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Keller Quartett — Ligeti String Quartets / Barber Adagio (2013)

 Keller Quartett — Ligeti String Quartets / Barber Adagio (April 30, 2013)

Keller Quartett — Ligeti String Quartets / Barber Adagio
Ξ  The Keller String Quartet is fluent in modernist music and is associated with the ECM New Series label.
György Ligeti born: May 28, 1923 in Discöszentmáton, Transylvania
Died: June 12, 2006 in Vienna, Austria
Genre: Classical, Avant-Garde
Styles: Modern Composition, Chamber Music, Choral, Keyboard, Experimental Electronic
Samuel Barber born: March 9, 1910 in West Chester, PA
Died: January 23, 1981 in New York, NY
Genre: Classical
Styles: Orchestral, Vocal Music, Chamber Music, Choral, Concerto, Keyboard, Opera
Keller Quartett formed: 1987 in Budapest, Hungary
Location: Budapest, Hungary
Album release: April 30, 2013
Record Label: ECM New Series 2197 (481 0026) 
Duration:     50:53
Tracks:
01 String Quartet No. 1 (Métamorphoses nocturnes) György Ligeti     22:08
02 String Quartet, op. 11; Molto adagio; Samuel Barber     7:43
03 String Quartet No. 2 (1968);  I. Allegro nervoso; György Ligeti     4:51
04 II. Sostenuto, molto calmo;      4:48    
05 III. Come un meccanismo di precisione     3:37
06 IV. Presto furioso, brutale, tumultuoso     2:10
07 V. Allegro con delicatezza — stets sehr mild     5:36
Group Members:
Ξ  András Keller
Ξ  János Pilz
Ξ  Judit Szabó
Ξ  Ottó Kertész
Ξ  Péter Bársony
Ξ  Zoltan Gal
Ξ  Zsofia Kornyei
Tracks 1 & 2 plays:
Ξ  András Keller violin
Ξ  János Pilz violin
Ξ  Zoltán Gál viola
Ξ  Judit Szabó violoncello
Tracks 3 — 7 plays:
Ξ  András Keller violin
Ξ  Zsófia Környei violin
Ξ  Zoltán Gál viola
Ξ  Judit Szabó violoncello
CREDITS:
Recorded: June 2007 and October 2011 (String Quartet No. 2), Radio Studio DRS, Zürich
Tonmeister: Peter Laenger
Cover Photo: Caterina di Perri
Liner Photos: Tamás Almási (p. 3), Andrea Felvégi (p. 4), Ines Gellrich (p. 6), Gordon Parks / Getty Images (p. 15), Marco Borggreve / Ullstein Bild (p. 16)
Design: Sascha Kleis
Produced by Manfred Eicher
An ECM Production
> 2013 ECM Records GmbH
< 2013 ECM Records GmbH
www.ecmrecords.com
Review by Blair SandersonScore: ****½
Ξ  György Ligeti was a member in good standing of the musical avant-garde of the mid-20th century, while Samuel Barber was, at the same time, one of the most prominent neo-Romantic composers. They would seem to be an odd couple on this 2013 release on ECM New Series, for Ligeti's two string quartets and Barber's Molto adagio from the String Quartet No. 2 (known in various arrangements as "Barber's Adagio") appear to come from opposing camps, if not different worlds. Yet the Keller Quartet demonstrates that there is not a huge gulf between these pieces, and that there are good reasons for placing Barber's placid elegy as a contrasting piece between Ligeti's more adventurous studies of string sonorities and extended effects. While some listeners will be fully prepared for the dissonant counterpoint and rough textures of Ligeti's String Quartet No. 1, Barber's Adagio works well as a kind of palate cleanser, and provides an opportunity to rest and take stock before advancing to the more agitated String Quartet No. 2. Even so, Ligeti's string quartets have their share of searching, introspective expressions, rather in the vein of the quartets of Béla Bartók, so listeners don't have far to jump to appreciate the choice of pieces. The Keller Quartet is certainly adept at playing both conventional, tonal music and more experimental, atonal music, and their performances are utterly convincing and beautiful. Ξ  ECM's exceptional reproduction contributes to the attractiveness of the package, so this CD is an appealing presentation of works that set each other off admirably.
GYÖRGY LIGETI
Artist Biography by Robert Cummings
Ξ  György Ligeti was one of the most important avant-garde composers in the latter half of the twentieth century. He stood with Boulez, Berio, Stockhausen, and Cage as one of the most innovative and influential among progressive figures of his time. His early works show the influence of Bartók and Kodály, and like them, he studied folk music and made transcriptions from folk material. In Apparitions (1958-1959) and Atmospheres (1961), he developed a style forged from chromatic cluster chords that are devoid of conventional melody, pitch and rhythm, but instead grow into timbres and textures that yield new sonic possibilities. The composer referred to this method as "micropolyphony." In Aventures (1962), Ligeti devised a vocal technique in which the singers are required to make a full range of vocalizations, cries and nonsense noises to fashion a kind of imaginary, non-specific drama, but with rather specifically expressed emotions. Ligeti was almost alone among progressive composers from the latter twentieth century who have written popular and widely performed music.
