Classical Music 139 Items

White Boy Scream is the experimental classical project from opera singer and composer Micaela Tobin. On her latest release, 'bakunawa', she dissects her voice through the use of electronics as a means of exploring identity and ancestral trauma. “bakunawa” is an homage to the pre-colonial mythology of her motherland, the Philippines. Part sonic ritual, part diasporic storytelling. Micaela Tobin is currently on Faculty as a Voice Instructor at the California Institute for the Arts. She most recently performed a principal role in the critically acclaimed experimental opera, Sweet Land (comp.Raven Chacon & Du Yun), which made it’s U.S. premiere in March 2020. Her previous album, 'Remains' was listed as one of the top 10 Noise/ Industrial Albums of 2018 by The Wire Magazine.

In celebration of Specialty Records’ 75th anniversary, a new Sam Cooke compilation featuring tracks from his Specialty catalogue focusing on his pop-leaning tracks plus the live recordings from the legendary 1955 Shrine Concert that has never been available on vinyl before. 3x10″ released in a triple-gatefold jacket, featuring replica flyers and other ephemera included as inserts in the packaging.

When a synth master like Steve Moore joins forces with the legendary KPM, magic must materialise. And so it does with Analog Sensitivity: cinematic, enigmatic synthscapes to both haunt and heal. New York-based multi-instrumentalist/producer/film composer Steve Moore is probably best known for his synthesizer and bass guitar work as Zombi, together with Anthony Paterra. But he is also part of Miracle and Titan as well as being a prolific solo artist releasing music as Gianni Rossi, Lovelock and under his own name. The story of Analog Sensitivity starts with those soundtracks, or more specifically the time in between them. Rather than being commissioned by KPM, this LP comes from music Steve was recording sporadically and tinkering with for over three years during the downtime between his film projects. There were no ideas about what it was nor a plan for how it would be released, or even if it was going to be released at all. However, after Jon Tye invited him to play on the Ocean Moon project for KPM Steve realised that the hallowed library label might be the perfect home for what he had been working on. The people at KPM agreed. Finishing production in late 2019 in Albany, NY, he came up with the track sequencing and suddenly, he had an album: Analog Sensitivity.

Conceived At The Heel Of Italy's Boot-Shaped Peninsula In Apulia, Patrick Belaga's Blutt Makes Music For The Unruly Imagination. The Title Is An Old German Word For 'Naked', 'Bare', But It Can Also Mean 'Blood' When Spelt Blut. Take Away Another Letter And It Makes 'Butt'. None Of These Definitions And Adaptations Were What Prompted The Classically-Trained Composer And Cellist To Name His Second Album With A Word Simulating The Sound Of A Punctured Artery. That Came Later. Blutt's Nine Woozy Compositions Are Inspired By A Contemplative Road Trip With A Friend, And The Mysterious Muffled Music Heard From An Unidentified Source. It Was A Combination Of Jazz And Classical Music That Haunted Belaga's Wanderings Through The Byzantine Town Gallipoli, And Soon Infected His Dreams Of Long-Gone Civilizations. This Record Is Its Outcome, Where Organic Instrumentals And Electronic Production Merge Into A Sound That's Both Contemporary And Ancient. Samples Of Mewing Incantations And Tape Hiss Sway Atop The Waltzing Thud Of Piano Chords On "Sigh". Composite Layers Of Belaga's Cello Play In Downcast Harmony On "Rust". There's A Wistful Sense For The Romantic, In The Eerie Rhythm Of A Piece Like "Momentum". The Quarter Tones Of An Eastern European And Middle Eastern Folk Scale Probe A Profound Melancholy Via Kai Knight's Violin. Its Notes Are Haunted By A Field Recording Of Running Water On "Unsoft", Echoes Of Panpipes And A Jew's Harp On Opener "Lilt". As A Consummate Composer And Performer Known For His Work With Artists Wu Tsang, Boychild, Josh Johnson And Asma Maroof, Belaga's Blutt Is Itself Marked By Flawless Collaborations. Vocalist And Instrumentalist Jazmin Romero Sings And Composes The Surreal Melodies Of "Grey Eye". Multidisciplinary Dance Artist And Producer Riley Watts Contributes To The Muted, Motorik Movement Of "The Tunnel Is A Tower". Together, The Record Plays As A Stunning Soundtrack To The Strangeness Of Sleeping, And The Heartbreaking Transience Of Time. Like An Intense Dream Half-Remembered, The...

