New music – Dave Angel – A Time And Place (R&S)

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posted by Ben Hogwood, with text from the press release.

British electronic music pioneer Dave Angel returns to R&S Records with A Time And Place, his first full-length album release for the seminal Belgian label. Arriving thirty-five years after Dave first joined the R&S family, the album reunites one of UK techno’s defining voices with the imprint that helped launch his career, renewing one of electronic music’s most enduring creative partnerships.

The first track to be made available from A Time And Place is Reflexion, featuring trumpeter Steve Waterman, an airy and jazz-inflected number that you can watch below:

A Time And Place feels less like a return than the continuation of a conversation left unfinished. Rather than revisiting former achievements, the album reflects the perspective of an artist whose creative journey has continued to evolve. Reconnecting with the label that first championed his work, Angel delivers his most personal and musically expansive statement to date.

Across fifteen compositions, the album reaches beyond the conventions of techno to reveal the full breadth of Angel’s musical identity. Drawing on jazz, soul, improvisation and richly textured electronic production, the album balances rhythmic precision with warmth, melody and emotional depth. Reflections on family, heritage, nature and the communities that have shaped his life sit alongside broader observations of the world around him, creating a body of work that feels both intimate and expansive.

That openness is reflected in a carefully chosen cast of collaborators. Celebrated trumpeter Steve Waterman features on both Réflexion and The Yellow Butterfly, bringing a lyrical, Miles Davis-inspired voice to the album after first catching Angel’s attention through his work on Paul Hazel’s Out Of This World. Elsewhere, legendary Chicago vocalist Robert Owens appears on Harmony Serenade, while guitarist Merv Carswell and vocalist Aurii Sky (Dave’s daughter, adding a poignant family connection) add further colour and texture to a record rooted in musicianship and shared expression.

While Dave Angel’s influence on British electronic music has long been established, A Time And Place reveals another dimension of an artist whose foundations were laid long before techno. Raised in a household immersed in live music and jazz culture, Angel has spent a lifetime absorbing sounds beyond the club, allowing those influences to surface naturally throughout a career defined by curiosity rather than convention.

For R&S Records, the album renews a relationship that stretches back to the label’s formative years. For Dave Angel, it reflects both the path travelled and the road ahead. Thirty-five years after 1st Voyage first announced his arrival, A Time And Place reunites artist and label with the same forward-looking spirit that brought them together in 1991, proof that the strongest creative partnerships continue to evolve.

Published post no.2,964 – Friday 31 July 2026

New music – Sennen: New Quiet (Sonic Cathedral)

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posted by Ben Hogwood, with text from the press release. Sennen photographed by Brian David Stevens

Sennen release New Quiet, their first album in over 10 years, on 30 October. It’s a wonderfully warm and fuzzy record, self-recorded by the band but with the end results mixed by James Chapman, aka Maps. It sounds at once fresh but familiar, with the band approaching their music with an uncomplicated honesty.

The first single – the Big Star-shaped Here It Comes – is out now on all digital platforms. It is a bittersweet, summery song with a hopeful message, with its repeated refrain of “everything will be OK”.

“I didn’t write that line with any cynicism,” says singer / guitarist Larry Holmes. “There’s an awareness of how fragile being OK is, and the magic of the things in your life that make you feel like everything will be OK. Us making this new record was definitely one of those things.”

You can watch the video by Innerstrings below:

On New Quiet, the now London-based four-piece’s familiar influences are still there, but this time they are leaning into them rather than shying away. “In the past we’ve felt uncomfortable, but you can end up sabotaging a good idea like that,” explains singer/guitarist Rich Kelleway. “On this album, I think we’re feeling a sense of freedom from self-imposed stipulations we’ve put upon ourselves.”

In short, they’re having fun and enjoying being a band again, something that was inspired by putting together an expanded anniversary reissue of their classic debut album Widows in 2021. This certainly explains the slightly wistful atmosphere that pervades New Quiet, a mix of nostalgia and acceptance.

“When we did the Widows reissue we were able to recognise the unfiltered joy we got from being in a band and making music together when we were in our early 20s,” says Rich, “and making the new album has brought that into focus again.

“I’ve accepted that I need this band in my life. I like to think we’ve funnelled that feeling into making this record and it’s an honest expression of us, now.”

“Sennen is a lifeboat for us, and always has been,” adds singer/guitarist Larry Holmes. “The happy-sad, fear, hope stuff comes from us getting older and having to experience a fair old fucking slice of life here and there – as does everyone.”

Essentially, New Quiet is an album about itself; about the importance of being in a band; about making a record; about listening to music.

This band could be your life.

Published post no.2,963 – Thursday 30 July 2026

On this day in 1856 – the death of Robert Schumann

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by Ben Hogwood. Picture by Johann Anton Völlner, Hamburg, courtesy of Wikipedia

On this day, 170 years ago, the composer Robert Schumann died in Bonn at the age of just 46.