Ξ  Ligeti was born on May 28, 1923, in the Transylvanian town of Dicsöszentmárton, Romania and grew up in Kolozsvar, Klausenburg. At the age of 14, he began taking piano lessons and soon wrote his first composition, a waltz.
Ξ  Because he was a Jew living under the Nazi-puppet regime in Hungary, Ligeti was forbidden university study and thus enrolled in the Kolozsvar Conservatory in 1941, and began studies with Ferenc Farkas, a Respighi pupil. Later, in Budapest, he also studied with pianist-composer Pál Kadosa.
Ξ  In January 1944, Ligeti was arrested and sent to a labor camp where he remained imprisoned until 1945. Other family members were sent to Auschwitz, where only his mother survived. Ligeti graduated from the Budapest Academy of Music in 1949 and began an extended period of study of folk music.
Ξ  In the years of 1950-1956, he served as a professor at the Budapest Academy. His music was largely unadventurous during this period, owing to restrictions by the Hungarian Communist regime. Ligeti and his wife fled their homeland during the Revolution in 1956, settling in Vienna. Ligeti began studying and composing at the Cologne-based Electronic Music Studio from 1957 to 1959, producing the influential Artikulation (1958), one of his first electronic works.
Ξ  Other important progressive works followed, such as the orchestral composition, Apparitions (1958-1959) and Atmospheres (1961). In 1959, Ligeti began serving as visiting professor at the Academy of Music in Stockholm and also started teaching courses at Darmstadt.
Ξ  His choral work Requiem (1963-1965) was another success, as were Ramifications (1968-1969), for string orchestra or 12 solo strings, and Clocks and Clouds (1972-1973). In 1972, Ligeti became Composer in Residence at Stanford University and the following year took on a professorship at the Hamburg Academy of Music. Ligeti composed his opera Le Grand Macabre in the period 1975-1977, but revised it in the 1990s, with the final version completed in 1997. It has become one of his most popular large works.
Ξ  In 1982, the composer's mother died. That same year saw a return of Ligeti's health after a period of five years' sickness. In the 1980s the composer forswore further composition in the realm of electronic music. Ligeti retired from his post as professor of composition at the Hamburg Music Academy in 1989. In the 1990s, he spent much time on the aforementioned second version of Le Grand Macabre.
Ξ  Ligeti received his share of awards and prizes, including the 1986 Grawemeyer Prize and the 1996 Music Prize of the International Music Council.
Ξ  György Ligeti was a member in good standing of the musical avant-garde of the mid-20th century, while Samuel Barber was, at the same time, one of the most prominent neo-Romantic composers.
Ξ  They would seem to be an odd couple on this 2013 release on ECM New Series, for Ligeti’s two string quartets and Barber’s Molto adagio from the String Quartet No. 2 (known in various arrangements as “Barber’s Adagio”) appear to come from opposing camps, if not different worlds. Yet the Keller Quartet demonstrates that there is not a huge gulf between these pieces, and that there are good reasons for placing Barber’s placid elegy as a contrasting piece between Ligeti’s more adventurous studies of string sonorities and extended effects. While some listeners will be fully prepared for the dissonant counterpoint and rough textures of Ligeti’s String Quartet No. 1, Barber’s Adagio works well as a kind of palate cleanser, and provides an opportunity to rest and take stock before advancing to the more agitated String Quartet No. 2.
Ξ  Even so, Ligeti’s string quartets have their share of searching, introspective expressions, rather in the vein of the quartets of Béla Bartók, so listeners don’t have far to jump to appreciate the choice of pieces. The Keller Quartet is certainly adept at playing both conventional, tonal music and more experimental, atonal music, and their performances are utterly convincing and beautiful. ECM’s exceptional reproduction contributes to the attractiveness of the package, so this CD is an appealing presentation of works that set each other off admirably.
SAMUEL BARBER
Artist Biography by Stephen Eddins
Ξ  Samuel Barber, one of the most prominent and popular American composers of the mid-20th century, wrote effectively in virtually every genre, including opera, ballet, vocal, choral, keyboard, chamber, and orchestral music. His music is notable for its warmly Romantic lyricism, memorable melodies, and essentially conservative harmonic style, all of which put him at odds with the prevailing modernist aesthetic of his time.
Ξ  Barber was a member of the first class at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. In 1928, the 17-year-old Gian Carlo Menotti came to study at Curtis, and the two formed a personal and professional bond that would last most of Barber's life. Ξ  As a student, Barber wrote several works that have entered the repertoire, including the song Dover Beach and Overture to the School for Scandal for orchestra. A fine singer and pianist, as well as composer, much of his work throughout his career featured the voice.
