Not a lot of bands are coming out of Belarus at the moment, but Five-Storey Ensemble are about the best working out of Minsk today. They are the standard bearers for the modern Rock-In-Opposition movement.
Instrumental
[Music] Hidden Orchestra – Wingbeats (Full Album)
Joe Acheson of the Hidden Orchestra come at us with his masterpiece. Soft, subdued, but an absolutely incredible listen.
[Music] Rebekah Heller – Metafagote
Metafagote is Rebekah Heller’s second release for the New York City-based record label New Focus Recordings. The bassoon is one of the most difficult instruments to not only play but to compose for. It seems Rebekah has done an outstanding job handling both.
[Music] Mark McGuire – Glass Bowls
Mark McGuire is a guitarist and improviser out of Cleveland, Ohio, who has a large body of work available via Bandcamp, but this one caught my ear because of pleasant, gentle, floating music within. There’s a vibe here that reminds me less of psychedelic music, and more of something akin to early Pink Floyd or Krautrock.
[Music] Wirephobia – Kurdistan
Kudos to Wirephobia, an experimental/noise project based out of Erbil, Kurdistan in Iraq, for doing their part in developing a local noise music scene in what one could imagine is a hostile area.
The music on Kurdistan, released in 2016, is a pastiche of ethnic recordings and bolts of feedback, radio emissions and it all seems to work quite well.
[Music] The Dusko Goykovich Sextet – Swinging Macedonia (1967)
Trumpet player Dusko Goykovich released one of the finest jazz albums to ever come out of the Balkans in 1967. Swinging stuff.
[Music] Maurice Pozor – 2056
My friend Maurice Pozor has released an intriguing album. Though in the Bandcamp tags the album is listed as a noise or experimental album, this has to be some of the most gentle ‘noise’ I’ve heard in some time. It’s a rather floaty piece, somewhat in keeping with good electronic music from the 1970s and early 1980s, but with a far crisper, cleaner sound.
[Music] Camarão – The imaginary Soundtrack to a Brazilian Western Movie
Analog Africa’s clutches are reaching out farther and wider with this release by Brazilian legend Camarão. It’s a reissue of work he did in around 1960 and is a lively mix of ethnic music, cha-cha, accordion music and something you would hear in a very hazy, psychedelic Spaghetti Western.
Expect this release to ship out starting on February 20, 2018. It’s been well worth the wait!
[Music] Zinovia Arvanitidi – Ivory
Greek pianist and composer Zinovia Arvanitidi has a new disc coming out, and if the one track she and record company Kitchen Label shared is any indication, it will be a spectacular release. From her Bandcamp site:
“There is a life and there is a death, and there are beauty and melancholy between.”
Born in Athens, Greek composer Zinovia Arvanitidi is most widely remembered as one half of the duo Pill-Oh in Vanishing Mirror as well as her debut solo The Gift of Affliction. Zinovia returns with her first solo piano album titled Ivory, and like its precursors, further highlights her mastery in crafting piano ambiances of austere beauty and melancholia, led by mesmerizing melodies and evolving cinematic textures.
Fully self-produced, the now France-based composer navigates through her own time-memory universe with Debussy-like impressionistic daubs, but sublimely she draws the listener into a strangely familiar landscape where the past confronts the present – it is perhaps a dimension that exists within all of us. As the chapters unfold, memories are untangled as darkness shifts into light. The minimalistic nature of the early piano pieces are then transformed, lush and ornate with orchestral strings, subtle electronic atmospheres, field recordings and airy whispers.
An omnipresent sense of duality lingers throughout the album, as with the ivory and ebony colours of piano keys, or the birth and decay of seasons. This is a work where the artist has grasped the essence of the quote by Albert Camus: “There is a life and there is a death, and there are beauty and melancholy between”. The aural journey heightens, then subsides with a newfound serenity in closing, engaging the listener to invoke their own introspections on acceptance and healing.
Rooted in film and television (and represented by film composer agency Oticons among the names of Shigeru Umebayashi and Jan A.P Kaczmarek), Zinovia’s well-versed background in cinematic scoring manifests in her dexterity at veiling intricacies within each track that only unveil themselves with each subsequent listen. As a fully expanded realisation of Zinovia’s artistic voice, Ivory will resonate with fans who love Pill-Oh, and appeal to those familiar with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Dustin O’Halloran.
French photographer Aëla Labbé’s enigmatic cover art photography once again unifies with Zinovia’s soundscapes since her work for Vanishing Mirror.
Zinovia Arvanitidi releases Ivory on 29 March 2018 on Piano Day via KITCHEN. LABEL worldwide. Available on 180g white vinyl LP, CD and DL.
March 29th can’t come fast enough for me.
[Music] Hypnodial – Aether Alcoves
Though this release isn’t breaking any radical ground musically, Hypnodial reminds me of some of the more solid ambient and electronic music releases of the late 80s and early 90s. Well done, well produced, and something quite nice to relax to.
A Miscellany Of Tasteful Music 