Glass Museum, the Belgian instrumental duo of Antoine Flipo and Martin Grégoire, are set to release their somophore album, Reykjavik, next month, following their 2018 debut Deux. Merging classical music, electronics and jazz, on the upcoming album, the pair’s duality remains their foundational element. “Antoine has this epic side in everything he does, including composition,” says Grégoire. “He’s also got the skill to translate a more classical tradition in a contemporary way.” Speaking about Grégoire, Flipo said he “has the ability to adapt to anything. There’s a lot more percussion on this album, because we have a very open dialogue between us that allows him to take over any kind of sound.”
Ahead of Reykjavik‘s release on April 24th through Sdban Ultra, Glass Museum have shared a wonderful new single, ‘Abyss’, and a self-directed accompanying video. Watch it below.
We’re thrilled to know Qasim Naqvi has a new release on the way, following last year’s Teenages, which was one of our 15 Album Picks of 2019. Entitled Beta, the album is meant as a sister release to Teenages, which was brought to life using an analog modular synthesizer built by Naqvi over the course of two years. The extraordinary percussionist and composer explains:
“Beta is a prequel to the story of Teenages. At the time I had the most basic elements of a modular synthesizer- one oscillator and a random voltage generator which is a module that releases sporadic currents through the system. Ironically, this component provided a lot of warmth and humanness to the music, a kind of fallibility. I fed simple melodic ideas and rhythmic patterns into this bare bones setup and observed the responses, while occasionally guiding the music in other directions. It was like a diagnostic test. At the time I felt that this music was underdeveloped but listening back, I think the Beta tracks add an interesting dimension to the entire Teenages arc. They’re the zygotes.”
The B side of the record is a live performance of the track ‘Teenages’, recorded at London’s Southbank Centre in February 2019. “I had performed this work just a couple of times and this particular one was special”, says Naqvi. “There were microphones up everywhere and you could hear the room bleeding into the sound of the synthesizer.”
Beta will be released as a limited edition on clear vinyl for Record Store Day on April 18th through Erased Tapes but we can already hear a striking track off it, ‘Matic’. Take a listen below.
All hail the return of legendary experimental pop group Aksak Maboul, who have announced the release of Figures, their first album in 40 years. Set for release on May 15th through the band’s founder Marc Hollander’s own Crammed Discs, Figures features a cast of stellar guests including Fred Frith, Steven Brown (Tuxedomoon), and several members of Aquaserge.
The thrilling news comes paired with the first single, ‘Tout a une Fin’, featuring vocals from co-producer Véronique Vincent. The single is offered with an accompanying video directed by animator and collagist Yoann Stehr. Watch it below.
New York-based composer, performer and sound designer Lea Bertucci has announced details of a new album. Entitled Acoustic Shadows, it started as an event inside a hollow bridge in Cologne, Germany, as Bertucci explains:
“Acoustic Shadows I-III was a series of site-specific musical performances and a sound installation that took place in the enclosed hollow body of the Deutzer bridge in Koln, Germany, 2018. Spanning approximately 440 meters across the Rhine river, the extraordinary acoustics and rich existing aural architecture of this site became crucial components of the installation and musical compositions.
An 8-channel speaker system distributed throughout the bridge became activated by three instrumental performances that happened throughout the course of a week. Fragments of each performance were captured by microphones installed in the space and then played back through the 8-channels after the performance was over in a loop of overlapping moments, creating a sonic accumulation that takes place over long stretches of time – a musical performance with no clear ending.”
Bertucci also gave some insight into the recording process:
“Rather than offer a straight document of a piece that eschewed notions of time, space and subjective/mutable spatial positioning of the listeners, I was more interested in shaping compositions that worked within the parameters of an LP, developing pieces that worked within the approximate timeframe of 20 minutes on each side and capturing the essence of the experience. The original pieces were more than 40 minutes long each, and with no real ending due to the playback element that transformed performance into installation.”
Acoustic Shadows arrives on April 15th through SA Recordings but we can already ear an excerpt of its first piece, ‘Brass’.
The wait is nearly over and the highly anticipated second album from Collectress, Different Geographies, will see the light of day tomorrow. When the exciting news first emerged last November, the experimental chamber collective enraptured us with the magical and jubilant single ‘Landing’. Now the track has been paired with a video, featuring footage from the carnival celebrations in Metaxourgio, Greece. “The track itself has always alway felt to us like it mixes a big heart and an energetic spirit with something about endurance, continuity and inter-dependence”, explained the band. “Setting it to imagery from the life-force that is carnival seemed like the perfect expression of this.” One of the four multi-instrumentalists sheds more light on it:
“For me they seemed to embody the anarchic spirit of the festival, always jumping and dancing, full of mischief, nature and mystery, a mix of dark and light, challenge and exuberance, traditional and modern, ancient bells and scruffy urban footwear combining in a leaping deafening joyfulness.
Since being in Greece, I’ve thought and read a lot about Greece’s at times complex relationship with its ancient history – a past often essentialised by Northern/Western Europe (think Byron, ‘Elgin’ Marbles, White/Christian/Fortress Europe). I’ve also thought and read a lot about Greece’s geographical position on the borders of Europe, Asia and Africa and its people’s heartbreaking humanity to refugees during the ongoing migrant crisis. Something of all of this seemed to be expressed both in the symbolism of those goat revellers and in the spirit of the carnival. I noticed as we paraded along, the tradition of restaurant and cafe proprietors placing tables outside their establishments, covered with cheese and bread and drinks for the revellers to enjoy for free. I thought of the potential in community, anarchy, kindness and welcome.”
Watch the video below and grab Different Geographies tomorrow through their own imprint Peeler Records.
Two years on from the release of The Return, which was one of our 15 Album Picks of the Year, Kamaal Williams aka Henry Wu is teasing the release of new music later this year. Preceding it, Williams has shared a new live album, Live At Dekmantel, which was recorded last summer at Dekmantel Festival in Amsterdam. Mainly the fruit of an improvised set, across its nine tracks, and as the press release describes, “dramatic sonics – high octane underground funk that fuses the spiritual with the dancefloor – complete with the atmosphere, markings and space that only live performance supplies – offer an introduction to a typical Kamaal Williams show.”
Along with the news, Williams has shared new track ‘3 Yourself’ and an accompanying video featuring original footage shot in Hong Kong during last year’s protests, as well as archival footage and photography. Tom J Bennett directs. Watch it now.
