An Evening With Dusty - Kyle Bobby Dunn from Joey Bania on Vimeo.

A beautiful 8 minute long 'ambient film' featuring suave drone music by Kyle Bobby Dunn.  Recommend viewing it on a big-screen HD tv set if possible - could really transform the room it's playing in.  Bravo!

Fennel - Resuming the Trail

Please enjoy the newest full-length Fennel album Resuming the Trail. Most of the work on this was done between early spring and late summer of this year, from the time I was anxiously waiting to see what would result of my school applications, up to just before I moved from Woodland Hills to Riverside. This is my most biographical and varied work yet, and the format this time around is quite different from before: there are 14 tracks adding to just over 35 minutes, and they're all seamless. No one track is fit to be isolated from the rest.

Field recordings were taken around Woodland Hills, Sherman Oaks, Santa Monica, Venice, Berkeley and Santa Barbara, California. These form a continuous environmental backdrop for the album, partly urban and partly natural, over which I put recordings of piano, guitar, voice, fujara (Slovakian overtone flute), and miscellaneous other sounds. My personal narrative unfolds in an exploded-fragmentary fashion, with much ambiguity. Some of the material was freely improvised and left unaltered; some of it was patched together from guided improvisations, and a little of it was completely premeditated and written out.

If you download this from Bandcamp ("name-your-price" as always), you'll get a couple bonus photos and a .pdf score for the piano part to one of the songs. You'll also get a good sized version of the swoon-worthy cover art made by Niv Bavarsky.

Huge thanks go out to everyone who has encouraged me or given advice or criticism of one kind or another. With the release of Resuming the Trail, I won't be producing new Fennel material for quite some time. Graduate study is quickly getting extremely time consuming. That said, I still think about music constantly and can guarantee the world will see more recordings come from me in the future.

Download for free or a donation

Fennel - Relics

Striking cover art by illustrator Cam Floyd

I'm very excited to finally give you all a new Fennel release. This 25 minute EP is called Relics because it deals with certain feelings and events that are now for the most part behind me. Work started on it shortly after the occurrence of my graduation from college last year, and continued on and off until the final touches were placed last February. All of the field recordings stem from in and around my home in Woodland Hills, CA.

"Deep Sky" was the very first thing I wrote after releasing A Leap Across A Chasm last June. The piece was inspired by walks around my neighborhood at certain times of day when the clouds and sunlight and trees all coalesce into something sublime. That kind of setting tends to fill me with a particular kind of cosmic longing or nostalgia that is hard for me to put into words. I would like to be forthcoming and acknowledge Brian Eno's "1/1" from Music for Airports as a major influence on the basic form of "Deep Sky"; from the first time I heard that magical track back in 2004, I had always wanted to attempt my own spin on the ambient piano-loop format. My loops (three main themes in different modes centered around the note D) were initially constructed from free improvisations, and then complicated by many dozens of small variations. I hoped to achieve a fractal-like effect, repetitive but ever-changing.

"Memorandum" has its roots in the early experiments that led to my debut full length. One weekend home from school, I was recording in my backyard when some negligence on my part led to an argument with my parents. Everything was caught on tape, but I didn't seriously consider using it for a piece until months later, when "Deep Sky" was nearly done. I ended up juxtaposing the fight with a much more serene memory of mine, that of a 100% ordinary afternoon spent working with my dad to repair a fence. Brought together, the two events give me a valuable, though incomplete, picture of my family dynamic. It is my hope that others will derive their own meaning.

Once again I have made my music downloadable for free at http://fennel.bandcamp.com. I sincerely appreciate all feedback and donations, two things that help ensure more releases in the future.

Best wishes to my readers and listeners!

