This is my weekly(ish) answer to the question “What have you been listening to lately?” It’s lightly annotated because I don’t like re-posting material without providing some context. In the interest of conversation, let me know what you’re listening to in the comments below. Just please don’t promote your own work (or that of your label/client). This isn’t the right venue. (Just use email.)
▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ ▰ NEW: Recent(ish) arrivals and pre-releases
▰ Håkan Lidbo has ingeniously composed music intended to accompany long-standing public bells heard around Stockholm, Sweden, including two churches and a civic center.
▰ If you’re tired of me recommending Jon Hassell’s latest album, then please allow me to recommend a record by one of its featured contributing musicians, guitarist Eivind Aarset. Snow Catches on her Eyelashes, released back in March on the Jazzland label, teams Aarset and Jan Bang on what could be the film score to a slow-burn science-fiction noir, all otherworldly tonalities transmuted through digital processing. Nils Petter Molvær (trumpet), through whose band I first experienced Aarset many years ago, is among the guests.
▰ As the album’s title suggests, Harbors sounds like coastal atmosphere come to musical life. With roughly 50 strings between them, Theresa Wong (cello) and Ellen Fullman (Long String Instrument, accounting for the remaining lion’s share) make resonant music together. Released last week on the Room40 label.
▰ Maximalist ambient music — orchestral and soaring — created from, of all things, the sound of an air horn. Better yet, it’s a multi-track video (using the SP-404, usually associated with beats). Recorded by the UK-based musician Morn Valley.