Tag Archives: contemporary classical

Disinblud – Disinblud (Smuggler’s Way)

Posted by John Lithium on

Label Description: Disiniblud, the thrilling new collaborative album project from the composers/producers/multi-instrumentalists Rachika Nayar and Nina Keith.

Rachika and Nina meet on complementary but seemingly disparate musical grounds. On her 2022 breakout LP Heaven Come Crashing, Rachika departed from her usual ambient guitar in favor of maximalist synths, sub-bass, and flickers of Amen breaks. Her distinct fusion of post-rock and electronica earned her accolades as Pitchfork’s Best New Music, on several best of the year lists (The New York Times, Stereogum, Fader, GQ, Bandcamp, etc), and as the opening act on tour with M83. Nina, meanwhile, is best known for her self-trained approach to composition, as evident on her 2019 debut MARANASATI 19111 and its delicate medley of cello, piano, clarinet, and flute, used to explore a personal history marked by community tragedy and paranormal incidents.

On Disiniblud, the two’s self-described “wordless conversation,” orbits such themes as mortality, reinvention through destruction, and sublimating fractured histories into music—all resulting in a work that suggests sweeping transformation can come from embracing old wounds with childlike wonder. Nina envisions this as she and Rachika’s younger selves packing a satchel, holding hands, and daring one another to run away into a place of “wounds and wonder,” only to discover an unforeseeable magic in an amalgam of post-rock, glitchy indie electronica, ambient, and pop genres in this co-created realm.

Disiniblud features guest appearances from Julianna Barwick, Tujiko Noriko, Cassandra Croft, ASPIDISTRAFLY, Katie Dey, June McDoom and Ponytail’s Willy Siegel.

c.soûle – Solamente Augustine (Shady Ridge Records)

Posted by John Lithium on

Label Description: From the Artist

Such a great bulk of my life, spent muffling the tender inner voice, in maybe-understandable, certainly misguided attempt to shield myself from further feelings of loss. I believe we are all susceptible to this tendency. Turns out it only sublimates the pain, causing it to erupt in greater violence still, jutting out in all directions in fits of hollowed impotence, thorny, as failing, tangled canes.

We outsource the difficult imperative of the conscience to reaction, to the rage and hopelessness proffered by the digital half-world, to charlatan-shepherds of collapsing pretense. We listen for it in the emotional labor of the hurting, merrily excusing ourselves over the darling cliff of claimed helplessness, siblings in tow.

I have been working at listening for it a might bit better. These tunes are meditations on my novice’s effort at the same. They are an apology and appreciation to Augustine, decades gone, for being held as object and unwitting surrogate to my own inner voice. Apology for this too-usual offloading of emotional work, work I should ought to have been doing myself, projected onto a mythologized, magical “other”. Gratitude for the borrowed “Nah, Pelon” that stood in for my conscience such a number of years and spared so many along the way some of my very worst ideas.

I have come to know my conscience as a tiny, sometimes intruding guest, an insectile dragon, often annoying, as it pollinates this inverted flower, this fig, my clumsy devotion.

Self-congratulations hangs around all day, every day, a constant histamine crackle, as I clod-hopper my way along, trying not to break every single thing I come across. Still, volcanic consequence slices clean through my Chuck’s, describing old desolation, enriching future soil under these weeping feet.

The ration is bitter with the sap of old choices, but it nourishes well, across a tongue, plump and honeyed with gratitude.

Turns out his first name wasn’t Solamente, after all. He has only ever had one name. I just didn’t have the language yet to know any different.

But I am working to understand.

Enjoy,

Clayton aka c.soûle 

Written, recorded, and produced by c.soûle
Mastered by Thomas Ragsdale

SRR041

shadyridgerecords.bandcamp.com

Dan Moore – Kielder Water Music (Self-Released)

Posted by John Lithium on

Label Description:

Named Bandcamp New & Notable, March 2026.

Built for an industrial expansion that never came, Kielder Dam in Northumberland is a monument to a forgotten future. Kielder Water Music explores this engineered landscape through field recordings, electronics, and string quartet.

The four pieces draw on sounds from the valve tower, reservoir, and surrounding forest, alongside interviews with those who live and work at the site. These recordings are woven together with strings, samplers, and analogue and digital synthesizers to create a dream-like sonic portrait of this unique post-industrial space.

Supported by Arts Council England.

Jo Silverston – Cello
Drew Morgan – Cello and Bowed Electric Guitar
Laura Wilson – Viola
Caelia Lunniss – Violin
Hugh Blogg – Violin

Mike Roberts – Words

Dan Moore – Fender Rhodes Electric Piano, Field Recordings, Samples and Synthesizers

Strings recorded and engineered by Luke Cawthra

Mixed by TJ Allen

Mastered by Shawn Joseph at Optimum Mastering

Cover Design by Oliver Batho

Thanks to Dan Jones, Andy Sheppard, Jonty Hall, Mike Roberts, Northumbrian Water, Alison Freeman, Hilary Ashton and the estate of Ernest Tomlinson, Riaan Vosloo, Jennifer Bell, Seb Reynolds, James Hester, Ned Rush, Jaqueline Ewers and Jenny Lindfors.

