The Glenn Branca

As demonstrated by the four works on this disc, the music of Anders Hillborg couples complexity with directness, sensuality with humour, hypnotic meditation with pulsating rhythms, and all is combined with an original sense of form and unfaltering craftsmanship.

Hans Zender - Schumann-Phantasie for large Orchestra / Bardo for Violoncello and Orchestra
Heinrich Schiff / SWR Sinfonieorchester / Hans Zender & Sylvain Cambreling
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 272 MB | Full Artwork: 51 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: hänsler # CD 93.128 | Country/Year: Germany 2006
Genre: Classical | Style: Contemporary

"…Drawing on a harmonic palette saturated with quarter tones, this rhythmically vital music is richly evocative, and a tour de force for the soloist. These virtuosic performances by the SWR SO are beautifully captured in all their detail in a superb acoustical ambience. Warmly recommended." ~Fanfare

This Austrian band produces disturbing sounds, full of pain and anger, and then they can all of a sudden shift to a softer, relaxed beat that makes you wonder if that is the same band. They swing back and forth between more rock oriented tracks and more avant-garde ones. The overall result is a very cool and interesting mélange of different approaches – from a more direct rock approach to a more unorganized, chaotic and experimental approach. The musical range is as wide as experimentalism is.

SPIRIT COUNSEL is a collection of three extended compositions recorded between 2018-19. This collection represents a period of reflection on spiritual matters, collective musical friendships, and a time and space universally, without words or languages to distract from meditation.

To confuse parts for the whole is inevitable with Palm. On their latest effort, Nicks and Grazes, Palm embrace discordance to dazzling effect. “We wanted to reconcile two potentially opposing aesthetics,” Kasra Kurt of the band says. “To capture the spontaneous, free energy of our live shows while integrating elements from the traditionally gridded palette of electronic music.”

Neurosis marks 30 years with Fires Within Fires, their 11th album. It's uncharacteristically economical, clocking in at a mere 40 minutes, their shortest since 1992's Souls at Zero. Engineered by Steve Albini (their sixth collaboration in a row), it takes stock of the places Neurosis has been since leaving behind their post-hardcore roots to pioneer the strange world of "post-metal." Opener "Bending Light" commences with a slow, doomy bassline and a guitar vamp that directly references Pink Floyd's "Nile Song" - specifically the Necros' mid-'80s cover - but uncouples itself to wander more jagged atmospheric terrain with sparse, bluesy guitar lines and darkly hued sonic effects from keyboardist Noah Landis…

Wim Mertens is a Belgian composer, countertenor vocalist, pianist, guitarist, and musicologist. Mertens studied social and political science at the University of Leuven (graduating in 1975) and musicology at Ghent University; he also studied music theory and piano at the Royal Conservatories of Gent and Brussels. In 1978, he became a producer at the then BRT (Belgian Radio and Television). For Radio 2 (Radio Brabant) he produced concerts by Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Meredith Monk, Urban Sax, and others, and hosted a program called Funky Town together with Gust De Meyer