Radio Silent

The 150th anniversary of Charles Koechlin's birth in November 2017 is marked by the reissue of all the Koechlin recordings made by the Sudwestrundfunk. This release of Koechlin's orchestral works includes many world premiere recordings and gives a comprehensive overview of Koechlin's output- from the early orchestral songs to his orchestrations of works by other composers and to his huge later works. Koechlin's compositional style was very subtle, full of delicate, colorful combinations of instrumental sounds. Many of his colleagues allowed him to orchestrate their works, simply because Koechlin was a master of the art.

Australia's All India Radio is an Ambient Electronic/Post-Rock project helmed by songwriter/producer Martin Kennedy whose sound straddles the line between '60s psychedelia, '70s Krautrock, and contemporary styles from downtempo to chillgaze. All India Radio first gained attention issuing a series of evocative, often cinematic recordings in the 2000s, including The Inevitable, Permanent Evolutions, and The Silent Surf. All India Radio's music has been used on TV shows like CSI: Miami, One Tree Hill, The Lying Game, and Emmerdale, among others. Kennedy has also played with the Church's singer Steve Kilbey for a series albums, including 2014's sci-fi soundtrack The Rare Earth and 2017's Glow and Fade.

Australia's All India Radio is an Ambient Electronic/Post-Rock project helmed by songwriter/producer Martin Kennedy whose sound straddles the line between '60s psychedelia, '70s Krautrock, and contemporary styles from downtempo to chillgaze. All India Radio first gained attention issuing a series of evocative, often cinematic recordings in the 2000s, including The Inevitable, Permanent Evolutions, and The Silent Surf. All India Radio's music has been used on TV shows like CSI: Miami, One Tree Hill, The Lying Game, and Emmerdale, among others. Kennedy has also played with the Church's singer Steve Kilbey for a series albums, including 2014's sci-fi soundtrack The Rare Earth and 2017's Glow and Fade.

A star in her native Denmark, jazz singer Sinne Eeg has been weaving her spell in performances throughout Europe, the United States and Asia, where audiences and critics alike have responded enthusiastically to her dark, alluring voice, rich timbre, impeccable intonation, inherent sense of swing and remarkably natural scatting ability that recalls her own vocal jazz heroes, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Anita O'Day. On We've Just Begun, her winning collaboration with the 19-piece Danish Radio Big Band and 9th album overall, Eeg sings with signature soulfulness, sassy spirit and jazzy abandon on a program of three well-chosen standards, a swinging adaptation of a tune from a vintage Danish film, and five affecting originals with Eeg as composer and/or lyricist.

The protagonist of Saint-Saëns’ Proserpine, premiered at the Opéra-Comique on 14 March 1887, is no reincarnation of the ancient goddess, but a Renaissance courtesan well versed in culpable amours. According to the composer, she is ‘a damned soul for whom true love is a forbidden fruit; as soon as she approaches it, she experiences torture’. Yet for all the innocence of her rival Angiola, the unexpected happens: ‘It is the bloodthirsty beast that is admirable; the sweet creature is no more than pretty and likeable.’ Visibly enraptured by this delight in horror, Saint-Saëns indulges in unprecedented orchestral modernity, piling on the dissonances beneath his characters’ cries of rage or despair. He concluded thus: ‘Proserpine is, of all my stage works, the most advanced in the Wagnerian system.’ The least-known, too, and one which it was high time to reveal to the public, in its second version, revised in 1899.

Radio Noisz Ensemble, successor of the folk group Emma Myldenberger, came from the Weinheim an der Bergstrasse area and released its only LP, "Yniverze" in 1982. It was compared to works of the Third Ear Band, Between, and Tri Atma. "Odiszée-Parck", appearing only as a small cassette edition, followed in 1983. The music on this album is of a significantly freer style, more unwieldy and harder to digest than its predecessor; less meditative. Once again the oboe is the leading instrument, and also the remaining instrumentation, featuring English horn, zither, double-bass, violin, flutes, etc. is quite unusual.

The fact that Roussel's four symphonies aren't better known is a pity, but surely the fault of his own countrymen. Symphonies were never a French specialty, and of the four great French practitioners of the symphonic art at the first decades of this century (Honegger, Roussel, Tournemire, and Magnard), only Honegger seems to have firmly established himself in the international repertoire. While Roussel's Third was championed by conductors like Charles Munch and Leonard Bernstein, even in France the remaining works are neglected. They are, however, one and all, excellently crafted pieces: tuneful, pithy, and very listenable. If you like one, you'll like them all; so this first-rate set is both good listening and good sense.

Giuseppe Sinopoli was a conductor quite versed in Mahler’s music. He left recordings of all the Mahler symphonies made for Deutsche Grammophon (DGG). It is well known that each of these performances is on the highest level. So it is natural that most listeners think these Mahler recordings are the last word of Sinopoli’s interpretation.

Radio Massacre International is a trio of English musicians (Duncan Goddard, Steve Dinsdale, Gary Houghton) known for their extended concerts of epic aural excursions. Their performances are largely improvised and often veer off into areas dictated by mood, circumstance or whim. RMI's recorded output reflects the diversity and complexity of this work, which is often compared to that of the Berlin School of cosmic music that emerged in Germany during the 1970s. But RMI is not simply re-creating the music of this era, but rather further exploring and contemplating the expressional mode and the instruments that made it possible - in hopes of realizing new ideas. Their album "Solid States" is an audio document of their bi-coastal 2002 tour of the USA, including the track "Nov(embers)" recorded live on Star's End.