Yes, I have already premiered two tracks this week (see Plïnkï Plønkï and Resina), and yes, this is another premiere of a track, and yet it is immensely needed, wanted, and necessary during these somewhat anxious times. “Rjóður” comes from the Icelandic composer Snorri Hallgrímsson, whom I’ve profiled on many occasions before (see also his In the Studio with… feature), as well as celebrated for his film music, which has been backed by the wonderful Moderna Records (home to many fantastic modern classical and solo piano composers, such as Jacob David, Ed Carlsen, Tim Linghaus, Tambour, and even yours truly). This particular piece appears on Hallgrímsson’s second EP titled Landbrot II – the first having been released last November with five pieces, and now, a year later, with five more. “The collection takes its name from the location of Hallgrímsson’s family cabin in rural Iceland, which he describes as his ‘happy place’. Landbrot translates to erosion or ‘land fractures’, and from this, we can imagine the search for inner calm and acceptance amongst the many obstacles of daily life.”

Read more about this release here: https://hcdi.gs/Landbrot

Landbrot II

Rjóður

TRACK PREMIERE : Snorri Hallgrímsson - Rjóður

Tomorrow, January 28th, Norwegian composer and pianist Julia Gjertsen is set to release her sophomore LP on the one and only Moderna imprint. I’ve covered Julia before, in particular, her collaboration with Nico Rosenberg (including the latest release on Constellation Tatsu), but for Formations, it’s nice to hear her play alone again. Besides the solo piano pieces on the album, which are entangled with reverb, some echoes and looped repetitions, the passages are processed with a rhythmic, borderline percussive brush. My favourite piece on the album, which was already released by the label as a single, is called “Falling In Keys”, and it perfectly embodies the lush atmospheres produced by the piano, drenched in sweeping delays, lightly sprinkled flutters and deep rumbling bass. The piece that I’m premiering for you today echoes the textured theme with just a touch of synth pads, delicate treatments and forefront pulsating rhythm. Here, we find Gjertsen “expertly oscillating between catchy, beat-driven hooks and slow-motion soundscapes that cause us to lose track of time.” I hope you will enjoy this and then come back for her 2019 debut, titled Fragile.

Read more about it here: http://hcdi.gs/Gjertsen

Formations

TRACK PREMIERE : Julia Gjertsen - Cause And Effect

Subtle shades arise from a quiet piano, with colours softly resonating through the air. Take in Ole-Bjørn Talstad warm and subdued playing; his latest number Leiting is a real treat for the senses.

Bandcamp: bit.ly/3vjD9UR
Apple Music: apple.co/3rv6QBe
Spotify: spoti.fi/3OelTJe

Leiting

⊜ spotify

Ole-Bjørn Talstad - Leiting

It's such a treat to wake up to another beautiful new piece by @jacob_david. This one is called Svaj and is paired with artwork by the very talented Serrah Russell. 

Listen: spoti.fi/3klk1AV / apple.co/3LaTl1h

Svaj

Jacob David - Svaj

We're celebrating the release of Malcolm Parson's beautiful record Letters From Home. The album was inspired by using music as daily journal entries reflecting on his past, specifically centred in his hometown of New Orleans. Composing and recording each part himself on violin, cello, synths, piano and guitar, Letters From Home was created through the act of recording daily spontaneous ideas at his studio. The album is embedded with warmth, density, and lush textures and we think you'll love it.

🎧 li.sten.to/lettersfromhome

Letters from Home

Westbank

Stream/Download

Malcolm Parson - Westbank

Following the warmly-received Paces (1631 Recordings/Decca Publishing) and the collaborative Stadsbilder (Time Released Sound), Swedish composer and multi-instrumentalist Jakob Lindhagen presents his second solo full-length album Memory Constructions on piano and coffee records.

Recorded together with German brother-duo Sebastian and Daniel Selke (aka CEEYS, whose collaborations also include Ólafur Arnalds and Spitfire) and longtime artistic collaborator Sofia Nystrand (Vargkvint), the album merges elements of neoclassical and ambient music, with a foundation of intimate piano works paired with violoncello and vocal synth, expanded with musical saw, kantele, bowed glockenspiel and sound experiments, recorded to analogue equipment. 

”Memories are an equally complicated as fascinating aspect of the human mind. After realizing a couple of memories from my childhood surroundings simply didn’t add up - the timeline didn’t make sense so I couldn’t have been in that place at that time, or a block of houses not being placed where they actually were - I became slightly obsessed with memory research. Our memories play such a huge part of our identities, yet they are extremely unreliable, change and fade over time, and are easily influenced and manipulated. And yet I couldn’t help myself also finding beauty in the fact that I both completely trust and distrust my own memories, that make up who I am. So digging from these slightly contradicting feelings, and from where my own memories are either constructed, fading, forgotten, rewritten, made up or completely true, this album was concieved.” 

Memory Constructions has been supported by the Swedish Arts Council, and is coming out digitally and on limited edition vinyl on the 23rd of September, featuring artwork by Sofia Nystrand and desing/layout by Celia Bayo.

Purchase

Jakob Lindhagen - Tomorrow

963Hz Accelerate the Abundance Anthem

An outtake from my solo piano album Tape Sketches, in memory of Conor Walsh
&
dedicated to Luke. 

