Pascal Comelade
“El Steinway a la guillotina”, by P. Comelade. To the crisis, imagination. If they don’t sell CDs, they “give them away” with a comic… El piano rojo is a comic by Max in which characters from the Catalan musical underground appear: Pau Riba, Sisa, Victor Nubla and… Pascal Comelade. The…
Anna von Hausswolff
“Ceremony”, by Anna von Hausswolff. It is challenging to start with a church organ as the main instrument on a record: its sound is resounding and determines a very strong personality (Emerson, Lake & Palmer demonstrated this in the early seventies). This young Swedish composer is also brave and determined….
X-TG Throbbing Gristle / Nico
“Desertshore/The Final Report”, by X-TG. X-TG? In 2007 the four founding members of Throbbing Gristle (Genesis P. Orridge, Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson, Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti), reunited for a series of performances at the ICA in London to reinterpret Nico’s album Desertshore. In 2010 Sleazy revisited that idea to…
Qluster
“Antworten”, by Qluster. Kluster was one of the basic German krautrock bands of the 1970s. One of its members, Hans Joachim Roedelius, without entrusting himself to the other members, has been changing the name over the last forty years for his own projects. First it was Cluster (with Dieter Moebius,…
Carter Tutti Void
“Transverse”, by Carter Tutti Void. Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti, founders of Throbbing Gristle in the 1970s, continued their musical career on the fringes of the noise avant-garde under the name Chris & Cosey and became Carter Tutti at the turn of the 21st century. Nik Void, meanwhile, is…
Brian Eno
“Drums Between the Bells”, by Brian Eno. Brian Eno, the ex-Roxy Music, the creator of ambient music (he called it “discreet”), the mega-producer (from U2 to Talking Heads, via Coldplay), Bowie’s avant-garde friend, Robert Fripp’s partner in multiple projects…, now returns to set to music a series of texts by…
“SERIES OF ANDS. Immediate givens”, by Wim Mertens
“SERIES OF ANDS. Immediate givens”, by Wim Mertens. The Belgian composer and pianist Wim Mertens emerged in the eighties as the most popular voice in continental Europe in the field of the minimalist current of contemporary music (Glass, Reich, Nyman…) With the passage of time he has not managed to…
Cluster
“Cluster ’71”, by Cluster. After Konrad Schnitzler’s departure from Kluster, the two remaining members, Dieter Moebius and Hans Joachim Roedelius continued under the name Cluster. And with their eponymous first album – now reissued – they created in 1971 one of the emblematic albums of krautrock (which was then called…
Balago
“Extractes d’un diari”, by Balago. The fourth album by the Spanish band Balago is not only their personal peak, their most melodic and rhythmic work, but also one of the most serious works of the Spanish musical avant-garde: “the Abbey Road of the drone”. Its twenty-one tracks show a wide…
John Adams
“I Am Love. OST”, by John Adams. John Adams is an American composer who has had the misfortune of being born ten years after two giants of the stature of Philip Glass and Steve Reich. Thus, his work, influenced by the minimalism of both, remains undeservedly in the background. Fortunately,…
“Homeland”, by Laurie Anderson
“Homeland”, by Laurie Anderson. Nine years have passed since her previous work, Life on a String, but the truth is that Homeland, the show of which the album that summarises it is now being released, has been travelling around the world for three long years. In fact, it was the…
Mecánica Popular
“Neguentropia”, by Mecánica Popular. A musician specialising in Andalusian and medieval music (Luis Delgado) and a producer (Eugenio Muñoz) who has worked with almost everyone in Spanish music (from Hombres G to Rosendo) got together thirty years ago to create two mythical records of avant-garde electronic music. Twenty years after…