Ξ  After his graduation from Curtis, Barber wrote a string quartet, the second movement of which became his most famous work, Adagio for Strings. Toscanini performed the Adagio with the NBC Symphony in 1938, and Barber's career was effectively launched. His 1939 Violin Concerto further established his international reputation. During the Second World War, Barber served in the Army Air Corps, where his duties included writing a symphony, his second. Works that followed over the next two decades include the Capricorn Concerto; a Cello Concerto; a Piano Sonata; Knoxville: Summer of 1915, an extended song for voice and orchestra with a text by James Agee; Hermit Songs, for voice and piano, using medieval texts; the chamber opera A Hand of Bridge; Medea's Meditation and Dance of Vengeance, taken from the ballet Cave of the Heart, written for Martha Graham; Summer Music, for wind quintet; the opera Vanessa; and a Piano Concerto. Some of the most prestigious musicians in the world performed his music and became champions of his work, including Leontyne Price, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Eleanor Steber, Martina Arroyo, Vladimir Horowitz, Arturo Toscanini, Eugene Ormandy, Bruno Walter, George Szell, and Serge Koussevitzky.
Ξ  Barber received his first Pulitzer Prize for Vanessa, which had been commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera, had its premiere in 1958, and was hailed as the first great American "grand opera." His 1962 Piano Concerto won the composer his second Pulitzer Prize. The Metropolitan Opera commissioned Barber to write an opera to inaugurate its new opera house in Lincoln Center in 1966. Antony and Cleopatra, based on Shakespeare with a libretto by Franco Zeffirelli, proved to be a failure due at least as much to flaws in the production as to the music. Barber was so devastated by the intensity of the animosity toward his work that he never regained his confidence. He was temperamentally disposed to melancholy, which turned into clinical depression, and although he continued to compose sporadically, he produced few further works of substance.
Ξ  In spite of the indifference or contempt of critics and the academic establishment, Barber's expressive and directly communicative music has never lacked support and devotion from concert audiences, and he remains one of the best-known and beloved American composers. His Adagio for Strings has achieved iconic status as a profound and universally understood expression of grief, and remains a testament to Barber's ability to write music of the highest artistic standards that can also touch the heart.
_______________________________________________________________
Booklet info:
Ξ  where is home
Ξ  When Ligeti’s Second Quartet was receiving its early performances, forty years or so ago, to programme it with the Barber Adagio would have been unthinkable. Ligeti was new music; Barber, though he was actively composing, was not. What could a work that took Webern as starting point say to an adagio in B flat minor? The Ligeti quartet was surely everything the Barber movement was not: novel in its soundscape, restlessly exploratory, suspicious of former rhetoric, questing and questioning. It appeared to show the Barber, long established as a popular classic through the composer’s transcription for orchestral strings, as irrelevant to the progress of music, a mis-step from a year, 1936, that had also seen the composition of Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Schoenberg’s Fourth Quartet and Varese’s Density 21.5 — or, to limit the field to compatriots and close contemporaries of Barber’s, works by John Cage and Elliott Carter. This was Ligeti’s continuing tradition; Barber’s was in the deep past. Ligeti was all about leaving what for Barber was solid home.
Ξ  How times have changed.
Ξ  How a recording can change them.
Ξ  As presented here, Ligeti’s music and Barber’s no longer seem to come from separate, even antagonistic universes. This is partly because both belong to the world of performance, because both are being drawn out of their time haunts into the immediate present, the now of fingers and bows on strings, of resonating wood (whose character is heard with such warm clarity in the pizzicato middle movement of the Ligeti Second Quartet especially). Physically actualized in the recording, the music is also being all the time remade by performers searching for what a motif can convey, must convey, and finding an abundance of expressive contours in Ligeti’s quartets as much as in Barber’s. The gesture of lament, of course, is common to both, if differently articulated. But what startles in these performances is the urgency of that gesture, whether in Barber or in Ligeti, and the destabilized ground on which it takes place.
Ξ  The Barber, needless to say, is a tonal composition, one whose means would have been fully understood half a century before the piece was written. By 1936, though, those means had lost their universality, and the Keller Quartett’s performance speaks of that loss. The almost non vibrato entry of the first violin removes any clothing of confidence: this is an instrument coming naked into the world, and showing, when increasing its vibration, only a flickering of insecurity. Its steps are tentative. They also lead nowhere, in a lodgeless world, ever returning and ever retracing. When the high point is reached, by all four instruments, it is the discovery of light but of a light that cannot be seen, because we are forced to tighten our eyes against it. And the final chord is more expiration than arrival, more exhaustion than homecoming.
