This Swedish elec­tron­ic group is yet anoth­er exam­ple of musi­cians delight­ing in “retro” elec­tron­ic sounds gen­er­at­ed by old equip­ment. The beeps, blips, and spacey sounds that embar­rassed the pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion of elec­tron­i­cists now seem cool again, espe­cial­ly if they can be mixed with con­tem­po­rary sam­ples. Get­ting it to work — to make music that appeals to the ear, can be tricky. I would say that this album, released in 2006 and re-released in 2008, does so about half the time, notably with the skit­ter beat 2 (“Perm”), the strange­ly folky 3(“Bootstrap’) and 4 (“Kino­ton”) with the only vocals, which make a nice sequence, but less so with the remain­ing tracks.

19790. (Sergei Prokofiev) Piano Sonata #9 in C
19791. (Sergei Prokofiev) Piano Sonata #10 (frag­ment), Op.107
19792. (Griev­ous Angels) One Job Town
19793. (High Places) 03/07–09/07
19794. (Nel­ly Fur­ta­do) Folk­lore Read more »

This was, believe it or not, the first album I ever owned. I grew up in a non-musi­cal fam­i­ly, and apart from what­ev­er turned up on the radio or tele­vi­sion, my expo­sure to music was very lim­it­ed. When I acquired a (kit-built) turntable and ampli­fi­er, I ran out and bought the first thing that appealed to me. Hav­ing noth­ing to go on, I picked Jimi Hen­drix’s Are You Expe­ri­enced? for no oth­er rea­son than that I liked the cov­er. Read more »

19688. (Fred­er­ick Delius) Dance Rhap­sody #1
19689. (Fred­er­ick Delius) The Song of the High Hills
19690. (Fred­er­ick Delius) Piano Pre­lude #1
19691. (Fred­er­ick Delius) Piano Pre­lude #2
19692. (Fred­er­ick Delius) Piano Pre­lude #3 Read more »

This French turntab­list quar­tet is erod­ing the dis­tinc­tions between DJs, bands, and elec­tron­ic artists. They play live in clubs, mix­ing their own mate­r­i­al, or that of live musi­cians pressed onto vinyl, rather than the usu­al sam­ples, and restruc­ture much of what they cre­ate in the stu­dio. The result is inter­est­ing music, like­ly to appeal to an old­er crowd than most club-goers.

Antonín Dvořák lived in Zlonice, a small town in Bohemia, from 1853 to 1856. He must have been fond of this church’s bells.

I have an odd advan­tage over Dvořák. I’ve heard this sym­pho­ny, while he nev­er did. It was com­posed in 1865, when Dvořák was only 24. He sub­mit­ted the man­u­script to a com­pe­ti­tion in Ger­many, and the only copy dis­ap­peared, so he nev­er had a chance to hear it per­formed, or even to revise it. He dis­missed it as lost, and did not num­ber it among his com­po­si­tions. How­ev­er, in 1882, it was found by a Ger­man stu­dent in a sec­ond-hand shop in Leipzig, and kicked around until it final­ly resur­faced in 1923. It did not have a com­plete and unal­tered per­for­mance until 1973.

How does it sound? It’s pret­ty much Mendelssohn, or rather Mendelssohn when he sounds most like Beethoven. But it’s damn good for a cal­low youth’s first sym­pho­ny, and could stand on its own at any con­cert. Every now and then you hear a pre­mo­ni­tion of dis­tinc­tive­ly Dvořákian fea­tures. Many pas­sages are beau­ti­ful, or at least enter­tain­ing. It just does­n’t come togeth­er in a com­plete­ly sat­is­fy­ing way. The record­ing I have is con­duct­ed by Stephen Gun­zen­hauser, with the Czecho-Slo­vak Radio Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra, and was made in 1993 (only 27 days after the sep­a­ra­tion of the Czech and Slo­vak Republics, hence the odd­ly hyphen­at­ed name). It isn’t clear why it was called “The Bells of Zlonice” ― there are no bells in it, or bell-like pas­sages, and the phrase is nowhere on the score ― but Dvořák is reput­ed to have called it by that name in lat­er years. He lived in the small town of Zlonice for three years, and it has rather nice look­ing church. Per­haps its bells were par­tic­u­lar­ly fine. How much of this youth­ful work did he remem­ber? Could he play parts of it in his head, in old age, or did it sim­ply dis­olve into a vague impres­sion? Sad­ly, we get to indulge in the guilty plea­sure of lis­ten­ing to some per­fect­ly good Dvořák that Dvořák him­self nev­er heard. So let us at least hoist a pil­sner to his hon­our, when­ev­er we do so.

Scored for theremin, space echo RE201, toy piano, ARP­prodGX, Roland SH101, Prophet 600, 808 Roland, per­cus­sions, tape recorder, ana­log delay Ibanez UE305, toy piano and “scream­ing”, this album is an exer­cise in cre­at­ing a sense of uneasi­ness in the lis­ten­er. French elec­tron­ic musi­cians Eti­enne Jaumet and Cos­mic­Ne­man (from Her­man Dune) acknowl­edge the influ­ence of George Romero and John Car­pen­ter’s hor­ror films as much as the tra­di­tion­al elec­tron­ic gurus. I can’t say that Mad Dog held my rapt atten­tion all the time, but it suc­ceeds well enough in its aims to be worth a seri­ous lis­ten. This is a 2006 debut full-length release (after one 12“er). I don’t know if there has been any fol­low up since then.

This Ice­landic band con­structs sound­scapes with old-fash­ioned elec­tron­ic effects rem­i­nis­cent of the 1970’s. The cheesy beeps and whirs grad­u­al­ly build into intel­li­gent struc­tures, with ele­ments of hard rock and house. I espe­cial­ly liked track sev­en, “Ser­e­mo­nia”, which builds to a sat­is­fy­ing res­o­lu­tion. Jóhann Jóhanns­son, Ice­land’s won­der­ful­ly sin­is­ter-look­ing com­pos­er and mul­ti­me­dia impre­sario, is behind it all. If you like lis­ten­ing to old Kraftwerk albums, and the instru­men­tal piece “Tel­star” drifts out of your sub­con­scious when you come out of a coma, you’ll enjoy this.

19513. (Anton Bruck­n­er) Sym­pho­ny # “0”
19514. (Jean Sibelius) “Sou­da, Sou­da, Sin­isor­sa [Swim, Duck, Swim]”, JS 180 [s. Anne Sofie 
. . . . . von Otter]
19515. (Jean Sibelius) “Nor­den [The North]”, Op.90 no.1 [s. Anne Sofie von Otter]
19516. (Jean Sibelius) “Nar­ciss [Nar­cis­sus]”, JS 140 [s. Anne Sofie von Otter] Read more »