Begley Flac

Welcome to this month’s free 15-track CD – exclusively curated for Uncut by Lankum. The band developed in Dublin’s traditional music clubs, but have long tapped into wider international networks of punk, drone, electronica and black metal. They’ve now become inspirations themselves, leading a scene pushing traditional music to the very edges and, as they discuss in their feature in this month’s issue of Uncut, they’re proud to bring new and emerging talents to attention outside of Ireland.

Sister in kith is the third album from Treppenwitz, the latest chapter in an ongoing story. The band set up with microphones in a living room; the engineer pressed record and they played. There was no separation between the instruments, and the audio has almost no post-production treatment. The results are startlingly immediate. sister in kith is simply the raw sound of these musicians, on that day, in that room, and the stunning audio quality seems to almost ignore that fact.

The opening evening of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, Das Rheingold is the prologue of the cycle, which is followed in turn by the music dramas Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung. The first instalment in Jaap van Zweden's projected Ring with the Hong Kong Philharmonic – an undertaking he regards as central to his tenure with the orchestra – is a promising beginning that may surprise many experienced Wagnerians. Van Zweden is ambitious in presenting the Ring with this orchestra, which plays it for the first time, though in fairness to the musicians, they offer an intensity and vigor that more than makes up for any minor scrappiness.