Ξ  Ligeti’s distrust or uncertainty, where homes are concerned, he revealed in his attitudes to his own early work, even as those attitudes changed. One relic of his Hungarian Bartókian ethnographical past was his string quartet Métamorphoses nocturnes (1953 — 54), which he took with him when he left Budapest toward the end of 1956, and which had a performance in Vienna a year and a half later. The work had been too challenging for presentation back home, but for Ligeti, who by the time of its premiere had worked on three electronic pieces in Cologne, it was not challenging enough. Though he implicitly legitimized it by calling his next quartet “No. 2”, he did not encourage further performances, and the quartet was not recorded until 1976. By then changes in his way of working — including, soon, a renewed enthusiasm for folk music — were beginning to make his Métamorphoses nocturnes less distant. What the Keller Quartett’s performance demonstrates is that this ‘prehistoric’ work (the composer’s own term) is already fully Ligetian in its busy polyphony, its abundance of new colours and its dissatisfaction with received information, even — or especially — the information it was so skilfully incorporating from Hungarian sources, rustic and learned.
Ξ  That intensity of dissatisfaction, conjoined with great authority, is vitally communicated by this recording. Ligeti was ably proceeding from Bartók (whose Sixth Quartet, we should recall, was barely more than a decade old), and achieving a continuous concatenation of episodes — atmospheric, macabre, dancing, humorous — threaded through with references to a motif that magically first emerges, in the form G — A — G — A, as a variation on parallel chromatic scales. Other features include the progressive expansion and contraction of intervals to move from oscillations to more jagged contours and back again (in the Prestissimo towards the close), as well as the first signs of a concern with string harmonics. The Keller Quartett realize all these aspects of the music’s power and drive — and all its details, not least a wonderful pizzicato glissando — while suggesting, also, that for the composer they are not sufficient. What is home for this music, the home it at once establishes and undermines, is a place to leave. The last trailing statements of the main motif come from instruments that, after a tipsy farewell party, are already moving on.
Ξ  Yet even the remarkable Second Quartet is not the destination, rather a waystage. Ligeti wrote it swiftly, between March and July 1968, at a time when, in parallel with the événements in Paris, what remained of the musical avantgarde’s solidarity, always more wishful than binding, was breaking down. So was its pursuit of innovation. On this point Ligeti has always been wary, as witness his playful introduction of quasi-human vocalizing into the supposedly pure electronic medium in the last of his 1957 — 58 essays, Artikulation, or the echoes of the late Romantic orchestra that had filtered into his Lontano the year before the quartet, or his choice of the quartet genre at all. More than his contemporaries who had been brought up in western Europe, he was aware that history cannot be forgotten. “The entire string quartet tradition from Beethoven to Webern is there somewhere in the quartet,” he was to say, “even sonata form, although only like an immured corpse.” That final word, though, is significant. No sooner does he mention the most central feature of the central tradition than he stops himself. Amnesia may be impossible, but there are parts of history that have died. The past is another country. We are no longer at home there.
Ξ  Hence the need Ligeti felt to redefine the quartet, which he did by redefining its sound. In particular, harmonics are no longer exceptional; indeed, they are almost the rule, creating a music that glistens. The effort to produce those harmonics, at the level of intonational clarity the piece demands, explains the long gap before the first performance, which the LaSalle Quartet, then the leading exponents of the quartets of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern, gave in Baden Baden on December 14, 1969. Almost half a century later, the work is as near as any quartet of its period to being part of the repertory, which means not only that its technical difficulties have been absorbed but also that it can profit from a performance that, as this one does, brings fresh and keenly expressive life to its sounds, with whistling harmonics of mystery, pain or hilarity and marvellous effects of bending intonation when one instrument slides past another.
Ξ  Unlike its predecessor, the Second Quartet is in distinct movements — five of them, in homage to Bartók’s Fourth and Fifth Quartets, if with markings more reminiscent of Berg’s Lyric Suite (Allegro nervoso and Prestissimo sfrenato in the first movement). However, the principle of continuous variation is maintained.
Ξ  “I wanted to realize one and the same concept in the five movements of the string quartet”, Ligeti recalled, and went on: “In the first movement the structure is largely broken up, as in the Requiem or in Aventures: one could almost describe it as an instrumental variant of these works. In the second movement everything is reduced to very slow motion … The third movement is a pizzicato piece … The net-formations, which were very soft until this point, now become hard and mechanical: the movement is like a machine that breaks down … The fourth movement is a very brutal movement … Everything that had happened before is now crammed together … And the fifth movement — in great contrast with the compressed fourth — spreads itself out just, just … like a cloud.”
Ξ  The first movement is concerned very much with abrupt changes from slow to fast and back again, with vigorous gallops being suddenly braked into stillness, and then as suddenly set racing again. On the melodic level, these changes are equalled by transitions from highly angular motion to tremolando, developed from the First Quartet almost beyond recognition. The second movement introduces specified quarter-tones into the cluster image; the third is one of Ligeti’s misbehaving clocks, just as the finale is one of his coloured clouds. The work, which had become very physical and near in its fourth movement, withdraws again from us.
