Reviews

Cyclic July roundup:

The Machinist – Of What Once Was

(Moving Furniture Records)
Two deep long drones with field recording and distorted guitar fuzz.

Leonardo Rosado – Opaque Glitter (Feedback Loop)
Mournful synths and crackle veering from blissful ambient to deep unease.

Rytis Mazulis – Musica Falsa (Megadisc Classics)
Thrilling canons and overtones from the Lithuanian superminimalist and ATTSWOH favourite realised by flute virtuoso Manuel Zurrio.

Lucia Mense: Electric Counterpoint (Satelita)
Excellent survey of new music for recorder from live Cologne performance.

Eisuke Yanagisawa: Ultrasonic Scapes (gruenrekorder)
Buzzing ultrasonic frequencies from organic and inorganic sources in Basic Channel steel box.

Mompou: Piano Works 6 (Naxos)
Positively dreamy undiscovered piano music from the willfully naive Catalan composer.

Nicolas Bernier: Usure Paysage (Hronir)
Award-winning musique concrete from the prolific Bernier.

Various: Contemporary Danish Music (Dacapo)
Impressive and high quality productions and performances of obscure chamber music by contemporary Danish composers. More on this label soon.

Villalobos and Loderbauer: Re:ECM (ECM)
Expertly pitched electronic doodling of ECM samples by Berlin techno duo.

Yoshio Machida: Scape Dance (Amorfon)
Patient Feldman-esque tin-pan improvisations and processed digital tin-pan digitalia accompany strange pastel visual cut ups on DVD. More on Amorfon, "the music adventure label and hair salon", soon.

Angélica Castelló: Bestiario (Mosz)
Chaotic sampladelica by Mexican subbass recorder player.

Coming up: New ambient stunner from Chihei Hatakeyama on Room 40.

Reviews

Here's what's been happening at Cyclic Defrost:

Ben Gwilliam/Jason Zeh – Brombron 16: Dots (Korm Plastics)
Nicely packaged single track of mysterious tape haze, silence and low-fi scraps; looks better than it sounds.

Seth Horvitz – Eight Studies for Automatic Piano (Line)
Refined experiments for player-piano by ex-microhouse producer, discussed here.

Alfredo Casella – Symphony No. 3 / Elegia Eroica (Naxos)
Blustery Italian orchestral music from between the wars.

Burkhard Friedrich – Citta Utopica (Ahornfelder)
Hour-long collage of subtly crazed electro-acoustics.

Alfred Schnittke – Complete Violin Sonatas (Naxos)
Bleak, muscular yet refined chamber music from Russian genius.

Jessika Kenney and Eyvind Kang – Aesetaurium LP (Ideologic Organ/editionsMego)
Mournful, droning black-chamber-folk for viola and voice, endorsed by Steven O'Malley.

Steve Reich – Three Movements/The Desert Music (Chandos)
Grand performances of grand Minimalism for orchestra

Alban Gerhardt and Cecile Licad – Casals Encores (Hyperion)
Flighty miniatures and Chopin arrangements for cello and piano.

Forthcoming: selection of twentieth century Danish composition on DaCapo; excellent static, samples and synthesis by Viennese artist Angelica Castello; Villalobos and Loderbauer's Re:ECM; Mazulis' Musica Falsa ...