SUNLIGHT LEAKING THROUGH TREES.... 🌤🌴

Canto Ostinato is the new volume of classical minimalism from musician and producer Erik Hall. Written for four pianos in 1979 by Dutch composer Simeon ten Holt, the piece is freshly framed as an intimate, hour-long solo performance consisting of multitracked grand pianos, electric piano, and organ. Modern yet warm, ethereal yet tangible, Hall’s Canto Ostinato expertly bridges a revered piece of meditative concert repertoire with a tactile and highly personal studio setting.

Chicago-born and Michigan-based, Erik Hall is known as a multi-instrumental pillar for the groups NOMO, Wild Belle, and his own songwriting moniker In Tall Buildings. He has composed music for feature films, and as a producer/engineer he has shaped records for Natalie Bergman and Western Vinyl labelmates Lean Year. In a 2020 creative pivot, he chose to reinvent composer Steve Reich’s monumental contemporary classical masterpiece Music for 18 Musicians as a solo undertaking, applying the piece’s score to the familiar keyboards, guitars, and synthesizers in his studio. “At the time I think I was working through my identity as a musician and an artist,” Hall explains, “and on a level there was some sort of exorcism of a long held pop spirit.” The album was celebrated for being “freshly thrilling” and “legible in history but assertive of the moment” (Pitchfork) and “beguiling, meditational, and magical” (Electronic Sound). It won the 2021 Libera Award for Best Classical Record, and it quickly joined the canon of the piece’s quintessential recordings.

“There is a pseudo-meditational benefit to working on a longform piece that’s built on repetition,” Hall says. “Every stage— from internalizing the music, to executing the performance, to editing and mixing the record— requires deep and sustained presence of mind. I’ve always been drawn to a hallucinatory combination of harmony and repetition, and I found the entire process addictive.”

An apt second chapter, Canto Ostinato is inherently vast, and its score gives great creative license to the performer. Comprising 106 sections, complete freedom is given to repeat each one as many or as few times as desired. Additional leeway is given with regard to dynamics, articulation, and even instrumentation. On the heels of his previous, rather maximal arrangement, Hall chose to limit this album’s palette to three foundational keyboards of his studio: a 1962 Hammond M-101 organ, a 1978 Rhodes Mark I electric piano, and his family-heirloom 1910 Steinway grand piano. “This particular piece brought the added challenge of rekindling my dexterity as a pianist, something I haven’t maintained in earnest since I was a teenager,” he admits. The ensuing five-note rhythmic motif— the piece’s primary building block— is steady and workmanlike, forgoing virtuosic flare for depth, texture, and resonance, and eventually giving way to the stunning gratification of a gorgeously lyrical left turn.

As with Music for 18 Musicians, Hall employed no loops nor quantization nor any programmed or sequenced instruments of any kind. Every part was performed live in a room and captured with microphones, one at a time, each informed by, and reacting to the last. In this way the record breathes with interplay and an organic humanity, complete with flaws, noise, and the faint sound of turning pages. The recording quality is nonetheless toneful and saturated, characteristic of Hall’s production style and straying from the usual transparency of classical albums by using gear with tubes, transformers, and various stages of compression in the signal path. Always there is unmistakable realism and the feeling of being present in the room, sitting among the keys, hammers, and tines.

Ten Holt said: “Time, patience and discipline are the prerequisites for making a genetic code productive." His landmark composition provides Hall once again with a wondrous space in which to reverently embody this sentiment and deftly convey the elegant beauty of this music.

Erik Hall - "Canto Ostinato - Sections 17 - 30"

a piano piece recorded on a 4-track tape recorder

How are you, my love?

Not even a month after dropping his entrancing In Stereo session, ex-Emeralds member Steve Hauschildt returns with more ambient hypnosis. This time, it's a track off the soon-to-drop remix EP for composer and artist Christina Vantzou's no. 3 album. Steve's undertaking brings seven minutes of sheer serenity, slowly soaring and regressing throughout its duration. True magic from the pro himself.

3.5 is out on March 18th.

Pre-Order

Christina Vantzou "Stereoscope (Steve Hauschildt Remix)" - Boiler Room Debuts

DOWNLOAD & TRACKLIST: http://blrrm.tv/InStereoBingRuth


Bing & Ruth - Boiler Room In Stereo

Taken from 'Collected Pieces' by Mary Lattimore, out April 14, 2017.