Ξ  Ligeti himself again referred to his Requiem in connection with this last movement, comparing it with that earlier work’s Lacrimosa, but this is music also of teeming life. Precisely midway through the movement there arrives a moment of poignancy — extreme poignancy, Barberian, as it is in this most characterful recording — which Ligeti typically follows with a smokescreen in the form of a rushing quadruple helix, which typically comes adrift. The temptation to start over suggests itself, with reminiscences of the movement’s quivering start, but it is as useless to seek a new beginning as to bemoan our fate. Once again the music ends with a departure. — Paul Griffiths
Also:
ANDY GILL  Friday 28 June 2013;  Score: ****
Ξ  http://www.independent.co.uk/
Robert Moon;  Score: *****
Ξ  http://audaud.com/
Michael Dervan;  Score: ****
Ξ  http://www.irishtimes.com/
LABEL: http://www.ecmrecords.com/
_______________________________________________________________

Keller Quartett — Ligeti String Quartets / Barber Adagio (2013)

 

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Wrekmeister Harmonies — We Love to Look at the Carnage (2020)
Calexico / Iron & Wine — Years to Burn (2019)
Fairport Convention — 50:50@50 (June 9, 2017)
Fairport Convention — Shuffle and Go (29 Feb., 2020)
James Taylor — American Standard (Feb. 28th, 2020)
The Magnetic Fields — Quickies (May 15, 2020)
Moses Sumney — græ Part 1 & 2 (May 15, 2020)
The Dream Syndicate — „The Universe Inside“ (April 10, 2020)
The Third Mind — The Third Mind (Feb. 14, 2020)
ANNA CALVI — HUNTED (March 6, 2020)
Jonathan Wilson — Rare Birds (March 2nd, 2018)
Jonathan Wilson — Dixie Blur (March 6, 2020)
Luke Haines — Beat Poetry For Survivalists (6 Mar. 2020)
Sink Ya Teeth — Two (28th Feb. 2020)
Stian Westerhus — Redundance (March 5, 2020)
Thomas Dybdahl — The Great Plains (Feb 24, 2017)
Thomas Dybdahl — Fever (March 13, 2020)
PETR KALANDRA — Petr Kalandra & ASPM 1982 — 1990 (Feb. 26, 2020)
Al Di Meola — Across the Universe: The Beatles, Vol. 2 (2020)
Sam Gendel — Satin Doll (13 Mar 2020)
Chapelier Fou — Deltas (Sept. 22, ​2014)
Chapelier Fou — Meridiens (Feb. 28, 2020)
CocoRosie — Put the Shine On (6 March 2020)
Dungen — Live (March 13, 2020)
Queer Jane — Home (Dec. 1, 2016)
Hornscape — Hornscape (March 6th, 2020)
Joywave — Possession (March 13, 2020)
Walter Martin — The World at Night (Jan. 31, 2020)
Morrissey — I Am Not a Dog On a Chain (March 20th, 2020)
Human Impact — Human Impact (13 March 2020)
Hibiscus Biscuit — Reflection of Mine (March 1st, 2020)
Markus Reuter — TRUCE (Jan. 17, 2020) cover
Orchards — Lovecore (March 13th, 2020)
Julia Holter — Never Rarely Sometimes Always (March 13, 2020)
Cathedral Bells — Velvet Spirit (March 6, 2020)
Bacchae — Pleasure Vision (March 6, 2020)
The Dears — Times Infinity Volume One (September 25, 2015)
Amanda Palmer — Forty~Five Degrees: Bushfire Charity Flash Rec.
