Few rock groups can claim to have broken so much new territory, and maintain such consistent brilliance on record, as the Velvet Underground during their brief lifespan…
Lou Reed has a new album out although you might not know about it yet. Metal Machine Trio: The Creation of the Universe is an instrumental double album recorded over two nights at Los Angeles' Redcat. These two special live concert recordings of non-vocal music featuring Lou on guitar and electronics, Ulrich Krieger on tenor sax and live-electronics, and Sarth Calhoun on live processing and Fingerboard Continuum.
The violin and cello duo cannot be considered as a musical rarity; yet it is also far from one of the most popular instrumental combinations in Western classical music. It is a challenging ensemble for both those composing for it and those venturing in the performance of its repertoire. It is a duo which invites counterpoint: the deep nature of both instruments and their vocation is to melodic singing, to the sustained lines which translate the human being’s aspiration to vocality into instrumental music. In consequence, to undertake a composition for violin and cello duo is also to implicitly accept the challenge of polyphony, and to affirm one’s mastery of its most intricate secrets.
With 2010’s career-defining Blackjazz, Norwegian band Shining held back from polishing the roughness that was always present around its sonic edges. Despite moving away from its origins as an acoustic jazz ensemble and into the realm of extreme metal over the latter part of the ‘00s, even when it went all-out crazy, there was a surprising restraint on the part of the musicians…