Featured Articles
Divorce Records “It depends on what you call the beginning, I guess,” says Darcy Spidle when probed about the origins of his experimental music label, Divorce Records. “The first thing I did with the label— about fifteen years ago—was to make big posters that said ‘Music[...] Read more
Sami Blanco’s Experimental Atmospheres Yellowknife-based experimental electronic-music artist Sami Blanco plays me a snippet of a soundbank he made for late-night broadcast on Yellowknife’s francophone radio station, CIVR-FM, familiarly known as Radio Taïga. Emerging from a Korg MS2000—the virtual analog[...] Read more
Resonate At first glance, Resonate appears to be a static, glowing, string structure in a dark, drone-filled room. But enter the space and pluck any of the glowing strings and dynamic pools of light suddenly appear, as sound objects form a rhythmic and spatial counterpart to the drones.[...] Read more
New Age Music—The Second Wave I’m lying on the living-room floor. I’ve been like this for two hours, on my back, in the dark, headphones on. The record on the turntable is literally locked in its groove and producing a low-note drone that at times sounds like a whale’s moan or some sort of detuned,[...] Read more
The Avian is the Message Songbirds have a secret language. This is something I did not fully appreciate until recently, when I became immersed in their world. What may be music to our ears is bird-speak—a mating call, an aural fence, or simple prattle to stay in touch. There are people who can understand bird[...] Read more
Tate Carson's Before, I wandered as a diversion Tate Carson is a composer and upright bassist from New Orleans, Louisiana. Before, I wandered as a diversion (2016), for clarinet and live electronics, won second prize in Musicworks’ 2016 electronic music composition contest. Listen to the full piece, streaming on this page.[...] Read more
Craig Aalders’ el8dEra 3m Ice cracking and melting; a forest by the coast; a dream; breath lingering in the cold air—these are some of the images that come to mind when listening to Vancouver composer Craig Aalders’ el8dEra 3m, the first-prize-winning composition in Musicworks’ 2016 annual[...] Read more
Samuel Andreyev’s Sonic Organisms There’s a strange duality about the music of Strasbourg-based Canadian composer Samuel Andreyev. His official bio states that his compositional process is “marked by a rigorous perfectionism,”[...] Read more
Pheeroan akLaff Pheeroan akLaff believes in drums first, rather than last. He can drive an ensemble forward with the machine-gun attack of his snare and the rolling thunder of his bass and toms, compounding and enriching the music with dense polyrhythms, or using the metallic shimmer of his cymbals to surmount[...] Read more
David Psutka Augments Creative Spaces In 2019, David Psutka was approached by Karen Vanderborght to compose the soundtrack for her augmented reality documentary Grey Matter AR, which she had started developing a few years earlier. Vanderborght, who describes herself as an extended reality (XR) creative, had begun by filming[...] Read more
Tristan Perich’s 1-Bit Symphony Tristan Perich’s 1-Bit Symphony (2009–10) is an electronic composition in five movements on a single microchip housed in a CD jewel case. 1-Bit Symphony is not a recording in the traditional sense; it is a complete electronic circuit that literally performs its music once it is[...] Read more
Emilie LeBel’s Field Notes For many composers, a work in progress comes with strings attached—no pun intended. There are arts councils and concert presenters to satisfy, musicians to liaise with, premiere dates that draw ever closer. Deadlines, of course, can get the juices flowing, and creative constraints ([...] Read more
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