THE DEARS — ‘Lovers Rock’ (May 15, 2020)
Eivind Aarset & Jan Bang — Snow Catches On Her Eyelashes (2020)
Waxahatchee — Saint Cloud (March 27, 2020)
Michael Landau — The Michael Landau Group Live (Oct. 31, 2006)
Låpsley — Through Water (March 20th, 2020)
Elysian Fields — Transience Of Life (May 7, 2020)
Baxter Dury — The Night Chancers (20 March 2020)
The Weeknd — Beauty Behind the Madness (Aug. 28th, 2015)
The Weeknd — Beauty Behind the Madness (Aug. 28th, 2015)
False Heads — It’s All There But You’re Dreaming (13 March 2020)
False Heads — It’s All There But You’re Dreaming (13 March 2020)
The Album Leaf — OST (March 20, 2020)
Real Estate — The Main Thing (28th Feb., 2020)
Villagers — The Art Of Pretending To Swim (03/19, 2020) DELUXE E
Villagers — Darling Arithmetic [Deluxe Version] (April 10, 2015)
Noveller — Arrow (June 7, 2020)
Justine Vandergrift — Stay (Feb. 7th, 2019)
The Electric Soft Parade — Stages (Jan. 8, 2020)
Ben Watt — Storm Damage (31st Jan., 2020)
Anoushka Shankar — Love Letters (7 Feb., 2020)
Roger Eno | Brian Eno — Mixing Colours (20 March, 2020)
Alberto Posadas : Poética del Laberinto, cycle pour quatuor de s
Sufjan Stevens — Aporia (March 27, 2020)
Beck — Deep Cuts (March 2020)
BECK — Uneventful Days (St. Vincent Remix)
Béla Fleck & Toumani Diabaté — The Ripple Effect [2LP, March 27,
Arbouretum — Let It All In (March 20, 2020)
Pearl Jam — Gigaton (March 27, 2020)
Loveblind: Visions
Loveblind: Visions
San Fermin — San Fermin (Nov. 11, 2013)
San Fermin — The Cormorant I & II (Oct. 4, 2019/April 3, 2020)
Stove — ‘s Favorite Friend (Oct. 31, 2018)
Queer Jane — Amen Dolores (March 27, 2020)
Rory Block — Prove It On Me (March 27, 2020)
Lizzy Farrall — Bruise (March 27, 2020)
Lilly Hiatt — Walking Proof (27 March, 2020)
The Chats — High Risk Behaviour (March 27, 2020)
Kazuomi Eshima & Masahiko Takeda — Inheritance for Soundscape
Marissa Nadler — unearthed (March 20, 2020)
Lucy Railton — Paradise 94 (22 Mar 2018)
BECCA STEVENS — WONDERBLOOM (March 20th 20, 2020)
Trees Speak — Ohms (3rd April, 2020)
Teho Teardo — Ellipsis dans l’harmonie (March 6th, 2020)
Ellipsis dans l’harmonie BACK COVER
Cocteau Twins — Head Over Heels
Cocteau Twins — Treasure
Cocteau Twins — Garlands (1982, Reissue 2020)
1600 x 1600 High Violet (10th Anniversary Expanded Edition).jpg
Riva Taylor — ‘This Woman’s Heart .1’ (27 Mar 2020)
Amy LaVere — Painting Blue (27 Mar 2020)
Sea Wolf — Through a Dark Wood (March 20, 2020)
Locate S,1 — Personalia (April 3, 2020
Anna Burch — Quit The Curse (Feb 2, 2018)
M.Ward — Migration of Souls (April 3, 2020)
Peel Dream Magazine — Agitprop Alterna (3rd April 2020)
ANDREW BIRD — CAPITAL CRIMES (April 1st, 2020)
Spy Machines — Spy Machines (April 3, 2020)
Richard Barbieri ‎— Past Imperfect / Future Tense (Mar 2020)
DAVID POMAHAČ — DO TMY JE DALEKO (Feb. 7, 2020)
KIESLOWSKI Tiché lásky
Born Ruffians — Juice (April 3, 2020)
LENKA NOVÁ — DOPISY (21.03./24.04., 2020)
Ezra Bell — This Way to Oblivion (3rd April, 2020)
Songdog — Happy Ending (27th March, 2020)
Laurel Halo — Raw Silk Uncut Wood (July 13, 2018)
Laurel Halo — Possessed (April 10, 2020)
Laura Marling — Song for Our Daughter (April 10th, 2020)
Hamilton Leithauser (The Walkmen) — Dear God (Aug. 2015)
Hamilton Leithauser — The Loves of Your Life (10 April 2020)
Don Gallardo — The Lonesome Wild (April 2, 2020)
Cowboy Junkies — Ghosts (30 Mar 2020)
The Mountain Goats — Songs for Pierre Chuvin (April 10, 2020)
Darnielle, Jon Wurster, Matt Douglas, Pete Hughes. ©Josh Sanseri
Erik Griswold — All’s Grist That Comes To The Mill (03/20, 2020)
Erik Griswold — All’s Grist That Comes To The Mill (03/20 2020)
Varga Marián — Solo in Concert (1. feb. 2018)
Joe Bonamassa & The Sleep Eazys — Easy To Buy, Hard To Sell
Midwife — Forever (April 10, 2020)
