Reviews
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Stuttering Music
By 2006, more than a decade and a half after the conclusion of the Lebanese Civil War, the city of Beirut seemed to be experiencing an era of cultural resurgence. The Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon had finally ended in 2000, and free of the association with conflict, Beirut’s cultural vibrancy was becoming a regular…
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ØKSE
New York hip-hop label Backwoodz Studioz continues their hot streak with the self-titled debut from international experimental jazz quartet ØKSE: California-raised NYC-based drummer Savannah Harris, Danish saxophonist Mette Rasmussen, Swede Petter Eldh on double bass, synths and sampler, and Haitian electronic musician Val Jeanty. Known for their genre-expanding underground hip-hop, it should come as no…
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Living Room Pieces
“Here’s something genuinely new for you.” We receive many submissions that make such a claim, but rarely have they lived up to their promise so fully as Michael J. Schumacher’s Living Room Pieces. A sound installation designed for living spaces, the work consists of a Raspberry Pi (small computer) in a metal case connected to two…
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DIS/EMBODIED
Having first captured our attention with Monolithic Nuance (2018) for Longform Editions, Megan Mitchell’s Cruel Diagonals has continued to impress with each new work. With Fractured Whole, she set herself the task of producing an album using nothing but her voice as raw material. While she deserves recognition as a gifted vocalist, she deserves at least as much praise for her…
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OLD & NEW DREAMS
This episode of Sound Propositions features scholars Kerry O’Brien and Will Robin, editors of the recent anthology On Minimalism: Documenting a Musical Movement. Described as a historical source reader, the book compiles over 100 primary sources retelling the story of minimalist music from the 1950s to the present. Sources include liner notes, interviews, journalism, manifestos, and other material organized chronologically…
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Peepers
Polar Bear is a London-based quintet led by the Scottish percussionist and composer Sebastian Rochford. Many of the best composers are often percussionists, and Rochford is in good company in joining many of my favorite bandleaders and composers: Steve Reich, Sasu Ripatti, Art Blakey. Something about filling the role of the drummer gives one a…
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INDISCREET MUSIC
Patrick Nickleson is the author of The Names of Minimalism: Authorship, Art, Music, and Historiography in Dispute, an academic study that radically reconsiders the origins and boundaries of musical minimalism. Uninterested in searching for the earliest work of musical minimalism, or even in doing the admittedly necessary work of expanding the canon to include lesser known but equally…
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Transmissions From The Radio Midnight
Aki Onda ~ Transmissions From The Radio Midnight After acquiring a portable tape recorder with a built-in radio in 2006, Aki Onda’s cassette memory archive gained a new category. Thereafter he made a ritual of listening to the radio late at night whenever he was traveling, capturing interesting moments on tape, especially those where he was…
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We Buy Diabetic Test Strips
On the last verse of “As the Crow Flies,” the final track on billy woods and Kenny Segal’s Maps, released earlier in 2023, woods rhymes: I’m in the park with the baby on the swings When it hits me crazy, anything at all could happen to him It isn’t long until those thoughts about his child turn back towards himself,…
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Demain, dès l’aube
From Overseas & zakè ~ Demain, dès l’aube On the final day of my first trip abroad, I hiked to the top of the hill above the small Italian village I’d been staying in for the previous month in order to watch the sunrise. I had promised myself I would do this before returning home, so…
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A Sorrow Unrequited
Frizzell & Duque ~ A Sorrow Unrequited A Sorrow Unrequited is a short but gorgeous collaboration between Frizzell & Duque, comprised of five minimalist explorations of high-fidelity sound. Each piece begins with the statement of a simple melody, which repeats throughout as additional layers accumulate, slowly teasing out new melodies. Rather than linger in the imperfections of…
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Soft Octaves
James Bernard & anthéne ~ Soft Octaves In a letter to his brother Theo, Vincent Van Gogh writes of “colors, which are heightened by being juxtaposed,” yet “will destroy one another by being mixed.” When mixed, such colors produce a sad gray, but in the right proportions can produce what he calls a broken tone. And…
Sound Propositions 