2010 - Fifty Great Releases, 5 - 1

5. Teebs - Ardour

Teebs' debut LP for Brainfeeder was one of my most anticipated releases of 2010, and it delivered on my every expectation and hope, and then some. Around the fall of 2009 I heard about Teebs from Nosaj Thing's excellent mix of music for the XLR8R Podcast series. Apparently Teebs got into making music when he sustained an injury from skateboarding and found a lot of time on his hands; somehow, he connected to Flying Lotus and became his roommate in LA. Teebs handed out a CD-R compilation in 2009 which completely sold me the first time I heard it. My readers probably know about me that I put a high priority on beauty, and Teebs makes futuristic instrumental hip hop that possesses utopian levels of beauty.

Ardour takes the best handful of tracks from the Teebs '09 compilation and distributes them among more than a dozen newer tracks to form a very tightly focused album. All but one of the tracks (the dreamy "Long Distance" featuring Gaby Hernandez on vocals) are instrumental, and many of them use a similar combination of chimes, bells, sparkling clean electric guitars, bass, Rhodes, ambient synth patches and traditional hip hop percussion. Lush and warm nearly to the point of humidity, the album effortlessly breezes by with some of the most consistently excellent production, melodic hooks and rhythmic flair around. Not a single track is weak, and a handful of them are as good as anything out there. Why, then, did the album end up at my #5 spot when I initially thought it was Top 3 material?

For being so consistent in instrumentation and so constantly gorgeous, combined with the length, Ardour ends up suffering a little bit from samey-ness and Ear Candy Syndrome. Basically we get a little too much of a really good thing. If the album were shorter or changed up its mood a little more, I would probably call it perfect. It works well as a musical trip to paradise, but I'd like to hear Teebs explore some colors other than glowing pastels. One darker track, and a standout on the album, "Why Like This", suggests he could very well work more with grittier sounds if he wanted.

Despite this selfish criticism I still think Teebs is making some of the most interesting new music, truly evolving beyond hip hop to probe sci-fi realms nobody else is exploring. His live sets go full-on psychedelic at times, and anybody in the vicinity of Eagle Rock should check out the new monthly live event "Futura" at the Center for the Arts, curated by Teebs and Asura. I should also mention that Teebs is a talented visual artist and the painter of his own album cover. With a craft as tight as anybody's in the game, Teebs could become the new most exciting beat pioneer by taking his sound just a little bit deeper.

4. Charles Lloyd Quartet - Mirror

No saxophonist I can think of has released more high quality albums throughout the 2000s than Charles Lloyd. His latest for ECM, Mirror, is not just the best jazz album of 2010 but one of the finest albums Charles Lloyd has ever recorded in his 45+ years as a respected improviser, interpreter and composer. His current band, with Jason Moran on piano, Reuben Rogers on bass, and Eric Harland on drums, is one of the strongest active jazz quartets. Their last album was the 2008 live concert recording Rabo de Nube, highlighting their passionately energetic interplay and daring solos. Things are relatively more toned down and introspective on Mirror, which features the group at their most sensitive and elegant.

The track selection includes several Charles Lloyd originals including the beaming, lovely "Desolation Sound", asymmetrical "Mirror" and exotic "Being and Becoming", as well as fresh interpretations of standards and spirituals like "I Fall in Love Too Easily", "Go Down, Moses", and "The Water is Wide". The band plays two Thelonious Monk tunes, "Monk's Mood" and "Ruby, My Dear", giving both of them an indescribably pretty, closer to celestial treatment; at one point of Jason Moran's supremely lyrical solo on "Ruby, My Dear" he lands on a note in the upper register and repeats it over and over while echoing it an octave below - this is one of the most heart-stoppingly-lovely brief moments in music recorded in 2010. "Lift Every Voice and Sing" has its anthemic melody stretched and contracted over rapidly skittering drums in more or less controlled free-time, and after a rollicking, Jaki Byard-esque solo from Moran, Lloyd releases uninhibited streams of melody worthy of John Coltrane.