Moondog — On The Streets Of New York (Feb. 14, 2020)
Damon Locks Black Monument Ensemble — Where Future Unfolds (2019
Meredith Monk & Bang on a Can All~Stars — Memory Game (03/27/20)
Pharoah Sanders — „Live In Paris (1975): Lost ORTF Recordings“
I Like to Sleep — Daymare (April 17, 2020)
MoE/Mette Rasmussen — Tolerancia Picante (March 25, 2019)
The Tiger Lillies — Cold Night in Soho (10 Feb. 2017)
The Tiger Lillies — Edgar Allan Poe’s Haunted Palace
Sarah Jarosz — World On The Ground (June 5, 2020)
Kate Amrine — This Is My Letter to the World (Jan. 24, 2020)
Fiona Apple — Fetch The Bolt Cutters (17 Apr., 2020)
The Tiger Lillies — Covid~19 (April 10, 2020)
Veneer — Recovery (April 15, 2020)
Siobhan Wilson — The Departure (10 May, 2019)
BC Camplight — Shortly After Takeoff (24 April 2020)
Siobhan Wilson — There Are No Saints (14 Jul, 2017)
Brendan Benson — Dear Life (April 24, 2020)
Ali Holder — Uncomfortable Truths (April 10, 2020)
From Atomic — Deliverance (April 2020)
Whyte Horses — Hard Times (17th of Jan., 2020)
Gerald Cleaver — Signs (March 27, 2020)
Sophie Tassignon — Mysteries Unfold (April 24, 2020)
HOUPACÍ KONĚ: SOULKOSTEL 8 11 2019 (April 25, 2020)
Sarah Longfield — Dusk (April 22, 2020)
Ariel Pink — House Arrest (2002/Mar 2011/April 24, 2020)
All The Best, Isaac Hayes (A Spoken Word Album)
Prophecy Playground — Comfort Zone (Feb. 15, 2020)
Mark Lanegan — Straight Songs Of Sorrow (8th May, 2020)
Genesis Revisited: Live at The Royal Albert Hall — 2020 Remaster
Joan As Police Woman — Cover Two (May 1, 2020)
Kuře v hodinkách — Flamengo
Kuře v hodinkách — Flamengo
Devon Williams — A Tear in the Fabric (May 1, 2020)
Johanna Warren — Chaotic Good (May 1, 2020)
emozpěv — Spolu (1st May 2020)
THE LEAGUE OF ASSHOLES — UNPLUGGED (1st May 2020)
Morgan1
Zuzana Mikulcová — Slová
The Fratellis — Half Drunk Under A Full Moon (8th May, 2020)
The Fratellis — Half Drunk Under A Full Moon (8th May, 2020)
Cocteau Twins — Victorialand (April, 1986, Reissue 2020)
Coloured Clocks — Flora (May 2, 2020)
I Break Horses — Warnings (08 May 2020)
Hawkwind — Acoustic Daze (25 Oct. 2019)
Indoor Voices — Animal (Feb. 14, 2020)
I Break Horses — Chiaroscuro
Einstürzende Neubauten — Alles In Allem (May 29th, 2020)
100 Gecs — 1000 gecs (May 31, 2019)
Evergreen — Overseas (15 Jun 2018)
Kurt Rosenwinkel Trio — Angels Around (May 8, 2020)
The Feather — Room (10 July, 2020)
Eyvind Kang — Ajaeng Ajaeng (May 1, 2020)
Eyvind Kang — Ajaeng Ajaeng (May 1, 2020)
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith — The Mosaic of Transformation (May 15, 20
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith — The Kid (October 6, 2017)
Mr. Alec Bowman — I Used to Be Sad & Then I Forgot (May 1, 2020)
György Ligeti — Lontano (22. Oct.,1967)
OWEN PALLETT — Heartland (March 3, 2014)
Badly Drawn Boy — Banana Skin Shoes (22nd May, 2020)
A.O. Gerber — Another Place to Need (May 22, 2020)
Kaleidoscope — Faintly Blowing (11 April 1969, Reissue, Remaster
Perfume Genius — Set My Heart On Fire Immediately (15th May 2020
Perfume Genius — No Shape (5 May, 2017) BC
Perfume Genius — No Shape (5 May, 2017) FC
Sungazers — Wasting Space (May 18, 2020)
Cermaque — Lament (22nd May, 2020)
Mountaineer — Bloodletting (May 22nd, 2020)
Jetstream Pony — Jetstream Pony (May 22, 2020)
Steve Earle — Townes (May 8, 2009)
Steve Earle & The Dukes — Ghosts of West Virginia (May 22, 2020)
Sixth June ‎— Trust (17 Jan 2020)
White Tail Falls — Age of Entitlement (May 29, 2020)
Weyes Blood — “Wild Time” from Titanic Rising
Nicole Atkins — Italian Ice (29 May 2020)
Deerhoof — Future Teenage Cave Artists (May 29, 2020)
Deradoorian — Find the Sun (Sept. 18, 2020)
Bob Dylan — Rough and Rowdy Ways (June 19th, 2020)
The Magnetic Fields — QUICKIES VINYL BOX SET (June 19, 2020)