Stop! Start! (Tape Sketches Outtake)



Taken from the album 'Taking The Veil', released worldwide on May 24, 2015 on Kitchen. Label

Pre-order on CD + Art Book here:
www.kitchen-label.com/ki015-hior-chr…king-the-veil/

“Shadows surrounding, this lucid veil that will not conceal.”

‘Taking the Veil’ is the debut solo album on Kitchen. Label by Berlin-based musician Hior Chronik. Originally from Athens, the new album is a follow-up to his previous work on the label as the duo Pill-Oh in ‘Vanishing Mirror’. The established foundation are intact on ‘Taking the Veil’: the bitterly romantic strings and gentle electronics whisper melting over plaintive piano scores. Hior Chronik has a penchant of producing subtly immense and cinematic compositions which are remarkably chilling in its beauty.

The latest release follows Hior Chronik’s distinctive compositional path with the pairing of a collaborator on each track. This time the instrumental colors are most intimate, honed to evocative perfection with each collaboration bringing its own nuances to a permeable set of motives. Through the contemplative moments, what give it life is the varied scoring which goes from solo piano to string orchestra, opening up a space that shimmers with stirring melancholy. Featuring classically aligned contemporaries such as Field Rotation (Denovali Records), Sophie Hutchings (Preservation), Lüüp (Experimedia) and Japanese composers Yasushi Yoshida (noble), Yoshinori Takezawa (Schole Records) among many others. The biggest change in this new album is the addition of vocals by Amber Ortolano and Fabiola Sanchez (Familiar Trees) on four songs. Figured centrally in the soundtrack as recurring lyrical voicing, the Amber Ortolano and Hior Chronik pairing also produced a rearranged version of ‘Twice’ originally written by Swedish electronic band Little Dragon.

‘Taking the Veil’ is presented in a 16-page art book format, also featuring the New York based Amber Ortolano as a photographer. The subject in the visual narrative of ‘Taking the Veil’ is of young women imprisoned by their flow of thoughts and their dark imagination. The delicate beauty and ambiguous gestures of feminine protagonists serve as powerful metaphors of the veil as the title of the album reflects – They reveal and conceal all at once, reviving emotions conjured by a sense of mystery. The album underlines this atmosphere that probe the consciousness imbued with burnished hues of something half-remembered and half-dreamed. ‘Taking the Veil’ is the best company for late hours and memory searching in a world of mist and shadows.

Released & distributed by Kitchen. Label
Ⓟ & © 2015 Kitchen. Label

MORE INFO:
www.kitchen-label.com


Hior Chronik - Cold Winter Morning (Featuring Luup)

'I', the opening song of my first collection -
https://oliverbrouwer.bandcamp.com/album/lp-1

Recorded on the 6th of October in Silverdale, UK 
Written and performed by Oliver Brouwer 
Recorded and mixed by Zac Barfoot 
Artwork designed by Harvey Pearson

Sat 10 Dec 2016

Third track of Manos Milonakis's remix release "Sólfar Reworked" by:

Luke Howard (www.lukehoward.com , @lukehoward) : 

Australian Music Prize-nominated composer Luke Howard has been described as “absolutely heavenly” (Mary Anne Hobbs, BBC Radio 6) and his music as “an ambient masterclass” (Musos’ Guide), but no words can fully capture the potency of Howard’s enthralling compositions. A pianist since childhood, Howard has scored films and performed with artists as diverse as Lior and Jeff Mills, capturing audiences with contemporary classical arrangements that curl and twist around the boundaries of a particular emotion. Though wordless, Howard’s songs perform a function unique to music as a medium – that of evoking without describing, bringing listeners to a feeling which defies articulating. 

Now signed to UK label Mercury KX (Lambert, Olafur Arnalds, Solomon Grey) and joined live by drummer and collaborator Daniel Farrugia, 2017 has Howard working across several projects: arranging the keyboard works of photographer William Eggleston, a pioneer of colour photography; a European tour beginning in the UK and ending with a performance at Germany’s legendary Elbphilharmonie; and a new record. 

Howard is one of Australia’s foremost practitioners of contemporary classical music. Having already accomplished so much and with more on the horizon, he is set to captivate audiences worldwide.

---
Celebrating Record Store Day and given the occasion of Sólfar EP’s 1st anniversary, Manos Milonakis invites friends, composers and producers to rethink-reimagine its’ 5 tracks. Sólfar EP was Manos’s second solo release, after Your Hand in Mine, which he recorded in Iceland with contribution of local musicians.

The 5 pieces of Sólfar EP have been reworked by:
Steve Gibbs, Fragile Balloon, Luke Howard, Hior Chronik, Ed Carlsen.

Sólfar Reworked is out worldwide on 22/04/2017, Record Store Day 2017, in limited handmade CD edition and digital.

You can find it at:
Thessaloniki: Lotus, Noise, Stereodisc
Athens: Underflow
Worldwide: www.manosmilonakismusic.com
Digital release: https://manosmilonakismusic.bandcamp.com

Sólfar Reworked

Ten (Luke Howard Rework)

say hello / licensing / demos 
modernarecords@gmail.com

We're here to trace a line from electronic sound designers to classical composers, connecting them through the realms of ambient & cinematic music.

Ole-Bjørn Talstad - Leiting

Moderna Records

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