Harmonic Divergence is the perfect companion piece to Steven Wilson’s highly acclaimed 2023 album The Harmony Codex. On this very limited nine track release, music from the original album has been remixed and reimagined by Wilson, alongside longtime bandmates/collaborators and like-minded bands and producers. The result is a warped mirror image of the original, where oblique electronics are replaced by spidery gothic guitar riffs and cyclical piano tracks are mutated and transformed for the dance floor.
Presented in a stylish 4-CD box set, here is a comprehensive recording of one of the most enigmatic manuscripts in the history of European music, preserved in the museum at the Château de Chantilly, France. ‘Anything that can be sung, can be written in music notation,’ claimed an anonymous treatise on notation in the late fourteenth century. The harmonies thus ‘captured’ on parchment represent an apex in Western music, associated with the wealthiest courts in Christendom, called ‘decadent’ by some.
Following their debut release 2021’s ‘Fragments’, the trio of bassist extraordinaire Nick Beggs (Kajagoogoo / Steven Wilson), gifted jazz keyboardist Adam Holzman (Grover Washington / Steven Wilson) & rhythmic powerhouse Craig Blundell, return to deliver their signature brand of instrumental Prog come Funk or Prunk / Frog if you were to be so bold. Aside from being immensely talented performers, the three have all at one point performed together as part of Steven Wilson’s band & all three appear on Wilson’s new album ‘The Harmony Codex’.
A long-awaited new release of one of the world’s most respected medieval music ensembles, Crawford Young’s Ferrara Ensemble continues its interpretation of late Gothic composers, in the first recording ever of what has been called the Mt. Everest of music notation puzzles - Angelorum psalat of the Codex Chantilly, recently published in a new edition by Crawford Young. A pinnacle of complexity, the Codex Chantilly, c1400, reflects the taste of popes and secular rulers such as Jean, Duc de Berry.
Stephen Rice and The Brabant Ensemble uncover more Renaissance treasures: Jacob Obrecht’s name may now be less familiar than those of some of his Flemish contemporaries, yet in his lifetime he was considered second only to Josquin.
A homage to the memory of victims of the slave trade. This new multicultural project from Jordi Savall and his musicians on The Routes of Slavery (1444-1888) marks a world first in the history of music and of the three continents involved in the trade in African slaves and their exploitation in the New World, which are brought together through the early music of the colonial period, the musical traditions of Mali and the oral traditions of the descendants of slaves in Madagascar, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico. This 'Musical Memoir' is accompanied with historical texts on slavery, beginning with the early chronicles of 1444 and concluding with texts written by the Nobel Peace Prize-winner Martin Luther King shortly before his assassination in 1968.