by Kirk Udvardi, contributing editor
Surprised by Beauty: Minimalism in Choral Music is the second studio recording by the remarkable choral ensemble, Boston Secession. They have been under the direction of Jane Ring Frank since 1996 offering uniquely themed programs filled with diverse repertoire from the 12th century to the present. Personally, as a fan of […]

At first hearing, this CD may seem stylistically all over the place. The first two pieces, the four movement Par temps calme et ensoleille for piano and tape and the one movement Par temps calme et ensoleille for cello and tape seem hardly to warrant the same name, and neither are anything like Musique […]

This album, unlike Barrière’s first, is stylistically varied at any hearing, the first or the hundred and first. Indeed, the first piece itself, Dessus la mer, is all over the place, as befits a piece that attempts (among other things) to present the musics the composer enjoyed growing up. It is an endlessly fascinating piece; […]

Although I can say that this is an entertaining album, I also have to confess that I don’t think I will listen to it all that often. While it won’t remind anyone of metal, I don’t think, it may be a kind of transition album for metal heads on a quest for pure noise. I […]

Afflux is Eric Cordier, Eric La Casa, and Jean-Luc Guionnet—all of them with other cds on Ground Fault, all of them very talented composer/performers. There are three tracks on this disc, and three men, but the pieces, so far as I can hear, do not reflect each individual. What happens here is one more instance […]

“Swinging ” – A noisy, minimal, slow-moving wash of gritty sound…, with tunes. It’s true; every once and awhile some of the electronic sounds are pitches, lined up just like pitches in a melody. It doesn’t happen very often, but it’s fun when an actual little tune appears out of the mix. […]

People who are immensely talented should do more things. The two guys who constitute Busratch are immensely talented. They’ve only done one other project that I know of, which I haven’t located yet. memorium is wildly entertaining and exhilarating. You can still find it, if you search, though copies are getting harder and harder […]

I first listened to this on lp, which gives an extra dimension of surface noise to the endeavor that cd copies will never have, viz. Marclay’s lp that comes sans sleeve. If you are old enough to remember radio, you will wet yourself at the opening of Grand Surface Noise Opera Nr. 3. If […]

This disc was my introduction to all four of these people. Needless to say, I soon had all the discs of all of them I could find. And I haunt the stores, looking for the next new one. With the first two, that used to be easy. It’s more difficult now, but you can […]

Oddly enough, Dix-sept minutes is almost exactly seventeen minutes long. And while it contains a lot of clock noises, including but by no means limited to ticking and chiming, those sounds are only part of a rich and complex tapestry that also includes acoustic instruments (single notes only), voices (mostly choir sounds […]