Live With Orchestra Version of "Pour Cyril" from How To Dress Well joined by Minna Choi’s Magik*Magik orchestra and first performed as part of a continuous sixty-minute live score put together to mark the release of "What Is This Heart?" in Berlin last June. 

Listen to How To Dress Well deconstruct the making of "Pour Cyril" in a new episode of Song Exploder: http://bit.ly/1EFXd04

"What Is This Heart?" out now on Weird World / Domino

Order the album on CD or LP
How to Dress Well: smarturl.it/htdwwithww
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or your local record store

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Pour Cyril (Live With Orchestra)

Some things could be attributed to chance, while others result from human [in]action. Reality has a way of unfolding, but we also can shape it, if we only try. We can create distortion fields in this world, both negative and positive. I prefer to do it with music [and also with these words], feeling the pressure levels of air displaced through this space, seeing my actions evolve our community. The key is to channel it into the right things. The key is to mould this reality by lowering suffering and not creating more insanity spun out by imaginary thoughts. Turkish electronic musician Siné Buyuka expresses her frustration, aggrievement and grief for the loss and devastation of the 2022 Turkiye-Syria earthquake on her latest album, Farewell. Producing under her Sinemis moniker, the music captures the visceral emotional maelstrom through sound shaped by organic pads, pulsating bass, and prickly stabs from semi-modular synths. Buyuka's music is "at once a love letter to the beautiful land that she once called home and a scathing indictment of the governing powers that have so harmed its own people, culture, and freedom." The tension of this cinematic expression is held together by beatless rhythm and sweeping noise that would appeal to fans of Caterina Barbieri, Alessandro Cortini and Helene Vogelsinger. Siné, of course, is more than an artist - she is also the founder and curator of an Istanbul and London-based boutique label, Injazero Records, which put out a benefit compilation two years ago (March 2023) titled re-LEAF with all profits donated to the Ahbap NGO in Turkiye for their wide-range relief operation in an ethnically diverse area home to millions of immigrants and Syrian refugees.

TRACK PREMIERE : Sinemis - It's Not Fate, It's You

For over two decades, the Osnabrück duo of Stephan Otten and Oliver Klemm has inhabited the sacred intersection of Krautrock's motorik pulse, ambient's expansive consciousness, and contemporary electronica's limitless possibility. Their approach to composition mirrors the architectural precision I've celebrated in my previous coverage on HC, where each element serves both structural and emotional purposes. In the liminal hours between consciousness and dream, Sankt Otten crafts sonic territories that feel both ancient and impossibly futuristic. "Die Gute Fee War Schon Da" (The Good Fairy Was Already There) emerges from their forthcoming album Tote Winkel like a meditation on synthetic breath. Long sighs and deep breathing from a machine that carries an undercurrent of foreboding beauty. This particular piece unfolds with the hypnotic inevitability of oncoming headlights—mesmerizing yet tinged with existential unease. Recorded predominantly live with Martin Schmeing spontaneously contributing DX7 textures, the track embodies Sankt Otten's evolution toward more organic creation methods. The fairy tale reference in the title suggests narrative completion. As their fourteenth album approaches on Denovali, Sankt Otten continues to prove that the most profound electronic music emerges not from technological innovation alone, but from the spaces where human vulnerability meets synthetic precision. Fans of synth-based explorations of future-retro sound will agree.

TRACK PREMIERE : Sankt Otten - Die Gute Fee War Schon Da

This song lives in the space between a knock and an open door.

It’s about the moment when words aren’t needed when a parent can see, just by looking, that something has changed. Not just a visit, but a return. Not just a man standing there, but a son who’s finally listening again.

When the Wind Remembers is less about memory and more about recognition. The wind doesn’t speak in sentences it moves through feeling, through instinct, through the kind of knowing that passes down long before it’s ever understood.

This song marks the quiet turning point of the story.
No speeches. No forgiveness required.
Just two souls recognizing that the path has led back home.

Some things don’t have to be said.
The wind remembers for us.

[Verse 1]
I hadn’t even knocked
The gravel still settling behind my feet
When the old front door creaked open
Like it somehow knew my heartbeat.

