Recordings

c_RL. Friends. Temporarily putting aside her notated work, multi-instrumentalist Allison Cameron teams up with fellow improvisers trumpeter Nicole Rampersaud and percussionist Germaine Liu for a program of eleven instant compositions that play to each trio member’s strengths, cementing a group[...] Read more

Recordings Ken Waxman

Chenoa Anderson. Krishna’s Flute. Chenoa Anderson's second collection of new Canadian music for solo flute is a fantastic—and often quite fantastical—survey of what's going on, coast to coast, in this admittedly specialized field. Focusing on works that incorporate an electronic element, either through[...] Read more

Recordings Alexander Varty

John Kameel Farah. Between Carthage and Rome. John Kameel Farah’s Between Carthage and Rome is a well-considered pairing of piano and electronics (both at Farah’s hand) that works best if you don’t think too much about it.   Toronto native Farah is a strong pianist and a good conceptualist. He studied[...] Read more

Recordings Kurt Gottschalk

André Cormier. Zwischen Den Wolken.   It’s often tempting to interpret the presence of abundant silence in music as a gesture of aggressive austerity. Yet André Cormier’s solo piano work Zwischen den Wolken—performed by Markus Kreul on a new recording released on Redshift—makes it very[...] Read more

Recordings Nick Storring

Cluttertones. Ordinary Joy. If the word clutter evokes the notion of a copious mess, its use in the moniker of Toronto-based Rob Clutton’s quartet The Cluttertones—Lina Allemano (trumpet), Clutton (bass), Tim Posgate (banjo and guitar) and Ryan Driver (synthesizer, piano, voice)—suggests more of a[...] Read more

Recordings Nick Storring

Matana Roberts. Coin Coin Chapter Three: River Run Thee. The third instalment of Matana Roberts’ Coin Coin presents an utterly overwhelming listening experience—a densely netted mass of images, information, and deeply visceral sensations, so profusely intelligible that it becomes opaque with stimuli.   Where the[...] Read more

Recordings Nick Storring Issue 121

Howlround. Torridon Gate. The title of Howlround’s third and reassuringly unheimlich album takes its name from a gate that really exists. It’s on a road in Hither Green, a suburb that was laid out for an expanding London at the end of the nineteenth century as an ideal home for hard-working commuters who[...] Read more

Recordings Louise Gray Issue 121

DJ Sniff. Incredulous Cuts—Reinterpretations of the Doubtmusic Catalogue. On Incredulous Cuts, DJ Sniff finds the hidden connections between the chirrup of the hip-hop needle-scratch and the squawk of the free-jazz horn blast. Also known as Takuro Mizuta Lippit, the Japanese-born, Hong Kong-based former artistic director of STEIM in Amsterdam (from 2007 to 2012),[...] Read more

Recordings Jonathan Bunce Issue 121

Xavier Charles. 12 Clarinets in a Fridge. This music is less rarified and warmer sounding than the CD title indicates, as French clarinettist Xavier Charles mixes mutated reed timbres and aleatoric slabs of musique concrète to craft five highly distinctive improvisations. Despite what it might seem like, Charles—who is[...] Read more

Recordings Ken Waxman Issue 121

Plumes Ensemble. Folk Songs and Future Loves. Being both a guitar-based indie-pop band and a modern chamber ensemble, Plumes Ensemble (or Plumes) is a group with a split personality. Based in Montreal and Paris, the ensemble makes a mighty effort to reconcile these seeming opposites with its latest recording, Folk Songs and Future Loves[...] Read more

Recordings Jonathan Bunce

Nick Storring. Gardens. We think of gardens as something we make. You start a garden and tend to it. It is yours. But the garden has most likely been there for a very long time. You just mould it to your own purposes. If you ask a rosebush how long it has been there, it won’t know what you’re talking[...] Read more

Recordings Kurt Gottschalk

Chris Strickland. Animal Expert. Animal Expert unfolds through an elegantly opaque, almost inscrutable logic—one which gradually overpowers, rather than satisfies, one’s desire for an audible syntax. Distinct, indelible impressions begin to form: the odours and dimensions of a particular space, the feeling of[...] Read more

Recordings Nick Storring