Antonio Gallucci – Hope for Nothingness as Something (Dinzu Artefacts)

Posted by John Lithium on

Label Description:

A two-chapter suite for modular & FM synth, wind & string instruments, electronics, sound objects and field recordings. The work is structured as a two-chapter descent from concrete score to analog & digital abstraction. It begins with the tangible written material and human presence of the performers, which are systematically subjected to a process of erosion. The initial components are reduced to “digital dust” — meaningless data fragments — then recombined algorithmically. This process entirely empties the material of its original structure and meaning. The work culminates in a final, unreal space, becoming a meditation on the transformation of human intention into pure, post-human data.

The notion of Hope for Nothingness as Something is a radical philosophical pivot, shifting the focus of human aspiration from tangible acquisition to ultimate negation. There’s a profound psychological shift: the very concept we often fear or dismiss as empty can be re-framed as an object of desire, value, or ultimate meaning. This concept draws its discursive power from its inherent paradox: desiring an absence and treating that absence as the most valuable presence.

“Is nothingness the same as nothing? Everything evolves around that. Absolute discardment, because there is hope only where nothing is retained. The fullness of nothingness. That is the reason for the insistence on the zero point.”

– T. Adorno

All tracks composed, played, mixed and mastered by Antonio Gallucci @ Mercurial Studio in Pistoia (Italy) between May and October 2025.

Antonio Gallucci is a musician, sound engineer, and digital technology expert born and raised in South Italy. He lives and works in Tuscany. His works reveal a poetic and conceptual dimension that leverages the use of new and old technologies, found objects and sounds, and the extreme
manipulation of sources, within a reflective and conscious aural experience. Over the past 25 years, he has collaborated with museums, theaters, artists, and international record labels.

Cover art by Aaron Owens

Nils Frahm – Wintermusik (Erased Tapes)

Posted by John Lithium on

Label Description: Nils Frahm, born in 1982, had an early introduction to music. During his childhood he was taught to play piano by Nahum Brodski – a student of the last scholar of Tschaikowski. The three instrumentals, which make up his debut ‘Wintermusik’ are piano led pieces, coloured with occasional celeste and reed organ parts. The record’s equal measures of sorrowful refrains and uplifting passages, combined with a real intimacy that makes for an album you’ll want to return to again and again. The songs were originally intended as a Christmas present for friends and family, hence its winter release.

Foetus – Halt (Ectopic Ents)

Posted by John Lithium on

Label Description:

Foetus is one of the major musical projects of NYC composer JG Thirlwell.

HALT is the final Foetus album, and the first Foetus album in twelve years. It completes the cycle of an arc that began in 1981 with the first Foetus album DEAF.

Thirlwell worked on HALT on and off over a period of eight years. As with each album he has made, he wanted to reinvent the music, use new forms, innovate and introduce new surprising forms into his musical palette, at the same time as feeling like a leap forward.

HALT deals with themes of war, religion, disease, media, global warming, anxiety, hypocrisy, conspiracy, death and mortality, among other things. Dread is a leitmotif through many of the Foetus albums and this one is no exception.

HALT will be followed by its companion album, LEAK, in 2027.


COMPOSED, PRODUCED, PERFORMED AND RECORDED BY
JG THIRLWELL AT SELF IMMOLATION STUDIOS

MIXED AT SELF IMMOLATION STUDIOS AND CIRCULAR RUIN STUDIO
FINAL MIXES WITH BEN GREENBERG AT CIRCULAR RUIN STUDIO
DRUMS RECORDED AT 30 BELOW
ENGINEERED BY BRENT MCLACHLAN

SPECIAL GUESTS
LEAH ASHER (The Rhythm Method) VIOLIN ON 2, 11
JAKE BALDWIN TRUMPETS ON 3, 7, 10
BRIAN CHASE (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) DRUMS ON 1,3 ,8
TIMO ELLIS (Netherlands) GUITAR ON 3, 7
SIMON HANES (Tredici Bacci) BANJO ON 9, BASS ON 9, 11, ACOUSTIC GUITAR ON 9
BRENDON RANDALL MYERS (Dither) GUITAR ON 3, 4, 10
SAMI STEVENS VOCALS ON 3
LAURA WOLF ADDITIONAL VOICE ON 8

SLEEVE ARTWORK BY JG THIRLWELL

Symbion Project – TRYPTYCH (Speed Of Dark Music)

Posted by John Lithium on

“Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.”
~ Alan Watts

TRYPTYCH is the 12th Symbion Project album from electronic musician, composer, and producer Kasson Crooker. The three long-form songs seamlessly blend into each other and feature layers of lush strings and woodwinds, haunting sound design, French horns, percolating synthesizers, Japanese koto, and field recordings.

credits

released January 1, 2025

Composed, orchestrated, mixed, produced, and mastered by Kasson Crooker

French horns played by Gus Sebring (Boston Symphony Orchestra
Japanese koto performed by Kasson Crooker

Copyright and published by Speed of Dark Music 2025 (BMI)
Released on FOIL Imprints

JG Thirlwell – Archer Original Soundtrack Volume 1 (Iam8bit)

Posted by John Lithium on

a0117650750_10

Label Description:

Archer Volume 1 is the long-awaited soundtrack album of JG Thirlwell‘s scores for the animated FX series Archer . Thirlwell created the musical score for season 7-14 of the series , from 2015-2023.

The album comprises 27 tracks and is drawn from seasons 7-9 of the show. It is released on maraschino red vinyl. The digital version of the album comprises 30 tracks.

Thirlwell joined the show in 2015 and was able to expand and build on the Archer universe with his musical stylings. The show won an Emmy Award in the category of Outstanding Animated Program for season 7.