Poetry

Stream & pre-order the album: https://idol-io.ffm.to/byrdsong

Today Shards announce their new album Byrd Song, inspired by Renaissance composer William Byrd, due April 19 on Erased Tapes. The album consists of eight reimagined works by Shards and their de facto leader Kieran Brunt, featuring the already released Facta est deserta and Amen, amen, amen… With today’s announcement, the vocal group shares the deeply emotional Agnus Dei.

“Agnus Dei is a meditation on a tiny fragment – the opening five notes of the Agnus Dei from Byrd's Mass for Five Voices - which builds into a song that is emotionally raw and impulsive. It's the first time I've recorded a song in one take, singing and playing the Prophet synth at the same time; as a result the rhythm is quite volatile and the processed vocal part florid and improvisatory” — Kieran Brunt

To mark the 400th anniversary of the death of the English composer in 2023, the broadcaster Elizabeth Alker commissioned a series of recordings and reworks of Byrd for a radio special on her BBC Radio 3’s Unclassified show. Kieran Brunt, who was in the midst of writing the new Shards album, contributed Facta est deserta, taking fragments from an original piece, adding autotune and distorted synths, painting a picture of a distant, broken landscape.

After finishing the commission, Brunt found himself distracted and followed his curiosity and delved deeper into Byrd’s compositions, which have long played as an inspiration for him as a composer. Expanding further on this, Brunt says “I’ve been singing Byrd’s music since I was at school, and sang a lot while studying and singing in my college chapel choir, which I did daily for three years. His music has endured for centuries because of its beauty, complexity and intense emotion“.

William Byrd was a devout Catholic in a Protestant England, much of his work was composed illegally at the time and performed in secret. “There’s a real sense of every note and word of text having extreme significance,” he adds.

Having the opportunity to bring new life to Byrd’s music through his own renditions and with the use of electronics, Brunt says “it has been so enjoyable to return to his music and reconnect with it with the tools I now use for my own compositions. I hope that by reimagining it with new timbres and the precision of effects like autotune I can illuminate certain details and shed a new light on its intricacies”.

Shards’ Byrd Song will be released on April 19 via Erased Tapes.

Byrd Song

Agnus Dei

Shards - Agnus Dei

Sylvia Plath on poetry – background and full text here: http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/10/27/sylvia-plath-reads-the-disquieting-muses-bbc/

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Sylvia Plath on poetry

Sylvia Plath reads her poem "The Disquieting Muses" – background and full text here: http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/10/27/sylvia-plath-reads-the-disquieting-muses-bbc/

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The Disquieting Muses

Transcript, context, and more here: http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/01/13/paul-goodman-silence/

Excerpted from WBUR's https://soundcloud.com/stylusradio/s1e1

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Christopher Ricks reads Paul Goodman on silence

Album: Nº1 DVD and Remixes
Label: Self - Release

and instantly take effect (loscil remix)

Background, context, and poem text: http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/07/15/nikki-giovanni-love-friendship-loneliness/

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"I'm Not Lonely" by Nikki Giovanni (read by Maria Popova)

"Love Is" by Nikki Giovanni (read by Maria Popova)

Szun Waves - Further

Download: https://www.xlr8r.com/mp3/2016/08/c-diab-memory-as-mist/

@c-diab

[via XLR8R]

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Download: C.Diab - Memory as Mist

The next release on London-based label @injazerorecords is a v/a compilation with all the proceedings going to mental health charity Mind. Spanning ambient, modern classical, and experimental electronic music, 'INJACOMP001' features contributions from the likes of EOMAC, Matt Emery and Throwing Snow side project Heathen Rites.

We're premiering a beautiful track called 'Closer' by Ukraine producer Oleg Shpudeiko aka @heinali. Here's what he had to say about it:

"'Closer' is from a far away 2012. Back then, I was finding my way back from a dark place I spent a great deal of time in before. So it's a fairly simple - I would even say therapeutic - recording that was brought about by a certain emotional experience. Memories of this experience grew dull with time, but the recording remains as is."

INJACOMP001

PREMIERE: Heinali - Closer [Injazero Records]

Taken from Kasper Bjørke Quartets forthcoming album "The Fifty Eleven Project"

Buy Single: KompaktRecords.lnk.to/LineOfLifeSD
Pre-order Album: KompaktRecords.lnk.to/TheFiftyElevenProjectSD

On October 19th Kompakt presents a new LP and audiovisual venture by Danish producer Kasper Bjørke and close cohorts. Epic and in length but always captivating, ‘The Fifty Eleven Project’ is an entirely ambient concept album, that interprets and evokes the emotional rollercoaster Kasper experienced, from his cancer diagnosis and throughout the five years of regular check-ups. The week of album release marks his second anniversary of getting the all-clear.

The base of the album was composed on vintage analogue synthesizers, reverbs, echo and sequencers – using the computer solely as a recording device – by Kasper and synth wizard Claus Norreen, in the latter’s Copenhagen studio.

The violins, violas and cellos are composed and played by the Italian composer Davide Rossi, who has also worked with Ennio Morricone, Jon Hopkins, Röyksopp, The Verve and Goldfrapp.

The piano parts are composed and played by Danish musician Jakob Littauer (of Kompakt labelmates Jatoma) on an old upright piano in a studio, and on a Steinway Grand Piano in the concert hall at the Royal Danish Music Conservatorium.