After An Almost 6 Year Hiatus, And The Break Up Of The Audio-Visual Trio It Had Evolved Into, Origamibiro Returns With Miscellany, A Body Of Work Amassed During The Years Since The Release Of 2014's Odham's Standard.Though The Group Never Officially Disbanded, A Number Of Life-Changing Events Meant It Simply Became Impossible To Continue Together. As Such, The Project Organically Reverted Back To The Solo Pursuits Of Composer Tom Hill. Fellow Multi-Instrumentalist Andy Tytherleigh, However, Remains A Strong Collaborator.Miscellany Comprises A Varied Mixture Of Work, Ranging From Electroacoustic To Orchestral Chamber Music. Drawing Upon Much Of The Found-Sound Style Fo...

180g vinyl, limted to 200 copies, including download code.

The corona pandemic slowed life down. No more gigs, clubs closed, festivals canceled. For me the chance to try new things and find a new way to make music. Without the club context, I was free in my mind. Making music right out of myself was a liberating feeling. I could do what had been dormant in me for a long time. There were attempts now and then, but in the end I couldn't get rid of the feeling of always doing techno. Nice too, but not everything for me. Many inspirations of my music come from artists such as Nils Frahm, Ólafur Arnalds, Yann Tiersen, Martin Kohlstedt, Poppy Ackroyd and many others, as well as nature, forest and city noises. And often from the instruments themselves. I switched my setup in the studio from the electronic to a minimalist instrument setup, just piano, double bass and a Moog synthesizer. I also like the background noise that comes from an instrument, like the hammers and dampers on the piano, the fingerboard and bow noises of the double bass. So I tried a lot of recording techniques and microphones until I found the sound I was looking for. After a few recordings, a number of pieces came together that went well together. I decided to finish it as an album. Some of them are one-takes with the associated imperfections, others are recorded and arranged layer by layer in the studio. I also used field recordings. A warm summer rain was the starting point for "Rain". The album will be released in May 2021 as a limited vinyl edition and digitally on my newly founded label "Feldeffekt".

Piano Day 2021 sees Nils Frahm surprise the world with his Erased Tapes debut. Wait, what? How? Anyone who has seen the trail blazing sonic pioneer live will know Nils likes to deadpan a joke. Graz is in fact the first studio album he recorded for the label back in 2009, that somehow remained a secret… until now. Nils Frahm has quietly changed the musical landscape, reincarnating the centuries old figure of a pianist-composer for a new generation of music fans. As Nils’ word-of-mouth popularity grew and grew, so did the pop-culture profile of his instrument. He founded Piano Day with a team of like-minded friends in 2015 to help that process, some years releasing an album of piano recordings to celebrate one of humankind’s greatest inventions. Graz is one such record; an unheard snapshot of a young Nils recorded at Mumuth, the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, in 2009 as part of the thesis Conversations for Piano and Room produced by Thomas Geiger, which received an award in the Classical Surround Recording category at the 127th AES Convention in New York. Whilst at the time it was decided to keep the grand piano recordings from the Graz sessions locked away and instead focus on his close mic’ed, dampened piano explorations which would become his acclaimed studio album Felt in 2011, two of the pieces — most notably Hammers — lived on as part of his live set, and were expanded on and re-recorded as part of his breakthrough 2013 record Spaces (a collage of field recordings from concerts which broke the Fourth Wall and included audience coughs). Over his mercurial career, Nils has pushed and pulled at the boundaries and parameters of his prolific work like that. He’s physically changed his piano (the softened prepared strings of Felt) played with a modified body (Screws recorded with 9 fingers and a broken thumb) played with scale (Solo recorded on the 3.7 metre high Klavins M370) and with the different layers of formats (last year’s Tripping with Nils Frahm nested his studio setup inside a live performance, concert film and live album). Now with Graz he has found the final frontier for play: time itself and his own discography. Graz is a moment of time at the very beginning of Nils’ quiet revolution. The essential genius is already evident; the harmonic language of classical, and the immediacy of jazz. Nils seems to pull down each idea moment by moment, gently, to not scare away the muse. He describes: “sometimes when you hear a piano, you might think it’s a conversation between a woman and a man. At the same time, it can hint at shapes of the universe and describe how a black hole looks. You can make

Moby’s eclectic career has cast him in the roles of electronic dance music pioneer, singer and songwriter, producer, activist, and restaurateur, but for his latest venture he presents his music in a whole new light. Together with Deutsche Grammophon, he is releasing an album of some of his best known tracks in stunning new arrangements for classical instruments – featuring Moby himself and a stellar lineup of collaborators from across the musical spectrum.

Though it was as a creator of dance music that he found fame in the 1990s, Moby’s music has never been easy to pigeonhole – his 1999 smash hit album Play, for instance, drew heavily on samples from Alan Lomax’s archive of field recordings. On this newly announced album, to be released on 26 March 2021, classic Moby songs including “Porcelain”, “Why Does My Heart”, and “Extreme Ways” will be released in innovative new versions. The album concludes with a cover of David Bowie’s “Heroes”.

