David Rosenboom. In The Beginning. Not unlike James Tenney, his late former colleague at York University, David Rosenboom is highly adept at taking rigorously structured systems and rendering them in a manner that is observable and bursting with sound colour. This two-disc set compiles the titular cycle of pieces whose creation[...] Read more

Recordings Nick Storring Issue 116

Aki Onda. Cassette Memories vol. 3, South of the Border. When Aki Onda released the first two volumes of his Cassette Memories series almost a decade ago, part of their radical appeal was the idea that someone would continue to use cassette Walkman recorders as their medium. Onda not only used them, but wielded them like a DJ, creating dense and[...] Read more

Recordings Chris Kennedy Issue 116

Yang Jing and Christy Doran. No. 9. One of the more striking recent developments in improvised music has been the entry of several musicians trained in Chinese traditional music. There’s Min Xiaofen, a pipa player and singer residing in New York, who worked with the late Derek Bailey (the usually adversarial guitarist[...] Read more

Recordings Stuart Broomer Issue 116

Jerusalem In My Heart. Mo7it Al-Mo7it. Radwan Moumneh is one of the key players in the Montreal scene that orbits Constellation, Alien8, and other local labels. As cofounder-producer at the celebrated Hotel2Tango studio and a collaborator with Land Of Kush, Cursed, and Eric Chenaux, among others, he’s helped shape a sizable[...] Read more

Recordings Nick Storring Issue 116

Hywel Davies. Hywel Davies. Composer Hywel Davies’ latest album is—surprisingly, given his prolific output—only his second solo album. The first, 1998’s Natural Language, was a beguiling collection of collaged sounds. This release, much of it recorded at the Banff Centre, is based in more[...] Read more

Recordings Louise Gray

John Butcher. Winter Gardens. John Butcher is one of the world’s most resourceful solo improvisers, a musician who has extended his saxophones in uncanny ways, creating waves of complex continuous sound with overtones arising and disappearing to the accompaniment of sudden percussive explosions. This LP contains[...] Read more

Recordings Stuart Broomer Issue 116

Daniela Cascella. En Abîme: Listening, Reading, Writing (An archival fiction). Daniela Cascella’s En Abîme is a fascinating consideration of the art of writing about sound—the process of listening and re-listening and responding to what one has heard. The result of a moment of crisis, when Cascella’s ten years of writing seemed to her to carry[...] Read more

Books Chris Kennedy Issue 115

The Venice Biennale 56th International Festival of Contemporary Music. Using the words “Venice” and “music” together likely brings Vivaldi to mind. Or if one says Venice Biennale, thoughts turn to contemporary art or perhaps film or architecture. Yet the Venice Festival of Contemporary Music just marked its fifty-sixth edition. Why is it[...] Read more

Concerts and Events Jason van Eyk Issue 115

Bedroom Community Reykjavik to Breidholt, a suburban district south of downtown that is home to Valgeir Sigurdsson’s Greenhouse recording studio and the offices of Bedroom Community, the record-label collective that the native Icelander cofounded in 2006 with American composer Nico Muhly and Australian[...] Read more

Recordings Jonathan Bunce Issue 115

Scott Walker. Bish Bosch. Scott Walker's output since 1995's Tilt is unquestionably some of the most flamboyantly unique and ambitious song-craft of the past two decades, and Bish Bosch is no exception.   The prevailing feeling is one of revolting and sensational corporeality—teeming[...] Read more

Recordings Nick Storring Issue 115

Various Artists. REWORK_ (Philip Glass Remixed). And how, you may well ask, do the epochal Beck and the magisterial Glass bond and re-bond? With lots of echo, I’m here to report. Echo and backwards-boinging. And the chanting of an avant-garde choir. Because “avant-garde” is “now,” for now, this choir sings[...] Read more

Recordings Andrew Hamlin Issue 115