Death Cab for Cutie's eighth full-length album, 2015's Kintsugi, finds the group sliding further into the studio smoothness that marked 2011's Codes and Keys. Produced by Rich Costey – best-known for his work with Kimbra, Mew, Muse, Interpol, and Chvrches – Kintsugi is also the last album Death Cab recorded with co-founding member Chris Walla, who announced he was leaving the band during the recording process. Sentiment has always been lead singer/songwriter Ben Gibbard's calling card, but as he starts to stare down the corridor to 40, he seems comfortable with leaving that open heart unadorned – or, better still, gussied up in a coat of studio shellac.
Call it postminimalist, totalist, or maximalist, the orchestral music of Bang on a Can co-founder Michael Gordon is big, loud, frenzied, and assertive, jam-packed with stylistic references, dense with inventive orchestration, and overflowing with virtuoso activity. Dystopia, performed by David Robertson and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, is a kaleidoscopic portrait of the city of Los Angeles, created in collaboration with filmmaker Bill Morrison. This live recording of the work's premiere at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, January 12, 2008, captures the energy and spontaneity of the music, which at times is quite reminiscent of the hubbub of the Shrovetide Fair in Stravinsky's Petrushka, though one must imagine that the listening experience with the film was overwhelming. In contrast, Rewriting Beethoven's Seventh Symphony is not so much a wall of sound as a multi-layered gloss on its original material, an echo of Beethoven's music warped and reshaped through glissandi, microtones, clusters, montage, and other modern techniques.
As more ensembles perform and record Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians, its status as a minimalist masterpiece is increasingly affirmed. Ensemble Signal's 2015 release on Harmonia Mundi is one of several amazing performances that have matched Reich's original ECM New Series recording in technical brilliance and expressivity, and it has even earned the composer's approval for being, "…fast moving, spot on, and emotionally charged." Under the direction of Brad Lubman, Ensemble Signal maintains a relentlessly steady pulse and articulates the interlocking patterns with absolute precision, though the shifting tone colors are perhaps a little clearer in this performance than in other recordings. The microphone placement is not so close that individual instruments stand out, but there is enough separation of parts to allow some sense of direction and the orientation of the smaller sub-groups of pianos, xylophones, marimbas, strings, clarinets, and voices. This is a mesmerizing performance that will transfix listeners, and the music is so compelling that it will linger on well after the CD stops. Highly recommended.
Beethoven’s opus of 32 piano sonatas, known as “the New Testament of piano music”, is a landmark in piano literature. Spanning Beethoven’s entire life, the sonatas reflect his whole development as a human being and a musician, moving from one century into the next, from one epoch in music in to another. With the sonatas “Pathétique”, “Moonlight”, “Waldstein”, “Appassionata”, “Hammerklavier” and the final sonata op. 111, the cycle contains some of the most known piano pieces of all time.
Songhoy Blues are a young and exuberant Malian band who already have a remarkable history behind them. They fled from their homes in the north when radical Islamists overran the region, and on reaching the safety of Bamako, decided to form a band – at which point their fortunes dramatically changed. They came to the attention of Amadou & Mariam’s manager, Marc-Antoine Moreau, who was looking for musicians who could record with the Africa Express team when they came to town; they also collaborated with Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on the AE’s Maison Des Jeunes set. Now comes their first full album, co-produced by Moreau and Zinner, and it’s an impressively varied and rousing set, if somewhat predictable. There’s electric desert blues (Nick), slinky, acoustic ballads (Petit Metier), and reworkings of songs from the Songhoy tradition. A band to watch.
The Island Years is a new comprehensive anthology featuring the work British rock band Spooky Tooth who released seven studio albums between 1968 and 1974…