with the group. We were lucky enough to have a situation in which I was able to try things out on the group over a long period. This was very important in writing it. The piece is in seven movements and is a kind of instrumental requiem, which references popular music elements (especially blues) and kind of grafts them on to the requiem structure. It’s something that I fell into quite naturally.  This I think is tied to my idea of ‘Cinderella instruments:’ eschewing the “classical” tradition somewhat.”

Bettison continues, “The thing that a lot of people don’t know about me is that I come from a very strict classical background. I was a violinist; indeed I went to a specialist music school in London as a violinist from the age of 10. My rebellion to being in a hot-house classical music environment was getting into metal, playing the drums and listening to avant-garde classical music that was seen as outside the ‘canon’ and I think that carried on into my music. So, to psychoanalyze myself for a minute, I think I’ve done both things in a response (quite a delayed response!) to the classical tradition precisely because I feel so at home in that tradition.”

For those in need of a respite from the constant barrage of overexposed holiday ‘favorites,’ Todd Reynolds has provided just the thing. His recasting of Greensleeves into a deconstructed looping meditation manages to remain in the “festive wintry” pocket while avoiding all the tinsel-laden cloying of so much seasonal dreck. (Note: the video art behind Todd is by R. Luke Dubois).

The track can be heard on his latest Innova release, Outerborough, a double CD that is, in my opinion, one of 2011′s finest alt-classical recordings.

Or, if you prefer to grab this track a la carte, download it here for 99 cents.

New Amsterdam Records has decided to give potential donors an extra opportunity to give to their 2011 fundraiser, extending it today for an additional day. They’re also offering for free download one of the imprint’s finest recent releases (and a Grammy nominee to boot!), Jefferson Friedman’s Quartets played by the Chiara SQ (embed below). Chrismukkah comes early.

Congratulations to:

Kyle Lynch
Ulysses Tone
Everette Minchew
Mark Wilson

Winners, please send me a quick email with your preferred mailing address.

Best,
Christian

Courtesy of Boosey and Hawkes, Bridge Records, and Naxos Records, we have another special giveaway that will benefit those not able to attend Elliott Carter’s 103rd birthday party on Thursday in New York.

We’re giving away two signed CDs of “Music of Elliott Carter: volume 5” (Bridge 9128), and two of String Quartets Nos. 2, 3 and 4 (featuring the Pacifica Quartet; Naxos 8.559363), along with a signed 8×10 photo to accompany each.

Once again, I’ll be selecting the winners via a random drawing. If you’re interested, send me an email at: S21managingeditor@gmail.com. The contest will be open until noon on Thursday.