Order Links:
The Ghostly Store: https://goo.gl/xXKSXW
Retailer of your choice: https://Ghostly.lnk.to/ml-collected-pieces

Collected Pieces

Mary Lattimore - Wawa By The Ocean

from the album 'semblance' available on kranky 07/20

semblance

forma 'new city'

Brian Eno & Robert Fripp - Wind on Water

Watch the official music video: https://youtu.be/YVoqGMWVTF0

Daniel Brandt, co-founder of acclaimed German ensemble Brandt Brauer Frick, is set to release his second solo album via Erased Tapes on October 12th. Called 'Channels', the new record follows the release of the London and Berlin based producer’s solo debut Eternal Something from 2017.

The seven-track LP is Brandt’s biggest statement yet, with the album’s thrilling avant-garde framework interweaving chord-driven techno, orchestral flourishes, rich electronic textures and hints of dark cinematic pop. Following on from Eternal Something, which captured a contemplative kind of isolationism, with Channels Brandt set out to create an album that captures the essence of minimalism whilst lending it to a more playful context. 

Intricate floor-filler and lead track ‘Flamingo’ synthesises the measured pacing of Detroit techno with an orchestral background. As with all of the tracks on Channels, ‘Flamingo’ began life as a sketch with very basic instrumentation, before taking it into the studio to rehearse with his band members, giving the album a live and visceral sound that sets it apart from his debut; “It was a great experience to do it this way as I have always wanted to have the chance to try out something in a live setting before recording it in the studio and not the other way round,” explains Daniel. “The actual typical rock band recording style that I never had the chance to do before.”

With Brandt also being skilled as a filmmaker, directing and producing visuals for BBF and Eternal Something, much of the new album’s creative ideas reference a rich visual palette. He directed the video for ‘Flamingo’, a sideways glance at the art world that takes the concept behind John Cage’s 4’33” and turns it on its head. 

“The video for Flamingo is deliberately non performance — people sitting in a room and watching basically nothing, never really sure if anything is ever going to happen. It’s also a play on John Cage’s 4’33”, except in this instance there isn’t even a performer present.” — Daniel Brandt

Daniel’s passion for film even prompted him to kick start his own online television channel Strrr.tv in 2017 that since attracted a lot of attention with guest moderators including BBC Radio DJ Gilles Peterson, modular synth legend Suzanne Ciani and Berghain bouncer Sven Marquardt counting amongst the most popular episodes. 

Recorded between Berlin and London, Channels is a deeply enthralling listening experience, which sees Daniel Brandt build upon his distinctive percussive sound whilst exploring new and expansive horizons.

Praise for Daniel’s previous album, Eternal Something:
“Propulsive, tense, and entirely mesmerizing” 7.6 — Pitchfork
“An evocative ray of multi-instrumentalism” 9/10 — DJ Mag
“A fizz bomb of overlapping ideas” — Record Collector
“Utterly abstract and wholly melodic” — Clash
“A cracker”  — Electronic Sound

Channels

Flamingo

Buy LP/CD/DL

Daniel Brandt - Flamingo

Taken from the album 'Intervals' available here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intervals-Snow-Palms/dp/B0091D488W/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1353333745&sr=8-1

Snow Palms - Motion Capture

We are thrilled to announce our latest release, a reissue of the 1987 hidden gem Resonance, by Japanese pianist Yumiko Morioka. Originally released on Akira Ito’s ‘Green & Water’ label Resonance remains her only solo record - a truly stunning, timeless collection of compositions that deserves to find a new audience in 2020. 

Just a little over two years ago, Yumiko was fortunate to escape with her life when a neighbour woke her in the middle of the night to tell her that wildfires were closing in. Thirty minutes later her California home, along with all her musical recordings and equipment, was destroyed.

Now back living in Tokyo, where Resonance was created, she is doing well and is excited that her music is being given a new lease of life. It’s our great fortune that Yumiko, and the music she recorded back in 1987, survived and we’re honoured to be able to share the remastered recordings with the world.

Resonance draws influence from the popular environmental music culture prevalent in Japan during the late 80s, but it’s also heavily inspired by Western musicians like Erik Satie and Brian Eno. Listening today, it still feels fresh and pertinent; like the great pioneers of classical and ambient music, there's a timelessness to Resonance - a comforting, familiar feeling, as if these melodies have always existed.

