Journeys in Sound & Music
“How naturally generous should be our appreciation of the marvels and beauty of a strange land”. These words from the final coda of novelist Neil Gunn’s autobiographical account of resigning from the Civil Service to journey through the Inner Hebrides on a small boat seem especially apropos to the introduction of a wonderful new musical…
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If you don’t know the name of UK-based composer and multi-instrumentalist Matt Emery, chances are you have heard his music somewhere. It could have been as part of a soundtrack to one of over 100 television shows or setting the mood for the trailer of a major film like The Kindness of Strangers (2019), or…
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In calling his new album Anaphora, UK-based guitarist Charlie Coxedge is telling us a great deal about the music it contains. Originating from a Greek phrase meaning “carrying back“, the word suggests a means of expression that relies on patterns of repetition. Most applicable here is its use as a rhetorical device which involves repeating…
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Since his solo album first debuted in 2017, Jakob Lindhagen has already managed to make an indelible footprint in the modern classical music scene in Scandanavia and Europe. Having played instruments since the age of 5, Jakob as gone on to become an award-winning composer, music producer and multi-instrumentalist whose work has been streamed by…
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For this new round up of recent ambient releases, I am going to latch on to the symbolism of the fading of winter austerity into the full bloom of spring. Not because the albums represented here are thematically tied to the season, but more as a reflection of how sparse posts have been of late…
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From a very young age, Swedish composer Matti Bye came to the realization that the piano would be the instrument that would become what is biography calls his “true means of expression” and “musical weapon of choice”. His career provides ample evidence of this from his live performances to screenings of the masterpieces of silent…
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First introduced with the 2020 EP Thought Forms, Purple Decades is an alter ego of Cincinnati-based composer, pianist, & producer Tristan Eckerson that he uses to explore a broad spectrum of electronic textures and ambient soundscapes. The project saw its first full length album release last year with Journey Test (Beacon Sound), an album characterized…
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Nearly a decade after first coming up the idea, composer Nils Frahm has seen Piano Day widely celebrated around the world on the 88th day of each year (chosen for the 88 keys of the piano of course). More recently Frahm’s Leiter label began curating and releasing an annual compilation of piano music to coincide…
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While Abul Mogard (the alter ego of Guido Zen) and Rafael Anton Irisarri each create music that is often labeled as ambient, anyone familiar with their work would likely agree that they do not necessarily comply with Eno’s oft repeated hypothesis that it “must be as ignorable as it is interesting”. In their own distinctive…
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Stationary Travels 