The meditative, spiritual and deeply inspired mood throughout the album is encapsulated in the final track, "Tagi", which features Charles Lloyd reciting verse from the Bhagavad Gita before launching into joyous sax improvisation. "Become angry, you confuse your mind. Confuse your mind, you forget the lesson of experience. Forget experience, you lose discrimination. Lose discrimination, you miss life's only purpose." This is contemporary jazz as moving and essential as anything recorded in its golden era.

3. Celer - Dwell in Possibility / Dying Star / Honey Moon

Dwell in Possibility

Dying Star

Honey Moon

Three of Celer's many 2010 releases impressed me so much on the first listen, and continued to deepen with further listens, that I couldn't pick just one to make my Top 3. All three are of quite different breeds, and all are top tier entries to the Celer catalog and good starting points for new listeners to the group.

Dwell in Possibility was the very first full-length Celer album to be released on vinyl alone. Its name is loosely suggestive of its content - a large number of musical possibilities contrasting in timbre, texture, color and mood rapidly float by like a sequence of (day)dreams. The instrumentation includes processed voice, cello, violin, piano, ocarina, field recordings, rocks, whistles, a toy organ, and cassette tapes; none of these are clearly recognizable for what they are, though their diversity comes through in the subtle movement from one combination of timbres to the next. Side 1 is titled

"I've Thought Only of Empty Shadows / Embark, Hollow Heart /
Adhered Irreverence / Empty Streets of Accurate Reasons /
The Street Rain & Pain of the City Rests Under My Toenails /
One Long Blast / Fine-Tuned Treetop / Functioning Voluptuary"

revealing that its 18-minute form is subdivided into 8 distinct movements. Though there are no gaps between movements and the dividing points are pretty fuzzy, the changes are much easier to perceive than on other of their albums that follow a similar plan, e.g. Poulaine in 13 Parts and Fountain Glider in 22 Parts. Nevertheless, the structure takes many close listens to carve out. From a spooky beginning comprised of muffled and detuned strings, Side 1 meanders amorphously until more sustained drones emerge, first in the high and then low registers, the feel becoming increasingly uneasy. Tension mounts as a filter passes over the thick stream of drones, only letting through a few in the middle register, becoming more concentrated and anxious. The filter breaks and a huge and ominously resonant tone cluster bursts onto the sound stage, only to gently subside into a lacuna long enough to reset the listener's bearings until another monumental mass of pulsing bass tones comes rolling along. This dark wave leaves a limpid field of bright drones in its wake, washing away the earlier atmosphere of dread and warmly closing Side 1 with the solace of fragile, shifting beauty.

Side 2, only slightly shorter than Side 1 and divided into seven parts, is titled

"A Mislaying of the Out-and-Out / Trespassing In Love's Furrows /
Umbrella Terms Protecting Puddles / Bony Hands and Hips Drawn /
The Satisfied Disorder / Say A Prayer For Me Tonight / The Veins of My Days".

The first portion of this side is distinctly sadder in tone than anything on Side 1, making its transition to the blissfully enchanting middle section all the more sublime. The record then enters a region more stable, focused, reserved and pure than any heard leading up to it, ultimately closing on a note of melancholy. 'Deep' hardly begins to describe it all; be sure to try spinning it at 30 RPM to go even deeper.

Dying Star is a very different affair. The instrumentation on this 50 minute album reads "Analog Synthesizer, Mixing Board". That's it. The entire album was free-improvised in one shot on a keyboard, without post-processing applied, which gives us a unique document of Will & Danielle Long working purely on instinct, in the moment. The control, restraint and taste they maintain in this most demanding of formats is downright incredible; this dying star is not a violent supernova, but a white dwarf billions of years old, finally puffing away its last layers. Activity is kept at a relatively low level for the most part, and the album is mixed very quietly; amping up the volume isn't encouraged, as this music was meant to capture a sense of seclusion. Despite how low-key and relatively static the tracks are, close attentive listening is greatly rewarded every time a subtle shift or accentuation occurs. In particular, there's a magical moment that another reviewer described right on the money:

