Kristin Berglund

Kristin Rule are cellist/composer/looper from Australia. Her release, 'The Knife that Cuts a Tear', is reaching deep into the hearts and minds of listeners from all walks of life. A composition graduate from the Victorian College of the Arts, Kristin has found her voice in the form of a cello and a loopstation. In performance, her original compositions are created live, layer by layer, mesmerising audiences with exquisite melodies, rich harmonies and beautifully raw sonorities.

Kristin Hersh’s new album is a cinematic road trip; a series of personal vignettes from a fiercely independent auteur, sitting plush with layers of all-consuming strings and mellotron. It’s a watershed moment in a career overflowing with creative firsts and inspirational thinking; an elegant piece of personal reportage, a home movie caught in time. Previously, the juxtaposition of light and dark has been essential to the drama of Throwing Muses and 50FOOTWAVE, but this solo set is something of a departure; more inward looking, quieter but outspoken, underpinned by background noise for ambience and awkwardness. “Passion sounds less angry, more grateful, I think,” Kristin muses, “sweeter, sadder. And somehow, no less alive… over car engines and rain in New England and whistling ducks and wind chimes in New Orleans, it all sounds wistful to me.” ‘Clear Pond Road’ is a life-affirming statement, a further part of the jigsaw, a very personal memoir, from street signs to snapshots; a late blossoming and coming-of-age from a true icon of independence. The record is both intimate yet expansive, written largely within the confines of Hersh’s home, making the proceedings ever more personal. // “Few artists understand the intensity of living one’s art like Hersh” The Guardian // “A fearless rock innovator” New York Times

SAVED! is an apocalyptic revelation on the complex, sometimes ugly, always nonlinear process of healing. Herein, Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter documents an earnest attempt to achieve salvation through the tenets of charismatic Christianity, focusing on the Pentecostal-Holiness Movement, which dictate that one’s closeness to God is demonstrated through transcendental personal experience. Sonically and thematically, the record is both a logical conclusion to and a significant departure from Hayter’s previous work as Lingua Ignota. Mirroring her personal evolution away from pain, she sheds the moniker that made her successful for its unflinching expression of lived trauma and instead builds herself anew, claiming her full given name, determined to see value within. Musically, while she continues to use historical avant-garde technique and formal constraints superimposed over accessible frameworks, she also strips down her instrumentation and degrades audio to provide a sense of musicological antiquity. Similar to Lingua Ignota, the record is steeped in pathos, but now the wrath of God gives way to His deliverance: “His boundless love shall make you whole.”

Expanded 30th Anniversary Edition of Kristin Hersh’s Stunning Debut Album. The album plus b-sides and string versions. Also includes lyrics and sleeve notes by Kristin. In 1994, the arrival of a solo album by Kristin Hersh seemed somewhat redundant. After all, Throwing Muses—the band she co-founded with stepsister Tanya Donnelly—had come to be defined by Hersh's singular vocals and songwriting style, both of which moved in unpredictable directions that were wholly unique and intensely evocative. It was Hersh's artistic dominance in the Muses that led to Donnelly leaving the band in 1991 to join the Breeders, then, later, form Belly to play her own, more traditionally hook-oriented take on indie rock. The first Donnelly-less Muses album, Red Heaven, found the band working as a trio, with Hersh's presence even more dominant. The follow-up—University—was recorded soon after, but was temporarily shelved for Hersh to record and release Hips and Makers. Initially viewed as a "get it out of my system" album, Hersh recorded it in fits and spurts over the summer of 1993, tapping Lenny Kaye to produce. Although she very much takes an unaccompanied guitar-and-voice approach to this material, the cavernous recording style combined with Hersh's individualistic approach to composition and tempo make this anything but typical coffee shop material. Vivid lyrics ("Don't kill the God of Sadness/ Just don't let her get you down" on "The Letter," for instance, or "press your palm to your snow-coated thought cage" on "Beestung") are both sharply focused and deeply impressionistic, and none of the songs here appear to have anything resembling a traditional chorus.

Violinist and conductor Gottfried von der Goltz has gained recognition as the leader of the Freiburger Barockorchester (or "Freiburg Baroque Orchestra"), an innovative historical-performance ensemble. He also performs widely as a violin soloist. Von der Goltz was born in the Bavarian city of Würzburg on June 1, 1964. He studied with his father, Georg Conrad von der Goltz, and his mother, Kirsti Hjort. Von der Goltz studied at the Hochschule für Musik in Hannover under Rami Shevelov, moved to New York for graduate studies at the Juilliard School, and continued taking lessons with Rainer Kussmaul in Freiburg. At age 21, von der Goltz earned a violin chair in the NDR Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg, looking forward to a secure career with a solid German orchestra. Two years later, he relinquished that post in favor of the Baroque violin, in the mid-'80s, not a terribly common instrument in Germany. That led to von der Goltz's leadership of the Freiburger Barockorchester, where he continues, with Kristian Bezuidenhout, to hold the post of artistic director. With the Freiburg group, he has amassed a large catalog of recordings, beginning in 1994 with an album of works by Purcell and Handel.