The "classical" music you buy from Boomkat (2010): a thread to discuss Sylvain Chauveau, Johann Johannsson, Peter Broderick, Olafur Arnalds and others

There's a new ep just released by Lucy Claire. It's only two tracks and three remixes but it's kinda great overall. Wish she'd make a full album soon.

lucyclaire.bandcamp.com/album/collaborations-no-1

Did anyone get into Lubomyr Melnyk's Corollaries?

Well I have now...thanks.

and this too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYn7WpgLg48

I'd only heard James Blackshaw before via the Brethren of the Free Spirit albums which I liked also.

From last year, but I've really been enjoying Christina Vantzou's No. 2 lately. Goes well with the recent weather - chill breezes blowing through the over-ripe vegetation of late summer, the cold hand of death poised to pull a grey veil across a weakening sun, that sort of cheery thing

I've been listening to the Vantzou too. That and her first album, also great.

Wasn't tempted by "Corollaries" when it first came out - played clips on Youtube and dismissed it as "novelty" - but heard again recently and it suddenly sounded impressive. Prompted me to pluck a Charlemagne Palestine album from the shelves but it sounded far too hardcore after a day at work.

Not feeling Vantzou but will give another go.

Augh, apparently I need to check this thread more regularly, just finding out about the Hildur Guðnadóttir album now! (Such is the nature of buying most of my stuff on vinyl and my local no longer carrying CDs...I'm starting to miss some of this stuff when it lands.)

(ps yes I know that it's on vinyl but my local shops don't carry that style o'music on vinyl, generally)

Just found out Gudnottir is playing in LA later this fall, opening for A Winged Victory for the Sullen.

Okay, I've been listening to little else other than William Ryan Fritch lately. His latest solo release, Leave Me Like You Found Me and his upcoming collaboration with Jon Mueller, Death Blues' Ensemble, are both exceptional. Although the latter isn't out until next week, it's streaming on Soundcloud right now.

https://soundcloud.com/holly-lalanne/weird-little-piece-rough

i first heard of WRF via this remix, but he's been popping up a lot lately: https://hushhushrecords.bandcamp.com/track/night-rising-william-ryan-fritch-remix

any suggestions for more pretty, minimal piano music ala Nils Frahm, 'drukqs', etc?

Jacaszek tour:

POLAND
12.09 Gdansk
Jacaszek + Sylwester Luczak (video+lights) feat. Ania Smiszek-Wesolowska (cello)
http://www.nck.org.pl/pl/wydarzenie/2254/koncert-michal-jacaszek-sylwester-luczak

13.09. Zielona Góra
Jacaszek+Trzaska
https://www.facebook.com/events/1450505958570522/

USA TOUR

26.09 PORTLAND at Mississippi Studios
Jacaszek feat. Beth Fleenor (clarinet)performing for a special Ghostly International Showcase presented by Project Pabst.
http://www.mississippistudios.com/event/638875-jacaszek-portland/

27.09 DECIBEL FESTIVAL Seattle, Venue: The Triple Door
Jacaszek feat. Beth Fleenor (klarnet, klarnet basowy)
http://dbfestival.com/db2014/optical/5-ghostly-international

30.09 LOS ANGELES „The Golem” live score at Cinefamily, SPECTREFEST
http://www.cinefamily.org/films/spectrefest-2014/#the-golem-w-live-score-by-jacaszek

USA tour supported by Adam Mickiewicz Institute and Gdansk Municipal Office.

Tour managed by SpectreVision

Mind you, I've yet to play the Touch album all the way through ...

Skelton watch: http://www.corbelstonepress.com/nimrod.htm

I'm a great admirer of Skelton's earlier recordings so this description makes me a bit anxious:

"The tremulous strings that characterised much of his earlier work have all but disappeared as the music is divested of ornament, revealing the coarse grain of its underlying substrate: a dark mass of shifting tonal colours suffused with filigree detail."

