Sometime around last October, I was thinking about all the CDs I'd acquired that year and wondered how many of them had been released in 2011. I discovered, to my chagrin, that most of the CDs I got in 2011 had been released in 2010 or 2009.
writing about music for people who like music
Category Archives: Reviews
Who Put John Cage on the Guestlist?
Who put John Cage on the Guestlist? is the 2011 release of Hemmelig Tempo, a Norwegian project of Doktor Døv, Professor Waffel, and Professor Fokuda-san. With the exception of tracks five and six, which merge into each other, each track on this CD ...
New Jersey Laptop Orchestra
The New Jersey Laptop Orchestra's first CD is called The Willingness to be Touched, which is also the title of the second track. And seriously, look at that album cover--that picture with those words? Who could resist? I've heard several laptop ...
L’étoile absinthe and Chant d’ombre
L'étoile absinthe first appeared on a Metamkine 3" disc, reviewed here, part of that label's Cinéma pour l'oreille series. Although these two pieces are separated by four years (2000 and 2004, respectively), Bokanowski considers them as companion pieces, so it is not ...
Acousma
Robert Scott Thompson writes a lot of ambient music. He also writes a lot of electroacoustic music, like you would have heard in Bourges back in the day, and indeed some of it was done in the studios in Bourges. Acousma is a blend of ...
Ghost Words
Robert Scott Thompson is a composer who, like Phillip Werren, had until recently flown entirely under my radar. Only by ordering a CD from Aucourant of music by Erdem Helvacioğlu did I become aware of Thompson. So now, just in case that, as with ...
A Ludger Brümmer Miscellany
TroTropforT - 1987 TroTropforT builds slowly and then breaks off suddenly. It starts up again with similar material, then breaks off again except for some quiet stuff to which are eventually added some clangs; but it goes on mostly quite quietly, with hollow little sounds and ...
Mandolini miscellany
Cancion de madera y agua A rattle of rachets to start, morphing in and out of various other sounds, without ever losing the rachety quality, until some low frequency thumps anchor things. After a short pause, the same mechanical logic begins to ...
Some Shapiro CDs
Madeleine Shapiro, one of the founding members of the New Music Consort, plays on two Mode discs with that ensemble in pieces by Anne LeBaron ("Rana, Ritual & Revelations" and The Musical Railism of Anne LeBaron). Except maybe for Lamentation/Invocation on the Rana, Ritual & Revelations disc, these CDs are not something to get to ...
connections, opportunities for mistakes
Francisco Meirino's 2009 release is all about the sounds music machines make when they're failing--minidisc players, P.A. systems, cassette recorders, and so forth. And very interesting and musical sounds they do make, to be sure. But ...
