Ergodos Records

THE WOLVES AND THE WATER . . . The Higher Animals

'Metallurgy' is the final track from 'What Was', the debut album devoted entirely to the music of Irish composer Judith RIng. 

Beau Stocker, percussion, Judith ring, objects

Judith Ring gets in a room with her musician and she starts recording. There are no pre-conceived ideas, no strategies. A feedback loop is set in motion: a sound is created, a change is suggested — ‘higher‘, ‘harsher’, ‘more pressure’, ‘lighter’, ‘darker’ — and more sounds come to life. Raw material is generated from actions, not plans.

What was documents the sensuous, rich and dark results of a painterly, highly personal approach to composition; it is the first album of music devoted solely to the last decade of one of Ireland’s most important composers.

The life-blood of these compositions is material arising from the musicians themselves – some of the finest exponents of new Irish music, including Paul Roe, Kate Ellis, Malachy Robinson, Michelle O'Rourke, Natasha Lohan and Concorde, as well as genre-crossing perfumers such as Laura Moody and Beau Stocker.

Ring’s work is first and foremost with the pulse in the arm that glides the bow over the string. She does not begin with a highly abstract, one-dimensional idea of that sound in notation. Her process can be described as truly experimental, in the sense of Charles Ives: open, aware, conscious, hopeful.

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Metallurgy / Judith Ring

The new solo album from woodwind instrumentalist and composer Seán Mac Erlaine, now available on limited edition, transparent orange vinyl.
http://ergodos.ie/shop/a-slender-song

Seán Mac Erlaine — Turaghlan

The second part of two-part work for ensemble by Benedict Schlepper-Connolly, inspired by an organum on the plainchant 'Viderunt Omnes' by medieval Parisian composer Léonin.

Ergodos Musicians

Jonathan Sage – clarinet
Kate Ellis – cello
Garrett Sholdice – piano
Benedict Schlepper-Connolly – electric guitar

Taken from the Ergodos Musicians release, 'All the ends of the earth'. (ergodos.ie/shop/all-the-ends-of-the-earth/)

'All the ends of the earth' reaches across nine centuries to connect three contemporary Irish voices with the music of a mediæval master. Present-day Dublin and 12th-century Notre Dame Cathedral have never seemed closer in this, the latest time-shrinking project by the visionary Ergodos Musicians.

Music by a French mediæval master, known simply as Léonin, forms the focus of this record. Léonin time-stretches a plainchant tune, Viderunt omnes, and places beautiful lyrical counter-melodies on top of it; this music seems even more transcendent as time passes.

Irish composers Linda Buckley, Benedict Schlepper-Connolly and Garrett Sholdice have found inspiration in the clarity of Léonin’s constructions, and the quality of his simple materials. Their works are personal acts of homage, remembrance and celebration.

In his central instrumental diptych, 'All the ends of the earth', Benedict Schlepper-Connolly crafts intricate, interlocked phrases out of tiny fragments from Léonin’s texture. These are set into motion, gracefully spinning and turning; gradually, over time they are changed, like clay on the potter’s wheel.

All The Ends Of The Earth II / Benedict Schlepper-Connolly

The first movement of 'Rise up, my love' by Howard Skempton, taken from the EP of the same name by the Irish Youth Chamber Choir under conductor Greg Beardsell. 

A celebration of the sensual, the vital and the earthly, 'Rise up, my love', is a passionate debut from the Irish Youth Chamber Choir. The title comes from English composer Howard Skempton and his four-movement setting of fragments from the 'Song of Songs', a biblical text unique in its joyous narrations of human intimacy. 'Rise up, my love' is typical of Skempton’s paired-down, exquisitely balanced compositional style. The words are everything, and nothing is over-stated. Beardsell and his singers match this approach in a flowing, natural interpretation that allows Skempton’s rich harmonies to really breathe and bloom.

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Rise Up, My Love / Howard Skempton

A luxuriant set of recordings, The feeling of remembering (released on cd) and re:play (released on vinyl), present music for cello by the singular English composer Christopher Fox. Both formats share much of the same music – but each format frames the material in its own unique way, making for a beautiful, mutually enriching, collectable pair. Experimental music luminary Anton Lukoszevieze’s playing is in sharp focus here; the cellist also provides the iconic cover photograph.

Memory – “what we remember and how we remember it” – is the over-arching theme here. The feeling of remembering re-occurs across the CD like a re-encountered memory – each time the same, each time different. The dark road – “a memory of the Irish community in Leeds” – is also involved in recollection.  
The Cd version of this piece is hauntingly underscored by voices of men who came from Ireland to Leeds to build the English motorways. Fox describes re:play as “music which gradually forgets itself – a briefly sketched melody that can never be recalled, in spite of recordings which remember what has just been forgotten”. 

Other works find inspiration in the rich qualities of the instrument, or an aesthetic question. Susan’s purple delights in the full-throated voice of the cello, whilst Arc re-imagines the instrument as a hurdy-gurdy. The principle of design takes its title from the writings of late-nineteenth-century writer and feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman: “I know a little of the principle of design, and I know this thing was not arranged on any laws of radiation, or alternation, or repetition, or symmetry.”

Christopher Fox (b.1955) is widely regarded as one of the most individual composers of his generation, often working at a tangent to the musical mainstream. He has chosen to base his compositional career around close collaborations with a number of performers, including the instrumental groups Ives Ensemble, Knm Berlin and Apartment House, and the vocal ensembles The Clerks and Exaudi. His work regularly extends beyond the conventional boundaries of the concert hall and includes the radio piece Three Constructions after Kurt Schwitters, the evening-long ensemble installation, Everything You Need To Know, and the music-theatre documentary Widerstehen. He lives in London with his wife, the writer Susan McNally, and is Professor of Music at Brunel University.

Cellist and inter-disciplinary artist Anton Lukoszevieze (lu-ko-shev-it-sheh) is one of the most diverse performers of his generation. Notable for his performances of avant-garde, experimental and improvised music, Lukoszevieze has given many performances at numerous international festivals. From 2003 until 2014 he was a member of the Zeitkratzer ensemble. He is noted for his use of the curved bow (Bach.Bogen), which he is using to develop new repertoire for the cello. In 2012 he was awarded a Royal Philharmonic Society Award for outstanding contributions to chamber music.

Ergodos is a record label and production house based in Dublin, Ireland.

Rise Up, My Love / Howard Skempton

Ergodos

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