Will reserve judgement until hearing it.

Not keen on the sound clips, I must admit - at least on initial play - but will go back to them.

The new Winged Victory for the Sullen record, 'Atomos', is very, very beautiful. On my first listen but it's very pastoral and sounds like a soundtrack to a non-existent film. At times it's very reminiscent of Johannssons Virtulegu Forsetar, strings wise.

Getting a big Michael Nyman/Piano vibe - albeit not as full and dramatic - from it too.

I've been listening to it nonstop for the last couple of days. I think it's a big improvement on their debut (which, mind you, is also good). It passes through more movements, there's more variety and changing of pace - more push and pull between the different instruments.

Streaming here:

http://thequietus.com/articles/16418-a-winged-victory-for-the-sullen-atomos-album-stream

Yeah, love Atomos. Also enjoying the Kiasmos album -- it's Ólafur Arnalds and some other guy

Atomos is getting better with every listen.

Trying to find the appropriate forum to discuss my Erased Tapesophobia. Not a dislike of the music they put out, I have it on in the home a great deal. But listening to Atomos these arguments come up again, the same frustration I had with heyday GYBE or Rachels'. The "soundtrack to Myst" quality of it. It's new-age-with-classical-instruments but gets discussed as new-classical. It's so completely easy on the ears that it challenges my laissez-faire attitude towards consonance. That it could actually be improvised by anybody in a few minutes. Between Max Richter being New Music Composer #1, Tim Hecker being Noise Musician #1, I can't tell if I want to embrace The New Consonance or fart on it.

Of course everything I'm saying is not a potshot but a salute

I think I mostly think of it as new age or ambient. I really like it. But some new classical classical is kinda New Consonance as well. Those long serene Morton Feldman pieces. Arvo Pärt. Gavin Bryars (whose most famous album was released by Eno). Gorecki's third. And the new pulitzer-prize winning Become Ocean by John Luther Adams, that I mentioned on the rolling classical thread, and which is rapidly becoming one of my favourite albums of this year, and which you really should all check out!

all the people I know who've studied composition hate max richter

Yeah Frederick I don't fuck with any of those composers you mentioned, except Feldman and a very rare Pärt. Younger I would've argued against them, now I'm just happy there are composers putting asses in seats. More just like I come home and my bf has got Lukas Foss on the turntable and I'm like "yesssssssss" but ultimately he wants Atomos and not Mica Levi. I'm trying to place consonance in a global, current context, trying to figure out what it means and why people respond to nicey-nice sounds so much more in film score, concert music, noise, ambient, drone etc. than they do in any other genres, where it'll make your track sound sickly

What do you mean by "classical" and "new age", fgti? (That's a non-snarky question, by the way).

And why do those who've studied composition hate Richter, ogmor?

Yeah it sounds as if I'm pissing on new-age I guess but I'm not. Just that the language is so safe and sound. It's nice when things are a little challenging, you know? Or maybe not?

Maybe not. There have definitely been points in my life where consonance has been outside my comfort zone/more challenging than dissonance.

fgti's remarks have lead me to self-asses my opinion on this a bit. Because I definitely get that the music seems 'safe and sound'. But in the end, I think that is where the quality lies. Safe and sound is not a disqualification per se, and this ties in with what djh says about consonance.

I don't see Winged Victory as 'new age' myself; I find it a broody, emotional moving piece of work albeit in a very subtle, subdued way. Perhaps it's also because I've been a long time SotL fan and for some reason have grown to respect Adam Wiltzie but also Dustin O'Halloran for their compositional qualities to not take it for generic new-age music (as my personal definition of 'new-age' tends to be: generic soothing music, which I quite frankly can't stand).

But it's a very fine, personal line.