"Yet despite the seeming placidity of the Dying Star's trajectory, the album's most poignant moment comes at the beginning of the final track. Flickers (Goodnight) is the only track that doesn't begin in silence, but instead is crossfaded directly from its predecessor. Even more significant, its continuing drone is overlaid with the only two even mildly percussive events, aptly characterized by the flickers in the track title, coming at the very beginning of the track and echoed about forty seconds in. These two events, so quiet as to be barely suggested, and appearing only after forty minutes of quiet undulating drones, are Dying Star's hidden treasure. Is it the dying star finally imploding, creating a brief flash all too easily overlooked? Has the listener drifted into an oblivious somnolence and heard it only in his or her dreams? Celer makes a call to the listener's attention and imagination and thereby elevates this release to one of their best." - Classical Drone

Well said, Caleb Deupree.

Neither as reserved & ascetic as Dying Star nor as diverse & kaleidoscopic as Dwell in Possibility, the cassette release Honey Moon occupies a somewhat more standard place in the Celer discography. The album was recorded "at home on the Autumnal Equinox, 2008" and is nocturnal through and through. Each side of the cassette has three tracks separated by silence, adding up to nearly an hour of Celer's trademark hypnotic immersion. Though the title suggests brightness and the joy of new matrimony, the work is eerily moody, balancing the murky feelings of the night with the ethereal glow of the moon.

Celer continue to stun with their ever-growing pool of releases. Thankfully, the rate of new material coming out seems to have curbed a bit, giving us some time to digest all that they've given us so far. I'm nowhere near exhausting all the beautiful and subtle details on the three albums in this review, let alone the dozens of other of their albums available. 2010 removed all doubt that Celer have the most impressive discography of any ambient group.

2. AFTA-1 - F O R M

I think I will take the lazy way out with this one and link to my past review of the album. Nothing has changed with respect to how strongly I feel about this jewel of instrumental hip hop. This is one of not too many albums I'm happy calling "perfect". How AFTA-1 remains an under-the-radar, unsigned artist, I have no idea. Easily one of the most talented and individual voices working in this new wave of beat based music.

1. Flying Lotus - Comosgramma

Cosmogramma is not a perfect album. It's not the best thing I've ever heard or even necessarily the most moving thing I heard in 2010. That said, I can't deny that it's the most unprecedented, important, on-another-level album released last year, promising more great and exciting things to come in bigger ways than any other 2010 release.

My quibbles with Flying Lotus' masterpiece are few in number and nitpicky. First, I think he could have and should have employed his cousin Ravi Coltrane to more substantial ends. The two tracks Ravi is afforded, "Arkestry" and "German Haircut", both sound like amorphous interludes - frankly, filler - compared to the rest of the album. For how indebted to jazz Cosmogramma is, I wish it had taken what was a ripe opportunity to include some actual trailblazing future-jazz with these tracks. Second, the album's structural arc is very hard to get a grip on, and I'm still not totally sold on it, particularly with how it opens, immediately throwing the listener into a fray of hectic confusion before shifting gears; you know something funny is going on when the fourth track is titled "Intro". I've heard the argument that Cosmogramma is divided roughly into three sections which represent the old Flying Lotus style (loop-heavy electronic arcade Los Angeles era), the new style (more organic and jazz influenced), and the transition between the two. Fair enough, but that kind of meta-ness distracts me a little bit, and overall I wish I simply got the new Flying Lotus. "Intro" would have made a really sweet first track.

