Dutch duo Tangent – Ralph van Reijendam and Robbert Kok – return with their seventh album.
Their distinctive sound has been honed through what their press release describes as “built from dense electronic textures, ghostly synths, intricate rhythms, and a persistent sense of movement between the organic and the synthetic.
Disclosure is their return from a three-year absence, and looks to bring a modular and analogue dimension to their atmospherics.
What’s the music like?
Dark and cinematic – but much more than mere mood music. The fluid, instinctive way in which the tracks are worked out show two musicians at ease with their musical instruments, but also in their way of structuring tracks that works really well.
Glitchy rhythms pile up in impressive percussive displays, but never at the expense of the melodies and harmonies around them. The music is moody and rather magnificent, the full drum sections and brooding keyboards working extremely well together.
To illustrate, Unfounded Existence has glitchy drums that ricochet around the stereo picture. Denial carries some impressive weight, with rolling beats and expressive soundscapes, while Vector Of Acceleration simmers nicely, too.
The spacey time out of Sonoluminescence works a treat, led by dreamy piano and swirling, misty white noise, before the fulsome drums return.
Does it all work?
Yes – and keeps on giving with repeated listening.
Is it recommended?
Yes – atmospheric music, and meaningful with it. An excellent album, and a brooding soundtrack to fill your stereo field.
For fans of…Trentemøller, Jon Hopkins, Daniel Avery, A Winged Victory For The Sullen
Listen / Buy
Published post no.3,055 – Thursday 22 October 2026
by Ben Hogwood Image of Carl Nielsen in 1917 – unknown credit, used courtesy of Wikipedia
On this day in 1926, Carl Nielsen’s Flute Concerto was performed for the first time in Paris, with soloist Holger Gilbert-Jespersen and the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire
A curious and highly enjoyable piece, the concerto takes its listener on an intriguing voyage – especially when played as here by Emmanuel Pahud, with the NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo conducted by Paavo Järvi:
Published post no.3,055 – Wednesday 21 October 2026
Don Florio / Conor Cooper; Don Sallust / Jonah Halton; Don Pedro / Rory Musgrave; Queen Elvira of Leon / Eleri Gwilym
Only in Wexford could their compact version of Michael William Balfe’s The Rose of Castile (1857), presented as a ‘pocket opera’ in the National Opera House’s smaller Jerome Hynes Stage, carry the faintest air of disloyalty alongside it. Balfe spent part of his childhood in Wexford, before studying in London, Rome, and Paris, and his legacy was tended in Ireland long after his death in 1870: Joyce punned on The Rose of Castile in Ulysses, while ‘I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls’, the best-known aria from The Bohemian Girl (1843), received the honour of an Enya cover in 1991. Full productions of The Rose of Castile headlined the first Wexford Festival of Music and the Arts in 1951 (excerpts available on YouTube) and the fortieth anniversary of the Festival in 1991; it shows how far Balfe’s star has fallen – or how many other composers Wexford has rehabilitated – for the seventy-fifth anniversary to demote The Rose of Castile to a seventy-minute reduction.
Manuel / Eamonn Walsh; Queen Elvira of Leon / Eleri Gwilym
It was probably the right decision. The Rose of Castile is competent if slightly bloodless late bel canto. At his best, Balfe can produce as gorgeous a lyric line as Bellini, and his coloratura writing is pacy, but his drinking songs and laughing choruses are easier to lose patience with. Music director Rebecca Warren kept a firm hand on the score on the Hynes Stage’s Victorian toned piano.
Music Director / Rebecca Warren; Donna Carmen / Erin Fflur
The plot is similarly Victorian: Spanish royals slumming it in disguise, plotting cousins, mistaken identities, and love and virtue triumphant in the end. To make sense of the reduced version, stage director Heather Hadrill introduced a hard-boiled gumshoe narrator (Peter McCamley, with a juicy New York accent) to recap the plot, which was updated from medieval Spain to the 1920s. Besides flapper dresses and Peaky Blinders headgear, designer Lisa Krügel produced a striking set on the small stage where gilded frames and oversized playing cards did duty for a nightclub and the royal palace.
Narrator / Peter Camley; Don Sallust / Jonah Halton; Don Florio / Conor Cooper; Don Pedro / Rory Musgrave
The cast all took their mission seriously. They were knowing rather than tongue-in-cheek, and had uniformly flawless diction. Especial praise for Eleri Gwilym, as Queen Elvira, who has a spectacular bel canto voice and flowing coloratura. Likewise, Irish tenor Eamonn Walsh as Manuel the muleteer (and maybe more) is also a very compelling bel cantist. ‘Twas rank and fame that tempted thee’, an aria that became a popular drawing room ballad (and also made it into Ulysses), stopped precisely short of being over-sentimental. Honourable mentions to Rory Musgrave as scheming Don Pedro, Conor Cooper and Jonah Halton as his accomplices, and Erin Fflur as Donna Carmen, Elvira’s maid of honour. A bright and well drilled ensemble did full justice to a Wexford stalwart.
The Rose of Castile runs as part of Wexford Festival Opera on 16, 20, 22, 24, 26, 29, 31 October 2026
posted by Ben Hogwood, with text from the press release
Hannah Peel’s original score Underland, Robert Petit’s film based on the Robert Macfarlane book of the same name, is out on CD today via Rivertones, followed by a world premiere of the score next week, part of the Hannah Peel In Focus series at the Barbican on 23-24 October 2026.
Hannah Peel’s Underland draws a glorious and vivid electronic map of the ground below, and what comes buried beneath that ground. Melodies that feel like they’ve been lifted directly from the soil merge with rhythm tracks that could be insects burrowing caves through the undergrowth, and gorgeous ambient echoes intertwined with spectral voices… these elements in Hannah’s hands are the true sound of the underground.