Yeah. I can't really describe why Vanessa Carlton is bad and Tori Amos is good or Clint Mansell's soundtrack to "Requiem for a Dream" is bad but Michael Nyman's for "Prospero" is good without getting exceedingly nebbish about things

And I'm typing this as an enormous fan of Atomos VII-- haven't heard the new album proper-- but also as somebody who found the s/t kind of disappointing bc it lacked the extreme long-form nature of the best of SotL and instead had prettystrings

Yeah. I agree about the Winged Victory s/t, I didn't take to that and while listening to it more and more thought of it as a 'lazy' affair (despite hating myself for thinking of that term while listening, as it can't have been lazy, made with the best intentions too, but prettystrings seemed intentional). I do think the new one is quite different though. Well thought out and despite its subdued nature has a lot going on. It is ephemeral, whimsical at times, but it does really carry me away and take me on a journey. If you took to Atomos VII I'd be very interested to hear what you think of the whole record, I think it deserves an honest chance before you lump it together with erasedtapes prettystrings :)

Not lumping anything in :) just always hoping to implement some aesthetic corrections in my listening

In the case of AWVFTS in particular - I definitely think of what they're doing as an evolution from ambient music, not a lazy take on classical.

For me, Stars of the Lid really opened my ears with Tired Sounds and Refinement of the Decline--when they shifted from making drone from guitars into making something more beautiful and more powerful with a small string section. Everything they've done since then--Brian McBride's solo albums and A Winged Victory--feels like steps from that point. For A Winged Victory it's less about "ambient" because of Dustin O'Halloran's piano, but to me it still feels related.

As for the rest of the Erased Tapes catalog (Nils Frahm, Olafur Arnaulds, etc), I don't really know where those guys are coming from musically to say it's "safe" or some kind of indie/poser-classical. I only know that I found my way to Erased Tapes via A Winged Victory for the Sullen so in my own mind I'm approaching it all from that perspective. That is absolutely subjective, though.

In any case I really hesitate to call it New Age, a term which has a pejorative whiff to it. I also bristle at "safe" as a descriptor of this music. I guess I don't really understand what I'm supposed to contrast that against. What would make Atomos dangerous? And would that necessarily make it better?

And as far as Atomos vs their debut - the new one is definitely superior. In the context of SotL I kinda get how you could perceive the debut as somewhat rote and less inspired. But I think on Atomos they more clearly show that they are trying to do something different. It's not just SotL with piano. (And for that matter I also like it more than a lot of the other Erased Tapes material I've heard.)

Yes yes I am not sure I love ATOMOS but it is amazingly well written and executed, holy cow. I've listened to it ten times now and it's still surprising me with how well paced it is, subtle expansions from track to track, really impressed.

Has there been anything good recently?

djh did you see the Textura EOY list posted int he Year-End Polls thread? Lots of great stuff on that list. Currently transfixed by Ian William Craig's Turn of Breath. Also digging Marvin Ayres's Ultradian Rhythms and Vicky Chow's Tristan Perich: Surface Image, among others.

And don't walk past Kyle Bobby Dunn's 'And The Infinite Sadness'.

Been fascinated lately by Aaron Martin's Comet's Coma and Elisa Luu's Enchanting Gaze.

Thanks all.

Ian William Craig's Either Or is nice; quite reminds of Rice Boy Sleep. "A Turn of Breath" seems to be sold out.

Yeah, Ian William Craig's Turn of Breath is really good - it was the most recent Guardian 100 weirdest (but great) albums on Spotify entry

http://tape-dust.tumblr.com/casolli

a winged victory for the sullen, anyone?

i enjoyed the prom. first i'd heard of them was last week's latitude coverage on Late Junction and this week they're on tv playing the Royal Albert Hall...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0640mhj (28 days left)

(some chat here: The "classical" music you buy from Boomkat (2010): a thread to discuss Sylvain Chauveau, Johann Johannsson, Peter Broderick, Olafur Arnalds and others )

Enjoying the new Hauschka EP A NDO C Y very much.

It cheers me up when this thread is revived.