Okay, this hasn't been the most glowing review so far for what I'm calling the album of the year. The truth is, what I perceive as flaws are the result of an excess of brilliance, not a lack of it. On the positive tip, there are about fourteen or so tracks here that are some of the most mind blowing things you can hear right at the moment. Many, many words have already been written about how great this stuff is, and in the interest of finally being done with this Fifty Great Releases list, I won't add too many more. Flying Lotus is a genius and charging the way to a future of sound I can't really imagine. His influence on other musicians is profound, and with his Brainfeeder label promoting artists like piano prodigy Austin Peralta, he may just be able to make jazz cool again with the young kids. Conclusion: if you live under a rock and haven't heard Cosmogramma yet, I wholeheartedly recommend you get on that ASAP.



Wow! It feels good to finally have this project behind me. I think 2010 was one of the most amazing years for music in recent memory, and so far 2011 has been delivering equally amazing goods. At this point I'm going to take a little break from reviewing to focus on composing and recording some new music. I hope you enjoyed my (way past its due-date) Top 50!

2010 - Fifty Great Releases, 15 - 11

15. William Basinski - Vivian & Ondine

William Basinski is one of the most adept composers to work with a writing process that in less skillful hands leads only to tedium: the tape loop piece. His best known works, the Disintegration Loops, explore the phenomenon of slow decay, as elegant orchestral passages on antiquated magnetic tape repeat over and over, each time losing sonic data as bits of the tape flake off. This newest work, Vivian & Ondine, is at the same time more subtle and more directly engaging than those prior masterpieces, making it one of his very best recordings.

At low volume or on speakers that can't provide much detail, Vivian & Ondine plays out much like Basinski's El Camino Real (2007). A neo-Classical theme of magisterial, sublime beauty is repeated again and again. The loop is short, only a handful of seconds, but it possesses timelessness - as one might experience from the iteration of a mantra, hearing the loop indefinitely causes moments just prior to or beyond the present one to take on an identical quality. Unlike El Camino Real, which is beautiful in a coldly austere and uninhabitable sense, the repeating theme of Vivian & Ondine is warmly reassuring and comfortable, like an infinite series of slow rolling waves in a tropical sea. If there really is anything to the healing power of music (which anecdotal evidence has suggested for centuries), this music has that to the fullest.

But beneath the surface of the aqueous main theme is a world of activity, as any pair of headphones will reveal when you listen to Vivian & Ondine in a very quiet room. Basinski compiled a collection of additional short loops, including gently percussive crackles and pops, delicate scrapes against guitar strings, siren-like chimes, and melodic and textural embellishments of the main theme. All the while the main theme repeats, Basinski adjusts which of these auxiliary loops is playing and how loudly (they are always kept low in the mix). Therefore Vivian & Ondine is much more than a simple tape loop composition, in fact having a generous live performance element; this recording was made live in one take in Basinski's studio in Los Angeles. Monumentally beautiful and full of details to discover for many, many listens.

14. Taylor Deupree - Shoals

I've had relatively less time to digest this album than the other ones this high on my list, but I could tell from the first 30 seconds of my first listen to it that it's special. Taylor Deupree - ambient artist, photographer, software designer and head of the consistently great label 12k Records - was given a pretty much ideal situation to make this album. He was afforded the full resources of the University of York Music Research Center, which presumably means he was allowed to use top equipment to make anything at all he could reasonably envision. When presented with such a multiplicity of options, an artist is often wise to set up some strict creative limitations to work within, which is what Deupree did: all of the sounds comprising Shoals are digitally enhanced recordings of Balinese and Javanese gamelan instruments.

With this stringent compositional decision in place, it's wondrous how much the album sounds like somebody placed a very tiny microphone in a natural setting, admist dripping branches, chattering insects, snapping twigs, distant bird cries, clattering rocks and rotting tree trunks. The lovely cover photograph and titles such as "Shoals", "Rusted Oak", and "Falls Touching Grasses" enforce this overall naturalistic aesthetic, and like habitats, the songs evolve, slowly, continuously, and organically. However, now and again sounds intrude that are clearly electronic and processed (especially on the more ambiguously titled "A Fading Found"), thwarting any attempt to categorize this as one of those sounds-of-nature ambient albums. In reality Shoals is a complex electroacoustic work, beautifully juggling sounds of polar opposite qualities - wood/metal, transient/stable, warm/cool, natural/fabricated - and contemplating the sole source of all those sounds richly deepens the experience.