From Max Richter’s ‘SLEEP’, Hannah Peel’s ‘Mary Casio: Journey To Cassiopeia’, to much of Brian Eno’s ‘Music For Installations’, ‘The Fifty Eleven Project’ continues in a rich vein of work by contemporary composers which explores a situation/condition, and is made with functionality and healing in mind.

The visual side of ‘The Fifty Eleven Project’ is made in collaboration with the culture laboratory Prxjects and acclaimed LA based artist/filmmaker/photographer Justin Tyler Close, who has created art films for each of the album’s 11 tracks - plus one music video, including clips from all 11 films. The 11 films will be assimilated into a video exhibition at Klub in Copenhagen from 12th – 21st October. The ambition is that the installation will tour Europe and the US in 2019.

Furnished in an exquisite fabric box, this 180 gram 3LP clear vinyl box is presented by cover art created by world-renowned artist Landon Metz, further cementing the release’s multidisciplinary links to the art world.

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PREMIERE: Kasper Bjørke Quartet - Line Of Life

Premiering on the Ransom Note: https://bit.ly/2MyJojX

"An enchanting new album." - The Ransom Note 

Heinali is the alias of self-taught composer and sound-designer Oleg Shpudeiko from Ukraine. Now well established under the name he brings along his latest full length ‘Iridescent’ due for release on October 12th on Injazero Records. 

Having garnered rapturous responses to his earlier output and last year’s ‘Anthem’ Oleg continues to push the boundaries and experiment with altering mood and atmospheres of any space - with abstract yet deeply personal transmissions of ambient synthesiser work and subaqueous, minimal techno contortions. 

‘Iridescent’ consists of fragments of studio improvisation sessions recorded in 2016 and 2017, some of them recorded in one unedited take on a modular system and some layered and later morphed into compositions. As the title suggests Heinali crafts shimmering, incandescent portraits, rich in his unique characteristics and compositional liberty. 

Apart from the “musical sculptures,” that represent the bulk of this LP, Oleg was interested in the exploration of polyphonic capabilities of the modular system. ‘Rainbow Folding’, a loose homage to Terry Riley’s 'A Rainbow In Curved Air,' features an interplay of several independent, but distinct voices and their processed shadows — ‘ghost voices’. In 'Shadow Invention’ eerie atmospherics steal the spotlight and dominate the composition, ending in a cacophony of the ‘ghost voices’. 

Oleg says of the album, “it’s a kind of studio dairy. A reflection on the development of my relations with the hardware instruments and exploration of them as channelling vessels for my experiences and ideas.” 

“One can think of Iridescent’ as ‘musical sculpture’ analogy — when the body of music stays the same, but its surface is flickering with various colours over time — sometimes in a subtle manner, sometimes loud and clear. Or it can be understood in the context of various colours of polyphony, or as a liminal condition of the colour as if it’s being ‘stuck’ in the mist of twilight zone between neighbouring colour-states, so it can’t become a particular colour and is in a flickering kaleidoscopic state.” 

‘Iridescent’ bares Oleg’s style of sonic storytelling and austere, otherworldly textural embellishments that bring to mind Ben Frost, Akira Yamaoka, and Oneohtrix Point Never but also plants the seed for much more club ready electro. ‘Starling Reprise I’ is a scorching piece of ambient techno that conjures Four Tet, LTO and Susumu Yokota’s blissful, kaleidoscopic synth work whilst ‘Starling Reprise II’ retains the frosty, steely ambience that has become Heinali’s calling card. 

Cover artwork by Olga Gaidash.
Mastered by Taylor Deupree at 12k Mastering.

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Heinali - Rainbow Folding

Shida Shahabi is a Swedish-Iranian pianist / composer, currently based in Stockholm. The beautiful, intimate and homespun piano of ‘Homes’ marks Shida’s debut release and the fourth in a row of new albums by female-fronted artists released on 130701 this year.

The entirety of the album was recorded at various home locations. During the writing process, Shida was renting a one bedroom appartment which she used as a studio space, before moving to a new house in the midst of the recording. So the music was actually written in one home studio and recorded in two different living rooms, hence the title, ‘Homes’. A sense of this homeliness and unpressured ease is clearly audible across the album – something utterly natural and unforced. There are no whistles and bells attached here, no big name guest performers or hired studio hands. Absolutely beautifully played and composed, it is a deeply charming record that exudes a confident warmth and an emotional depth and honesty in every note. Its production eschews the prioritising of cleanliness, with a warm, fuzzy noise floor audible from the very first track immediately immersing the listener into this sublime yet imperfect reality – as though the whole existed beneath a layer of dust. It posits comfort over obsessive cleanliness. Living comfortably with traces of wear and decay, the recording makes audible intimate acoustic details and imperfections – creaking and hissing; tiny distortions; the pressure exerted by fingers and feet against the piano’s pedals and keys.

Homes

Shida Shahabi - Abisme

from the album 'connected' available oct22.

oren ambarchi & robin fox 'standing mandala'

"Emmeck" is taken from "In Sight", F.S.Blumm´s first solo album for Sonic Pieces. Handmade LP and CD editions available from August 28th.

The Disquieting Muses

brainpicker

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