Resonance will be released on limited edition vinyl & digital on April 15th. You can pre-order the album here: https://metronrecords.bandcamp.com/album/resonance

Yumiko Morioka - Komorebi

HOT CHIP  - Late Night Tales
Album released 2nd October 
2LP / CD / DIGITAL
Stream/buy: https://orcd.co/latenighttales_hotchip

Spearheaded by founders Alexis Taylor and Joe Goddard, Hot Chip are one of the UK’s most interesting and much-loved acts. Since releasing their debut album ‘Coming On Strong’ in 2004, they have received a Grammy Award nomination (‘Ready for the Floor’) and Mercury Prize nomination (‘The Warning’) and their seventh studio album, last year’s ‘A Bath Full of Ecstasy,’ received rave reviews across the globe from both critics and fans.

“I think we all had slightly different understandings of what a Late Night Tales compilation might consist of; varying interpretations of the brief. For some the mix might be what you’d want to listen to as your late night continues, after a night out. For others maybe it suggested a selection of music for listening to as you drift off to sleep; then again it could just be music evocative of night time, or concerned with its traditionally ‘darker’ moods,” says Taylor.
Hot Chip’s ‘LateNightTales’ opens with the simplistic beauty of Christina Vantzou’s ‘At Dawn,’ before morphing in to the first of four exclusive tracks from the band - the floating, transcendent ‘Nothing’s Changed’, before Rhythm & Sound ft. Cornell Campbell serve up the heavy dub classic, ‘King In My Empire’.

The journey continues with Pale Blue’s ‘Have You Passed Through This Night’, a silky, cold wave disco track, while Suzanne Kraft’s ‘Femme Cosmic’ and Fever Ray’s ‘To The Moon and Back’ provide squelchy synth-pop. Furthermore, the punchy ‘Much To Touch’ from Bolton-born, Berlin based producer Planningtorock and an ethereal cover of Velvet Underground’s ‘Candy Says’ by our hosts add an element of displacement and detachment.

Elsewhere, other highlights include an appearance from synth-pop auteur Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith with ‘Who I Am & Why I Am Where’ and new material from Alexis’ ‘other’ band, the improv-mavens About Group, along with the adventurous ‘Workaround Two’ from electronic experimentalist Beatrice Dillon and German composer, Nils Frahm’s beautifully evocative ‘Ode’. But it is left to Alexis’ father to have the final word, with an elegant excerpt from the daring ‘Finnegans Wake’ by James Joyce.

“We’ve put together a mix of music which ties all of these ideas together and represents some of our favourite music new and old, some of it directly influential on Hot Chip and some of it music we have discovered and loved, been surprised by and connected to. There are three new songs of ours which we’re really proud of, and which I think connect naturally with the nocturnal world the compilation speaks of, and a cover of ‘Candy Says’ which is one of the first songs the very early version of Hot Chip played when we were still at school,” says Taylor. 

01. Christina Vantzou – ‘At Dawn’
02. Hot Chip – ‘Nothing's Changed’ (Exclusive track) 
03. Rhythm & Sound ft. Cornell Campbell – ‘King In My Empire’
04. Pale Blue – ‘Have You Passed Through This Night’
05. Suzanne Kraft – ‘Femme Cosmic’
06. Fever Ray – ‘To The Moon And Back’
07. PlanningToRock – ‘Much To Touch’
08. Charlotte Adigery – ‘1,618’
09. Mike Salta – ‘Hey Moloko’
10. Matthew Bourne – ‘Somewhere I Have Never Travelled’
11. Hot Chip – ‘Candy Says’ (Velvet Underground cover version – Exclusive track)
12. Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith – ‘Who I Am & Why I Am Where’
13. About Group – ‘The Long Miles’
14. Beatrice Dillon – ‘Workaround Two’
15. Hot Chip – ‘Worlds Within Worlds’ (Exclusive track)
16. Daniel Blumberg – ‘The Bomb’
17. Nils Frahm – ‘Ode’
18. Hot Chip – ‘None Of These Things’ (Exclusive track)
19. Neil Taylor – ‘Finnegans Wake’ excerpt (Exclusive track)

Follow Late Night Tales:

Web: http://latenighttales.co.uk
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/latenighttales1
Twitter: http://twitter.com/LateNightTales
SoundCloud: http://soundcloud.com/latenighttales
YouTube: http://youtube.com/latenighttalestv
Instagram: http://instagram.com/latenighttalesofficial

Hot Chip - Candy Says [Exclusive Velvet Underground Cover Version] (Late Night Tales: Hot Chip)

Métron Records is a record label & podcast series showcasing music from around the globe.

For enquiries please contact jack@metronrecords.com

Yumiko Morioka - Komorebi

Métron

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