Dad stood there in the porch light
Hands steady, shoulders worn by years
And in the quiet between us
I felt my whole life disappear

[Pre-Chorus]
No words, no welcome home
No questions where I’d been
Just a father reading truth
Beneath my skin

[Chorus]
And he knew
Lord, he knew before I spoke a sound
He saw the man I’d carried
Finally putting all that weight down
In one look, he saw the road
That had twisted me too long
And he knew his son wasn’t just visiting
He was home
He was home

[Verse 2]
His eyes softened like he’d waited
Through a thousand silent nights
Like every prayer he whispered
Found its home in fading light

I tried to play it steady,
Like a grown man standing tall
But something in his knowing
Made the armor start to fall

[Pre-Chorus 2]
He didn’t say I missed you
He didn’t have to try
The wind itself fell quiet
When my father met my eyes

[Chorus]
And he knew
Lord, he knew what I couldn’t understand
That the land had called me back
long before my feet touched this land
In that doorway, in that twilight
In that breath between our bones
He knew his son wasn’t just visiting
He was home
He was home

[Bridge]
Maybe fathers see the truth
Before the world gives it a name
Maybe home is not a place
But the one who whispers who you’ve been

[Final Chorus]
And he knew
In the quiet where the past and present meet
He saw the boy he raised returning
In the man before his feet.
No speeches, no forgiveness
Just a heart that finally found its own

He knew his son wasn’t just visiting
He was home.
He was home.

My Fathers Doorway

No Witness but the Day.wav

Hyperballad is written by Björk
Arranged by Luke Howard and Ben Abraham
Re-arranged by Tim Shiel

I love this song.

'Hyperballad' came out as a single 20 years ago today (Feb 12, 1996).

To celebrate the fact, I approached some talented friends to help me work on a cover — composer Luke Howard and producer Tim Shiel.

The collaboration resulted in two beautiful versions that I am very proud to be a part of.

Luke's string arrangement makes the song feel like it could be a hundred years old; a testament to Björk's timeless songwriting. Tim's version, with electronic sparseness that pays homage to the original, reminds me that the song could have come out yesterday and it would still be fresh and arresting, and like nothing I've heard.

The lyrics have also become a personal narration for the stage of life I find myself in. I suppose that's what compelled me to want to record it. The exhaling that comes with singing the line "to be safe up here with you" is one of the song's many gifts.

Songs like this feel alive to me.

It's daunting to interpret such a canonised work and the original certainly didn't need to be added to or taken away from.

So with the utmost respect, here are the efforts of three friends who live on the other side of the world from this remarkable artist, celebrating her work with work of our own.

You can listen to Luke's version here: https://soundcloud.com/benabraham/hyperballad-with-luke-howard

Hyperballad with Tim Shiel

Opening track + track two from the ambient album 'This is soon too late'. 
FDL#05.

Support independent music?
https://federleicht.bandcamp.com/album/this-is-soon-too-late

Herbstlaub - Tijd als beloven / Du nahmst ganz einfach meine Hand (FDL#05, 2016)

Ambient Sketch

Jean-Michel Blais and CFCF are both accomplished musicians. Their collaborative work on the 'Cascades' EP, which is out March 15th on Arts & Crafts, is a heartbreakingly pretty collection of lush explorations pulled forward by warm piano and a fluid mix of new age calm and forward-thinking ambient. "In a Landscape (Rework)," as the parenthetical suggests, is a cover – of sorts – of a piece by John Cage of the same name. It premiered on RBMA Radio's Discreet Music, our weekly deep-dive into all manner of experimental sounds.

@cfcf
@artsandcrafts
https://www.rbmaradio.com/shows/discreet-music/
http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/

Cascades

Jean-Michel Blais & CFCF - In a Landscape (Rework) [Discreet Music Premiere]

I have long been interested in sleep, the unconscious and the subconscious when it comes to audio, listening and music.  With the birth of my first daughter I became particularly interested in sleep and how to get more of it (I’m sure most parents go through this).  I composed several pieces of simple drone music as an aid to our family to try to help us relax and sleep.  I have no idea if it really worked.  Jimmy’s piece and write up led me back to some of these thoughts about sleep and particularly what role audio plays during sleep, getting us to sleep, meditation, relaxation, dreaming, etc.

Jimmy makes some comments in his write up about sounds detached from the listener.  While Jimmy sleeps he images the sounds being heard by the objects that make them.  This is a beautiful idea in and of itself but what strikes me as interesting is that Jimmy still includes himself in his sonic portrait; a body, lying still and unconscious, perhaps not listening to these sounds but somehow still connected to them.

What role does audio play in aiding sleep?  What role does audio play while we are asleep? These are both interesting questions to me and are central to my relay piece and inspired by Jimmy’s piece and thoughts.


I’ve sampled small portions of Jimmy’s piece and reconstructed them into very simple layered patterns that loop and oscillate.  For me they are the sounds of the process of sleep itself. They are the sounds of a sort of sleep machine, an audio bridge between the conscious and unconscious.
Scott Morgan (Loscil) / September 2008 
______________________________________
Relay is an online music project devised and curated by musician John Lambert (aka Chequerboard). Explore the project in full at www.relayproject.com