Experimental
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As a child, my wife Lisa was desperate to learn the piano. She was too young to understand how big an ask this was of her hard-working parents. Hilda and Stan were as generous as they could be with their two kids in those days. But a piano was no small thing, financially or otherwise.…
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The contrast between the gentle ambient sounds Pepo Galán is well known for and Carlos Suero’s penchant for thick, dense electronics is central to the appeal of this new collaborative effort. The duo has produced a layered, ominously visual album. Galán’s work on the cover captures the feel of these five new works perfectly. Dark…
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James Armstrong’s imaginative use of sustained guitar sounds places him on the near end of an artistic continuum that features Randy Roos, Steve Holland, Tony Levin, Mike Stern and more recently Brian Eno collaborators Michael Brook, Daniel Lanois and The Edge. This is the kind of company most guitarists would be happy to keep. In…
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To fully appreciate this extraordinary new work from Rutger Zuydervelt (a.k.a. Machinefabriek), it’s important to understand the subject of the documentary that The Red Soul serves as a soundtrack to. Joseph Stalin led the Soviet Union, as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party from 1922 to 1952 and as Soviet Premier…
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Lewis Carroll fans will recognize this title from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Watching a croc coax fish into his mouth with a warm smile, Alice recites a poem that begins “How doth the little crocodile; improve his shining tale …” Carroll’s poem within a story was a parody of Isaac Watts’ “Against Idleness and Mischief.”…
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France’s Pierre Boulez was a giant of avant-garde music in the period following the Second World War. He is part of a conversation that includes greats like Arnold Schoenberg, John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen. His “Le Marteau sans maître,” “Pli selon pli” and “Répons” (premiered in 1955, 1960 and 1981 respectively) all count as major…
The Moderns 