Stationary Travles 2020 in Review

评语：【Post Rock】 Still Motions is a four piece ambient post rock band out of Phoenix, Arizona arriving on the scene with a strong debut balancing crunching riffs, thundering percussion, and anthemic crescendos with atmospheric guitars and well-crafted melodies. A cathartic and ultimately uplifting listen.

评语：【Post Rock】 The triumphant return of Glories with Distant After, their first record since the tragic loss of band brother and guitarist Zach Cooner in the summer of 2017. Working with producer, mixer & engineer Jeremy SH Griffith and music recorded in their own basements, Adam Blevins, Dallas Kelley, & Kyle Posten have created another radiant Glories record that no doubt has special meaning to them as well as listeners who have bonded with their music over the years.

评语：【Post Rock】 On their first full-length studio album since 2015’s Dust and Disquiet, Caspian continues to stretch their sound in new & creative directions with one of their most adventurous efforts yet and one that yields many beautiful and exhilarating moments. Among the highlights here are the overlapping guitar & saxophone lines of the rousing “Wildblood” and the intertwining of Shelly Weiss’ violin and Jo Quali’s cello on the radiant “Ishmael”.

评语：【Post Rock】 This five-piece collective from the Netherlands brings a splash of color to the sometimes bleak landscape of post rock with their unique combination of chromatic themes and storytelling approach to composition. ZWARTGROEN (black/green) is the band’s collagic musical tale of survivors negotiating a post-apocalyptic world that mines the public domain archive of Rijksmuseum Amsterdam for both its inspiration and its artwork. Lush, melodic, and beautifully arranged, it is a sumptuous and satisfying listen.

评语：【Modern Classical】 Inspired by a visit to a peninsula in Western France in 2018, this album by Joel Nathaniel Pike, aka Tiny Leaves, was three years in the making and became what he called “a collection of musings on solitude and togetherness”. Choosing not to begin a new track until the previous one had been fully explored, he created a directional flow for his writing that resulted in an overarching personal and musical journey. With the addition of Faith Brackenbury on violin, the songs the songs give voice to a wide range of moods & emotions from contemplative to exuberant.

评语：【Modern Classical】 Australian pianist & composer Sophie Hutchings has a gift for expressing herself on the piano with uncanny fluidity that is at once deeply introspective and exhilarating. She is at the peak of her powers on this sweeping album that marks her debut on the Mercury KX imprint. Joining her to add color and depth to the compositions are longtime collaborators Peter Hollo (cello) and Jay Kong (violin) with additional contributions from Bree Baxter (violin), Vera Marcu (violin), soprano singers Sandra Liu and Josephine Stark, and Lee Hutchings (flute and alto flute). “That’s the beauty of instrumental music: it’s felt, not spoken, and sometimes the things we feel can’t always be articulated through spoken language.” – Sophie Hutchings

评语：【Modern Classical】 Icelandic composer/producer Snorri Hallgrímsson (along with Karl James Pestka on violin & viola and Unnur Jónsdóttir on cello) certainly creates a gorgeous web of introspective beauty with this suite of music capable of assuaging the most anxious of souls. The music stands on its own, but was created as a score for Mark Waters’ feature length documentary that ells the story of a materially successful young man who suffers from debilitating anxiety and embarks on a journey of self-discovery.

评语：【Modern Classical】 UK-based pianist & composer Simeon Walker translates his own experience into a beautiful suite of music exploring themes of negotiating personal change from a forward looking point of view. “Winnow refers to the idea of blowing something away until you are left with solely what is authentic; removing something that feels untrue to oneself; separating the wheat from the chaff…” – Simeon Walker

评语：【Modern Classical】 n recent years, I have excluded compilation albums from the year in review. That is not meant as a slight. Compilations can serve as valuable intersections of discovery, community, and charity but generally speaking not as a singular artistic work. And that is where this album from an ensemble of artists associated with the Preserved Sound label feels very different. Each song is a “blind collaboration” between three artists in which one recorded a basic track and the others added overdubs in isolation. Somehow all the strands intertwines in an overarching and cohesive way to project a palpable longing for meaningful human connection.

评语：【Modern Classical】 One of the most memorable passages of music for me this year was the haunting piano theme from Tales From the Loop which on the first hearing made me want to watch this mesmerizing science fiction series based on Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag’s striking crowd-funded art books. The score co-composed by Philip Glass and Paul Leonard-Morgan proves eminently listenable on its own, but serves a crucial role in not only supporting the narrative and letting the viewer into the souls of the characters.

评语：【Modern Classical】 A self-confessed journey of personal and creative growth, Ólafur Arnalds gives tender musical expression to his own quest for peace with these disarmingly beautiful musical stories that may just help the listener seek out their own as well. Featured in the video above is a beautiful performance of three songs from the album filmed on the winter solstice with Ólafur accompanied by the string quartet of Karl Pestka, Sigrún Harðardóttir, Sólveig Vaka Eyþórsdóttir & Unnur Jónsdóttir and JFDR on vocals.

评语：【Modern Classical】 It is hard not to run out of superlatives when talking about Nils Frahm and his music. He ended the year with a film and album documenting his spectacular live shows which I am poised to dive into, but not to be overlooked is this quiet gem he released for Piano Day 2020 containing solo upright piano pieces recorded over two summer nights in Berlin eight years ago.

评语：【Modern Classical】 An album-length synopsis of an original score for a production of Anton Chekhov’s play by Thessaloniki-based composer, producer & multi-instrumentalist Manos Milonakis. A clever blending of electronic soundscapes with graceful piano lines to parallel the themes and narrative flow of the play punctuated by moments of profound emotion voiced by cello and violin.