In terms of Brian Eno's criteria for effective ambient music (that it should be as ignorable as it is engaging), Shoals strikes an almost perfect middle ground, but more often than not ends up being too engaging to ignore (certainly not a strike against it). Although there are not really any discernible melodies or harmonic progressions to hold on to, its diverse array of lush timbres and textures makes Shoals one compelling listen.

13. Chubby Wolf - Ornitheology

Here we go - another lengthy excursion into finely honed yet totally unabashed beauty. Chubby Wolf was the moniker of the late Danielle Baquet-Long for her solo releases, and this long two-sided cassette was only her third such work to see the light of day, after L'Histoire and the EP Meandering Pupa. I recommend all of my readers check out this detailed, heartfelt and difficult to follow up review over at 5 Against 4, which blog declared Ornitheology to be the best album of 2010. It's a big claim that I have no intention of trying to refute, as the album is indubitably flawless. Why it only landed at #13 on my list, well, quite a lot of music came out last year that to my ears is in a neighborhood of as 'good as it gets'; I've had some real hair splitting to do in numbering these Best 15, and basically I regard them all as essential.

Back to the actual reviewing. The two album-long tracks here are "On Burnt, Gauzed Wings" and "Phantasmagoria Of Nothingness (Prey To Our Emotions)". These are accompanied by the following poem, written by Danielle and printed in the cassette case insert: "You glue wings to / my ideas about love; / Though, / There is something in / the way they take flight, / spin and begird, / returning again / in the manner of flocks / that suggests / they sprouted manifestly." Combined with the dedication "To my Will", the message couldn't be more clear: this music is a direct distillation of love to sound waves. If it all sounds a little sentimental, it should. This is Romanticism with a capital R at its very finest, stripping away the intellect, the ego, and leaving only feeling. That pure feeling is presented with a raw intensity that has been matched only on albums by Celer (I'm thinking especially of Engaged Touches, Mane Blooms and I Love You So Much I Can't Even Title This).

Superficially speaking Ornitheology operates in the classic long-form Celer style, and many of the remarks I made about their albums Cursory Asperses and In Escaping Lakes, particularly about their use of through-composition and very slow change, apply equally well to this album. There are notable differences, however. Both tracks on Ornitheology use fairly restricted palettes, so they really sound like single long pieces, rather than ten or more short pieces with inaudible boundaries. The variations they undergo are intensional rather than extensional - different arrangements of consonance, dissonance, and dynamics are ceaselessly juxtaposed without conventional development or a sense of direction. The effect is somewhat like wandering through a very small and confining labyrinth in which the walls shift their configuration, constantly giving you slightly different views of the same central abstract object, namely, unwavering devotion. Immersing oneself in this feeling for fully 80 minutes is challenging, bracing, and ultimately affirming as it requires mustering quite a bit of devotion in itself.

It's a happy fact indeed that most Chubby Wolf albums have yet to be released, as we almost surely have additional gems to look forward to. Ornitheology is the brightest thus far.

12. Brother Raven - Diving into the Pineapple Portal

It's a bit difficult for me to explain why I like this short, quirkily-titled album quite so much, but a starting point is that my first listen to the opening track gave me a similar feeling as when I first heard the original recording of Terry Riley's "A Rainbow In Curved Air". What these pieces have in common includes a reliance on overlapping textures of short synth pitches, energetically and buoyantly repeating, with certain melodic lines using different echo periods, so that a thick, polyrhythmic construction results. Both of these pieces also work within a certain dreamy, laid back and positive vibe I associate with the 70s and psychedelics. Influences on Brother Raven, a synth-based duo from Seattle, WA, seem to include Kraut rock and/or so-called "kosmische" groups of the late 60s to 70s, more modern dream pop bands, and to somewhat less of an extent, contemporary electronica/glitch.