The premiere performance of Underland has been adapted by Kieran Brunt and will be performed by contemporary vocal ensemble Shards. For this unique performance, the score combines choir and electronics with stunning imagery from the film, adapted for stage by the director, Robert Petit.
Talking about the source material, Peel says, “I had read Robert’s book back in 2019, and even included some words from it for my 2022 album ‘The Unfolding’. The chance to actually compose for the book’s film in return though: beautiful synchronicity!” Going on to explain, “Scoring for these astronauts of the underworld, those sacred ancient cave systems, the mysteries of the universe’s secrets, exploring what would they actually sound like? Those haunting descents that remind us of our planet’s past and future, asking us to look deep into our ancestors’ stories and evaluate where we will go next, made it a profound film to work on. I used ancient Mayan Pod Trumpets and an iron age horn called a Carnyx mixed with baroque choir, string orchestra and synths to bring to life a score that had to combine mythology, technology and possibility.”
Hannah Peel In Focus is a two-day takeover at the Barbican, opening on Friday 23 October at Milton Court on 23 October with PIA– a brand-new live music and dance production for her 7-movement odyssey Mary Casio: Journey to Cassiopeia (2020). The production was created with choreographer Katya Bourvis and creative producer Tala Lee-Turton, and will be shaped by the sound of a 17-piece brass band.
This will be followed on Saturday 24 October with the Underland premiere and a live performance by Hannah Peel & Beibei Wang of their recent album The Endless Dance (Real World Recordings), an album grounded in the strength of ancient concepts. This will be a rare chance to see the album performed, as it comes alive with the joy and freedom of play as together, the artists travel through the 24 solar terms of the Chinese calendar with a cornucopia of sound in tow – synths and prepared piano alongside traditional and unconventional percussion that includes rice bowls and a jawbone.
Hannah Peel won Discovery of the Year at the World Soundtrack Awards last week with her score for Midwinter Break.
Leyla Gu and members of the chorus in Iris, by Pietro Mascagni, O’Reilly Theatre National Opera House Wexford
Rosetta Cucchi, Francesco Cilluffo, and a well-picked cast make the strongest possible case for an unsettling but still rewarding work.
Reviewed by Tom Hardwick Photos by Padraig Grant
Wexford Opera Festival began their seventy-fifth anniversary season with a convincing production of Pietro Mascagni’s 1898 Iris. Set in Japan, it springs from the same vein of late nineteenth century japonisme that produced both The Mikado and Madama Butterfly (and Luigi Illica wrote both Puccini’s and Mascagni’s libretti), but its plot makes it a much harder pill to swallow. The young Iris’s sunlit, bucolic life playing with her dolls and caring for her blind father is invaded by the rake Osaka and the procurer Kyoto (Illica may never have visited Japan, but he had certainly seen it on the map). Osaka is desperate to possess Iris, so Kyoto distracts her with a puppet show in which Osaka appears as the son of the Sun God and abducts her. They take her to Kyoto’s geisha house where Osaka, no longer divine, fails to seduce her. Iris begs to go home but he discards her. Kyoto puts Iris on show to passers-by in the red-light district: her father, who has traced her there, finds her and curses her. She throws herself into the sewers, where ragpickers strip her dying body. A sea of flowers raises her to the sun, where at last she finds peace.
Yu Shao, Meilir Jones, Joshua Baxter, dancers, chorus in Iris, by Pietro Mascagni, O’Reilly Theatre National Opera House Wexford
Iris is an unrelenting, unsparing story of a young woman’s exploitation by men which offers little uplift, and it is not difficult to see why it isn’t frequently performed. Rosetta Cucchi, Wexford’s artistic director, first came to Wexford in 1995 to work on the festival’s first production of Iris, and chose to direct her own version this year. Devoid of Orientalist distraction, the production sees the world through Iris’s eyes, made visible through Thomas Achitz’s striking video projections and Tiziano Santi’s spare but telling sets: kudos to both for creating a last act rubbish heap that managed to be both repellent and elegant.
Jolyon Loy, Yuchen Pan, Hannah Scully, dancers, chorus in Iris, by Pietro Mascagni, O’Reilly Theatre National Opera House Wexford
Leyla Gu, as Iris, kept her voice in check as the unspoiled girl of the first act, before unleashing her reserves in the second and third acts. Her second act ‘octopus aria’, describing a temple screen decorated with a scene of a young woman being smothered by an octopus (curious readers search for images of the original at their own risk), grew to an engrossing, queasy climax. Long-standing Wexford collaborator Joseph Calleja sang Osaka with conviction: ‘apri la tua finestra’, an extremely popular stand-alone aria during Mascagni’s lifetime, was almost irresistible. Younger baritone Jolyon Loy was a sinister leather jacketed Kyoto who moved from smooth to snarling. Wexford always takes care with smaller roles, and tenor Yu Shao shone as the beggar and ragpicker.
The opera begins and ends with the powerful, radiant Hymn to the Sun, probably the opera’s best-known piece, where the Wexford Chorus were well drilled by Andrew Synnott and sparely, effectively choreographed. Iris is conductor Francesco Cilluffo’s third Mascagni for Wexford, and he gave a lyrical account of the score. There is hard-won redemption of a sort in Iris’s final transfiguration from the gutter to the sky (taken literally, as Leyla Gu was hoisted up as the curtain fell). It’s a tribute to the director and cast that the journey never felt impossible, nor the destination a let-down.
Iris runs as part of Wexford Festival Opera on 15, 20, 23, 28 and 31 October 2026