For a while it was fashionable to criticise him on account of his musical quality, and especially orchestration – and indeed Mahler re-orchestrated all four of his numbered symphonies. Yet time has shown him to have much greater substance, with Schumann’s influence on composers such as György Kurtág revealed more explicitly in recent years. One piece the Hungarian composer treasures in particular is the late Märchenerzählungen (Fairy Tale Narrations) Op.132, for clarinet, viola and piano:

One of the composer’s greatest champions is cellist Steven Isserlis, who can be seen playing the glorious Adagio and Allegro in A flat major Op.70 with Connie Shih:

Published post no.2,962 – Wednesday 29 July 2026

Arcana at the BBC Proms – Louise Alder, London Philharmonic Orchestra / Edward Gardner: From the Alps to the Auvergne

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Louise Alder (soprano), London Philharmonic Orchestra / Edward Gardner

Tjøgersen Between Trees (2021)
Canteloube from Chants d’Auvergne (1923-55): La pastoura als camps; La delaïssádo; Deux bourrées; Lou coucut; Baïlèro
Richard Strauss Eine Alpensinfonie Op.64 (1911-15)

Royal Albert Hall, London
Monday 27 July 2026

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood Photos (c) BBC / Chris Christodoulou

The music for this invigorating Prom drew us outdoors, to Norwegian woods, the fields of Auvergne and the mountains of the Alps – all brought to us in glorious technicolour by an orchestra on top of their game.

The Norwegian forest was first, a 360 degree view turning the Royal Albert Hall itself into a vast canopy. Kristine Tjøgersen’s Between Trees was full of sonic invention, an intriguing portrait by turns humorous, ominous, light, heavy, happy and sad. The instrumental effects (water in the brass instruments, ‘prepared’ harp and strings) would have been gimmicky in the wrong hands, but Tjøgersen clearly knows her way around a symphony orchestra and ensured all were used to the greater good.

The creak of a branch, the snap of a twig and even the underground workings of fungi and insect life – all were vividly evoked, to the point of wondering if the casing around the organ was even swaying in the light wind! Every rustle had a purpose, pointed towards the more conventional passages for horn quartet and strings in the closing pages, where unexpectedly sharp points of emotion lay in wait. Tjørgersen, who was in the audience, begins a three-year residence with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra next season. On this evidence hers is a striking, individual voice, a composer to follow closely.

Canteloube is a rare visitor to the Proms on account of his small output, heavily weighted towards his crowd-pleasing Chants d’Auvergne. These settings of traditional Auvergnian folksongs for soprano and orchestra are largely pastoral affairs, descriptively bringing their shepherds and birds to life. It proved impossible to listen, however, without a strong pull of sympathy for those suffering at the hands of the fires in France, a feeling heightened by the sorrowful La delaïssádo (The Abandoned Shepherdess). The part was inhabited with great feeling by soprano Louise Alder, supported by meltingly beautiful solos from cor anglais (Sue Böhling) and oboe (Ian Hardwick).

By contrast the bright La pastoura als camps (The Shepherdess in the Pasture) revelled in the open air, while the Deux bourrées danced lightly, the second (Lo calhé) especially, the quail a worrisome presence as it protected its nest. Lou coucut (The Cuckoo) was funny, heightened by Alder’s side glances to the audience, but inevitably the showstopper was Baïlèro, the shepherd’s song drawing an exquisite tone from the soprano and the supporting London Philharmonic Orchestra woodwind.

Donning our crampons after the interval, we joined Edward Gardner in an ascent he knows well, scaling the peak of Richard Strauss’s Eine Alpensinfonie, a piece both he and the LPO have captured on record. Familiarity in this case brought a tight structural grasp of the arching structure, whose 22 sections lasted 48 minutes – a relatively quick interpretation. Some of the sections did indeed move a little too quickly, the ascent taken by quick mountaineers, but the vistas on display were stunning in their sound quality.

The brass in particular excelled, trombones (led by Mark Templeton), trumpets (Tom Nielsen), tubas (Lee Tsarmaklis) and horns, both onstage (John Ryan) and off (Annemarie Federle), the latter expertly marshalled in the gallery by conductor Wilson Ng, who successfully accounted for the sonic delay.

Meanwhile the percussion took the brunt of the Thunderstorm, the wind machines whirring as timpani rolled and struck with ever greater danger, the mountain revealing its dark side. As an orchestral sound painter, Strauss is almost without equal, and his gifts were shown off repeatedly as Gardner showed us the waterfall, flowery meadows, mountain pasture and glacier in glorious technicolour. The LPO woodwind were crystal clear in the rarefied air, the burnished strings enjoying the rich melodies and cadences. Balancing everything was Richard Gowers on the Albert Hall organ, his church solo ideally rendered as the magical coda approached, setting us back on the arena floor where this extended musical paragraph began.

You can listen to this Proms concert on BBC Sounds until the end of September 2026. Meanwhile you can click on the link to access Richard Strauss’s Eine Alpensinfonie as recorded by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Edward Gardner

Published post no.2,961 – Tuesday 28 July 2026

On this day in 2016 – the death of Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara

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by Ben Hogwood. Picture by Laivakoira, courtesy of Wikipedia

On this day ten years ago, Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara died in Helsinki at the age of 87.

Rautavaara’s legacy is impressive, a natural beneficiary of the legacy of Jean Sibelius – whose eye he caught with the 1953 work A Requiem in Our Time, for brass and percussion – while also innovating in many traditional musical forms. These include the symphony – with his seventh, Angel of Light, especially popular on release by Ondine in 1997 – but also the concerto and in music for the stage and the chamber music hall.

Rautavaara’s musical language varied between stages of his career, as rather like Arvo Pärt he showed himself to be a versatile composer capable of flirting with the avant garde as much as writing with deceptive simplicity.

One of Rautavaara’s standout pieces is the Cantus Arcticus, published in 1972 with the subtitle Concerto for birds and orchestra. The birds in question are recorded whooper swans, whose calls are both the impetus for the melodic figures and the orchestral responses. You can listen to that, and the Angel of Light symphony, below:

Published post no.2,960 – Tuesday 27 July 2026