For all their experimenting with strange noises, the accessible melodic element to their music is always foremost, and there is also a strong rhythmic component to all of the tracks. "Diving Into The Pineapple Portal", the opening, longest and best track, settles into a joyful groove based on quintuple-time while duplets and triplets bubble about and compete for your attention. "Speaking Whale From My Sea Canoe" emphasizes sustained drone tones, appropriately enough, but it also features a background ostinato in a quick seven-time. Odd metric divisions like this are unusual for this kind of music, effectively anchoring the somewhat noodly melodies without giving the pieces a rhythmically boxed in and constrained feel. The closer "Happy Astronaut" utilizes this component best - I just can't count out how that track works for the life of me, yet it clearly has 'bars' and could be given a definite (if completely artificial) time signature. Brother Raven are doing very fresh things on various technical levels, but most of all their sound exudes playfulness, naiveté and a lack of pretense. Diving Into The Pineapple Portal is the album on my list which most sounds like it was created by benevolent aliens.

11. Chihei Hatakeyama - A Long Journey

This album snuck up on me and blew me away. Chihei Hatakeyama is a prolific musician with about ten albums out since 2006, most of which appeared in the last two years. He is a true musical Impressionist, with highly visually descriptive titles such as "The Moon Reflecting on the Surface of the Ocean" bestowed upon nearly every track he records. A Long Journey probably refers to Chihei's own artistic path, which always seems concerned with recreating lost places, moments or feelings. The album is fairly brief at 34 minutes and passes by as a series of ten vignettes, all nostalgic in character and seamlessly blending recognizable instrumentation (guitar, piano, bell tones) with abstract drone material derived from thereof with a laptop. The majority of the tracks feature direct melodies and chord changes to follow, and very earnest ones at that, giving them the feeling of something closer to 'songs' than 'ambient compositions' (though the distinction is only one of vague connotation). Many though not all of the tracks also feature anecdotal field recordings, always to illustrate, as on "Within New Trees" which includes families chatting in Japanese, leaves in the wind, gentle wooden knocks, and a squeaking swing, among other events. The most impressive of the field recording heavy tracks is "The Distant Sound of a Bustle", which effectively summarizes in four and a half minutes what Celer's Generic City is all about (not at all to say Generic City is any less valuable), and which finally forced me to find myself a new direction/format to work in for my own music, because this guy is just too good at this stuff. Hats off! If the late Luc Ferrari's then-unprecedented Presque Rien ou le lever du Jour au Bord de la Mer was musical photography, Chihei Hatakeyama is a master musical videographer.* The closing track "The Dance of The Sea" features field recordings alone, of light rain on the ocean, a boom of thunder, heavier rain, a chiming bell calling in children at play, more thunder, and a sudden crescendo of excited bugs. This ending is somewhat abrupt, though it does successfully get across a sense that ordinary, day to day events often regarded as mundane are in fact precious and beautiful from another angle, and that these qualities are encoded in their associated sounds. Although I haven't yet heard the definitive Chihei Hatakeyama album, A Long Journey stands out in maturity and variety, and has some of his individually strongest tracks to date.

*I don't seriously intend to compare the quality of these two great artists with this metaphor.

Top 10 coming who knows when!

Gil Shaham & The Berlin Philharmoniker play Brahms

This acclaimed Deutsche Grammophon recording features two ecstatic works by Brahms, the Violin Concerto in D, and the "Double" Concerto for Violin & Cello in A-minor. Both pieces are staples of late-Romanticism, replete with lush orchestration, advanced harmonies, and explosive emotion. Gil Shaham is a virtuoso with a satisfying balance of delicacy and fervence, and the engineers of Deutsche Grammophon have, as many of us have come to expect of them, achieved an excellent sonic reproduction of a very rich orchestral texture.

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