评语：【Modern Classical】 After many years away living in Melbourne, Seattle and New York, composer & sound designer Madeleine Cocolas returned to her hometown of Brisbane, Australia and wrote this album named for one of its neighborhood’s as a “raw, personal and cathartic experience”. Able to summon tender melodies from a solo piano or spin up a kaleidoscopic storm of electronic sounds, Ithaca traverses a dazzling range of tones, textures, moods, and emotions.

评语：【Modern Classical】 The second full-length release from Minneapolis- based pianist, John Hayes which began as a single solo piano piece written to cope with the unexpected loss of a friend but evolved during the late nights in a new studio into a complete album. Born in the hours when our losses, regrets, and fears come to call, but each brush of each hammer brings us closer to the dawn of a new day…

评语：【Modern Classical】 Composer and pianist Hania Rani follows up her stunning debut in splendid fashion with an album that expands her instrumental palette to include to voice, electronics, strings, and percussion as she stretches her fluid piano compositions into atmospheric and cinematic territories.

评语：【Modern Classical】 On his newest album as Goldmund, Keith Kenniff furnishes a collection of musical vignettes that create a space in which to “unfold the sorrows of a troubling age and revel in the hope and beauty that follow thereafter.” It is, to be sure, some of his most affecting work that strikes an ideal balance between restrained minimalism and emotive expression while touching on themes both profound an personal. PS: You can read some of Keith’s own thoughts on the album here in our recent interview.

评语：【Modern Classical】 A beguiling multi-faceted album from composer Danny Mulhern (Silent Witness, What They Had), Flow States explores three different methods of improvisation across 19 different pieces – “desnuda” (solo piano), “vestida” (solo piano with orchestral elements overdubbed afterwards), and “group flow” (blank canvass improvisations with a group of musicians from London Contemporary Orchestra).

评语：【Modern Classical】 Having released albums on Mathias Van Eecloo’s Eilean Rec. and IIKKI Books imprints, Danny Clay makes an appearance on the recently launched Laaps taking long strands of beatific chamber music and binding it to the ephemeral by weaving in voice, music box, electronic treatments, and combs (you can even hear the stroking of the tines as the last track fades). Danny’s albums are always highly unique in concept and sound and this one stands out for its sheer beauty and tranquility.

评语：【Electroacoustic & Experimental Folk】 Originally from Melbourne, Australia, Zoltan Fecso grew up in Budapest, studying classical piano from an early age and then discovering a fascination for electroacoustic music while at university. More recently he developed an interest in pointillism and applying its artistic concept to composing and performing music. On this beautiful set of restrained solo guitar improvisations he captures coruscating fragments of notes in various shapes and patterns with mesmerizing effect.

评语：【Electroacoustic & Experimental Folk】 A musician and graphic designer residing in Tokyo, Tomotsugu Nakamura composes music with fragments of minimal acoustic & electronic tones and field recordings. His contribution to the Laaps Records project is an aesthetically pleasing exercise in sonic pointillism, a discreetly minimal collage of tactile, organic sounds that exudes harmony and balance.

评语：【Electroacoustic & Experimental Folk】 Acoustic guitarist & multi-instrumentalist Andy Cartwright aka Seabuckthorn is known for his unique use of resonator guitar and finger picking & bowing techniques combined with various open tunings to create exotic sounds that reside somewhere between primitive folk and cinematic ambient music. Through A Vulnerable Occur is his contribution to IIKKI Books which pairs a music album with a hardcover art book from a visual artist, in this case Melbourne based photographer Sophie Gabrielle. Worth noting the label was founded by Mathias Van Eecloo whose Eilean Rec. label saw the release of Seabuckthorn’s Crossing last year.

评语：【Electroacoustic & Experimental Folk】 A bittersweet record for Kael Smith aka Mute Forest to make, but one of disarming honesty and beauty for the listener. Rooted in sketches and fragments recorded during a painful period following the loss of his father to alcohol abuse in 2017, the album was finally realized with careful attention to arrangements and recording methods that allow Smith’s lucid guitar lines and vulnerable vocals to resonate with crystal clarity. “There are songs on here I wish my father could hear…and there are also songs and lyrics I would have never written had he not passed. I’ve always felt music can be a teleport and there are songs on here that can teleport me to when he was alive. The hope is the album can teleport someone else out there somewhere beautiful too.” – Kael Smith

评语：【Electroacoustic & Experimental Folk】 Slow Machines brings together 12k veteran Stephen Vitiello from Richmond, Virginia and label newcomer Michael Grigoni currently based in Durham, North Carolina. With Vitiello providing digital & analog sampling, field recordings, and Ebow guitar and Grigoni on dobro, lap steel, and pedal steel guitars, the music of these two artists intertwines like translucent golden threads in a collection of impressionistic pieces inspired by the kinetic sculptures of artist Arthur Ganson – “a series of new sonic machines that morph and evolve over the bending, lulling tones of the steel guitars.” as the label aptly puts it.

评语：【Electroacoustic & Experimental Folk】 Already established as one of the more unique and compelling artistic voices in instrumental music, harpist Mary Lattimore finds still new avenues to explore by teaming up with Slowdive’s Neil Halstead who produced her new record and added layers of guitar to her wayfaring compositions inspired by the Cornish landscape, the sea, and tales & stories she encountered. Shimmering and evocative with more than a touch of the mysterious.