Always a daring and imaginative thinker, Moby’s first classical collaboration came in October 2018, when he performed a selection of his songs alongside the LA Phil and conductor Gustavo Dudamel. This was the inspiration for the current project, which features not only full orchestral versions but new electronic arrangements, as well as sophisticated smaller-scale acoustic interpretations.

The 14-track album features some eye-catching collaborations including both Jim James (My Morning Jacket) and the acclaimed classical pianist Víkingur Ólafsson on “Porcelain”; Gregory Porter and Amythyst Kiah on “Natural Blues”; and Kris Kristofferson as well as original vocalist Mark Lanegan on “The Lonely Night”.

Mischa Blanos is part of the cult Romanian Formation Amorf (together with Christi Cons and Vlad Caia) which tours all over the world as a headliner of the “ro-minimal” scene. - The blend of electronic music and academic piano training is not new, but few artists have expertise on both musical fronts. The result is an album with a unique organic groove. - Technically Mischa is an outstanding pianist (with several piano prizes). His perfect knowledge of his piano, which he also uses as a rhythm box, allows him to improvise/jam, which gives “City Jungle” a certain “Jazz” dimension. - City Jungle is his first album (after two EPS for InFiné)

180g vinyl.

Lubomyr Melnyk returns with a 24-minute mini album entitled 'Evertina' on December 15, 2014. Featuring three newly composed solo piano pieces, the long-form EP showcases another side to Lubomyr – his more gentle and melodic work.

180 Gramm Vinyl

Eight years after its original release in 2015, and sold out upon release, Umor Rex finally presents a vinyl repress of Sirens, by Kara-Lis Coverdale and LXV. This new edition is limited to 500 copies and comes with revised artwork.

Inspired by the link between seduction and violence, Sirens comprises a series of timbrally vast anamorphic pieces that poise the voice as a newly imagined tool of multiplicity. Processes of sample manipulation, signal processing, routing, and source design inform instrumental writing and performance in feedback until intertwined, flickering between states of conflict and consonance. Apparitions of the schizophrenic voice are at one moment fractured and cold and at the next full of warmth and vivaciousness, embodying velvet rituals of romanticism in the digital age.

Ultimately, Sirens is music for ambitious dreamers: surreal sound portraits sound like the warmth of the world laid over an ice cold virtual altar. LXV’s vocal truncations and fleshy sound palettes depict the archivation of the breath and aural fantasies of the flesh which Coverdale sets amongst a vast and unconfined landscape of deeper and unknown force. Harmonically active and dynamic orchestrations underpin post-sacred tonalities while brooding pipe organs, sphinx flutes, and hailstorms of metallic percussion characterize uniquely disjointed discussions between disparate compositional ontologies. At times violent and at others serenely peaceful and seductive, these pieces, at their most powerful moments illuminate a felt space between cybernetic energy and the body.

Composed and recorded by Kara-Lis Coverdale and David Sutton. Mastered by John Tejada. Cover photograph by Cody Cobb. Layout by Daniel Castrejón.

Ambivalence has the tendency to dance to its very own beat because of its implied ambiguity. It’s the antithesis to any kind of middle of the road business. And it’s something that rings particularly true for Joram Feitsma’s sophomore album “Flux“. Giving home to fifteen songs that were composed between 2017 and very late 2020, “Flux“ is the result of multiple years of experimenting with different styles, different tones, different feelings, exposing an emotional spectrum you thought you’ve lost in the fire for good. It’s sensual. it’s sensitive. It’s even a bit otherworldly. It’s a testament to the idea that we’re all capable of immense love regardless of its possible disillusionment and consequential losses. Hand numbered/limited to 200 copies.

Only 1 per customer.

Melody As Truth present “Melodies In The Sand”, a collection of works from Czech artists Irena and Vojtěch Havlovi. The husband-and-wife duo began working together in the mid 80’s as part of experimental ensemble Capella Antiqua e Moderna, a unique association of musicians whose repertoire spanned various styles of European classical music. With an inventive and unorthodox approach to both historical and modern compositional techniques and interpretive procedures, the Havel’s have steadfastly developed a unique and musically autonomous language which continues to expand to this day. Spanning their early work in Capella Antique e Moderna to recent pieces recorded for Viola De Gamba, ‘Melodies In The Sand’ is presented to the listener with the simple aim of shining a light on these incredible musicians. Their work has within it the ability to penetrate and enrich the innermost corners of a perceptive human soul, a gift which they share with sincerity and humbleness.