The Magnetic Fields — QUICKIES VINYL BOX SET (June 19, 2020)
This Will Destroy You — Vespertine (June 9, 2020)
Jake Blount — Spider Tales (May 29, 2020)
Jake Blount — Spider Tales (May 29, 2020)
Yoko Ono, Kim Gordon & Thurston Moore — YOKOKIMTHURSTON
Psychic Markers — Psychic Markers (29 May, 2020)
The Memories — Pickles & Pies (May 29, 2020)
Songs for the Late Night Drive Home (Feb. 5, 2016)
Spc Eco — Dark Matter (Nov. 20, 2015)
SPC ECO — June (June 1, 2020)
Yves Tumor — Heaven to a Tortured Mind (April 3, 2020)
Norah Jones — Pick Me Up Off the Floor (June 12th, 2020)
Larkin Poe — Self Made Man (June 12th, 2020)
Ezra Furman — Sex Education [Original Soundtrack] (April 24, 202
Endless Field — Alive in the Wilderness (June 12, 2020)
Wesley Gonzalez — Appalling Human (June 12, 2020)
Noveller — Arrow (June 12, 2020)
Kim Myhr & Australian Art Orchestra — Vesper (17.04. 2020)
Kim Myhr & Australian Art Orchestra — Vesper (17.04. 2020)
Andrej Šeban — Triplet (March 22, 2019) inner cover
Andrej Šeban — Triplet (March 22, 2019) cover
The Crossing & Donald Nally — James Primosch: Carthage (05/2020)
Jerskin Fendrix — Winterreise (April 17, 2020)
Zoongideewin — Bleached Wavves (June 19, 2020)
ULRICH SCHNAUSS — A Long Way To Fall — Rebound (3rd April, 2020)
Sports Team — Deep Down Happy (5th June, 2020)
Wrekmeister Harmonies — We Love to Look at the Car (2020)
Midlake — Antiphon (Nov. 4, 2013)
ANASTASIA MINSTER — Father ©Michael Haley
Jessie Ware — Glasshouse (Deluxe; 20 Oct 2017)
Teen Daze — Morning World
Jessie Ware — What’s Your Pleasure (June 26, 2020)
Art Feynman — Half Price At 3:30 (June 26th, 2020)
Bo Ningen — Sudden Fictions (26th June, 2020)
Khruangbin — Mordechai (June 26, 2020)
Pottery — Welcome to Bobby’s Motel (June 26th, 2020)
Orlando Weeks — A Quickening (June 12, 2020)
John Craigie — Asterisk the Universe (June 12, 2020)
Kavus Torabi — Hip to the Jag (May 22, 2020)
Nadine Shah — Kitchen Sink (June 5, 2020)
Paul Weller — On Sunset [Deluxe Edition] (3rd July, 2020)
Corb Lund — Agricultural Tragic (June 26, 2020)
Christine Ott — Chimères (pour ondes Martenot) (May 22, 2020)
The Beths — Jump Rope Gazers (July 10th, 2020)
Ashley Paul — Window Flower (May 13, 2020)
Grey Daze — Amends [Deluxe Edition] (July 3, 2020)
Grey Daze ©Photo credit: Anjella / Sakiphotography
Ajimal — As It Grows Dark / Light (June 26, 2020)
Ajimal — As It Grows Dark Light (June 26, 2020)
Eleanor Friedberger — Rebound (May 4th, 2018)
ELEANOR FRIEDBERGER — NEW VIEW (January 22, 2016)
Immigrant Union — Judas (June 19, 2020)
Julianna Barwick — Healing Is a Miracle [Japan Edition] (2020)
Neil Young & Crazy Horse — Colorado (Oct. 25, 2019)
Neil Young — Homegrown (19th June, 2020)
The Jayhawks — XOXO (July 10, 2020)
Joy Division — Closer (40th Anniversary) [2020 Digital Master] (
Daniel Bachman — The Morning Star (July 27, 2018)
Daniel Bachman — Green Alum Springs (June 6, 2020)
Becca Mancari — The Greatest Part (June 26, 2020)
Ytamo — Vacant (June 12, 2020)
Bright Eyes — Down In The Weeds, Where The World Once Was (Aug.
Thin Lear — Wooden Cave (24th July, 2020)
Devendra Banhart — Vast Ovoid (July 24, 2020)
Cub Sport — LIKE NIRVANA (24 July, 2020)
Sara Serpa — Recognition (June 5th, 2020)
Sara Serpa, Ingrid Laubrock, Erik Friedlander — Close Up (2018)
Klara Lewis — Ingrid (1st May 2020)
Buju Banton — Upside Down (June 26, 2020)
Son Lux — Learning Structures vol. 1~4 (Oct. 11th, 2019)
learning structures, vol. 3 distance between us (Oct. 11, 2019)
learning structures, vol. 2: end firma
learning structures, vol. 3: distance between us
The Boomtown Rats — Citizens of Boomtown (13 March, 2020)
Ralph of London — The Potato Kingdom (19th June, 2020)
Mike Polizze — Long Lost Solace Find (July 31, 2020)
Land of Talk — Indistinct Conversations (July 31, 2020)