The Flute in the Cellar

By Katie English of Halifax, West Yorkshire

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Isnaj Dui is Katie English of Halifax, West Yorkshire. Her work generally focuses on the flute, which, along with other instruments, is transformed through unusual performance practice, including electronic processing. The track “Dean Clough Cellar” is named for the Halifax business and arts center “that was once the world’s largest carpet factory.” The piece is gestural, the flute heard as a series of looped, layered fragments amid the ritual clank of, perhaps, pots and pans. Over the course of nearly four minutes, the looping provides a mechanical inflection to the flute, helping form a complementary pairing with the more percussive material.

More on Katie English / Isnaj Dui at [isnajdui.bandcamp.com](https://isnajdui.bandcamp.com/) and [facebook.com/isnajdui](https://www.facebook.com/isnajdui) and at the label she runs, FBox ([fboxrecords.co.uk](http://www.fboxrecords.co.uk/)). A note accompanying “Dean Clough Cellar” says it was originally recorded in October 2014 for the awards show of the Dead Albatross Music Prize ([deadalbatross.com](http://www.deadalbatross.com/)).

A Latinate Bach

A cross-cultural probing by Ethan Hein

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

What is great about Ethan Hein’s participation in the public discussion of music isn’t simply that he writes exuberantly about the making, the distribution, and the consumption of his subject, or that he ably employs images to point out [the Venn Diagram that is funk](http://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2014/how-to-tell-funk-from-disco/) or the constellation of pop that orbits a [single sampling data point](http://vi.sualize.us/parliament_mothership_connection_sample_ethan_hein_structure_infographics_tree_mindmaps_picture_4jra.html), but that on top of it all, he uses music itself to pursue ideas. For example, he explored a Bach invention by using MIDI to apply the note sequence to the Latin percussion pack that is part of the popular music software suite Ableton. The effort is doubly effective because in addition to sounding out Bach’s classical piece in what, cultural context might suggest, is a more populist instrumental realm, Hein also connects back to the piano being, for all intents and purposes, a well-tuned percussion instrument itself:

Here for reference is the Bach in question performed on, you know, a piano:

Hein’s work originally posted for free download at [soundcloud.com/ethanhein](https://soundcloud.com/ethanhein/bach-invention-number-four-for-ableton-latin-percussion-kit-b). More from Hein at [ethanhein.com](http://www.ethanhein.com/).

Kid606 in a Aphex Mood

Or at least a relaxed one

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

“One Unchanging Constant in My World of Variables” by Kid606 could almost be a slowed-down cover version of Aphex Twin’s “Domino,” off *Selected Ambient Works Volume II*. It has the same rounded staccato, bubbly minimalism, the same pop pointillism, the same bubblegum Philip Glass/Steve Reich appeal. Kid606’s take on the material is even more sedate than Aphex Twin’s — in the brief accompanying note he says, simply, “feeling relaxed” — and the piece gains, as it proceeds, an underlying drone. In different circumstances that drone would be heard as the foundation of the piece, but here it is just apart enough from the percussive melodic material that it provides a source of tension, of distance.

Track originally posted earlier this week at [soundcloud.com/kid606](https://soundcloud.com/kid606/one-unchanging-constant-in-my-world-of-variables). More from Kid606, aka Miguel De Pedro, who is based in Los Angeles, at [twitter.com/Kid606](http://twitter.com/Kid606) and [instagram.com/miguel_kid606](http://instagram.com/miguel_kid606).