Switched On – Gaspar Claus: CELLS (InFiné)

Posted on by
Reply

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Gaspar Claus delivers his first artist album since Tancade, released five years ago. The cello may be his main instrument, but Claus works with Basile3 to use it as a departure point, with electronics intervening as appropriate to create a host of original and intriguing soundworlds.

When speaking of the recent single release Ecstasy, one of the standout points of the album, Claus speaks of how “These sounds were transformed, put through machines, digitized, stretched, sometimes metamorphosed into synthetic textures or even percussion. So it’s not a meeting between cello and electronics, but rather a story of -transformation.”

With Basile3, Claus worked in a custom-built studio alongside producer Basile3, the press release describing their output as “an album shaped by friction and breath, moving between intimate memory, desire, and vital energy. Driven by a fertile tension between the cello and its digital transformation, the record unfolds a shifting sonic landscape where organic fervour meets electronic metamorphosis.”

What’s the music like?

Highly charged. Claus wrings every bit of emotion out of his cello, but also uses it imaginatively when building the electronics, so that on occasion it sounds like a full orchestra.

World of Idols is a solemn but richly coloured opening, making a powerful impression with its broad and slightly sorrowful melody, not to mention the fulsome bass section. Ecstasy on the other hand is brightly coloured and adds beats effectively. Amour constrictor (Fugue) is also a lively number, light hearted and brilliantly realised with its ticking figurations. Meanwhile Chrysalis is evocative, its polka-like dance a proper foot tapper.

Does it all work?

It does, to the point where it is difficult to comprehend this is music born from the cello – Claus covers all voices in his use of polyphony. The pioneering efforts are even better with repeated listening.

Is it recommended?

Yes, without hesitation. An effective, stimulating and deeply moving piece of work.

For fans of…Julia Kent, Sarah Neufeld, Manu Delago, Olafur Arnalds

Listen / Buy

Published post no.3,066 – Monday 2 November 2026

New music – Kali Malone: Burning Song (Ideologic Organ)

Posted on by
Reply

posted by Ben Hogwood, with text from the liner notes written by Jonathan Williger

Kali Malone‘s new album, Burning Song, is out now. His first new album of solo compositions since early 2024’s All Life Long arrives via Ideologic Organ with a physical release to follow on 13th November.

Moving through endings and beginnings, reflection and foresight, Burning Song represents a transformation in Malone’s compositional strategy towards a process that is more intuitive and direct. The album was recorded at the historic Thomaskirche in Leipzig, Germany, where J.S. Bach was cantor for the last 27 years of his life; his body rests beneath the sanctuary. Malone is the first musician to perform contemporary works on the church’s Bach Organ, an instrument completed in 2000 but with bespoke tuning and temperament systems based on historical norms of the baroque period.

She is joined by Lucy Railton on cello and Stephen O’Malley on bowed acoustic guitar, the same trio that honed a profound connection based on deep listening through the development of Malone’s work Does Spring Hide Its Joy. Recording took place over the course of two late nights in August 2025, with the engineer Francesco Donadello placing over 20 microphones throughout the room and closely upon the instruments, allowing the listener to locate themselves within the music as it fills the historic sanctum.

Across the album, chord follows chord, each in slow succession, emerging like stones of various shades and shapes on a winding path. The trio moves as one, stepwise, through passages that are alternately ambiguous and radiant, at times triumphant as the tones rise towards the organ’s upper register. By discarding canon form, which has dominated much of her organ work, there is a clear sense of freedom that allows these pieces to unfold more gradually and speak more declaratively than ever before. Even with the presence of one of the most canonized and dissected composers of all time just underfoot, Malone felt the pressure of tradition lifting, an ease of being dictating the flow of the music. She is careful to never extend the narratives of any individual piece beyond what feels conclusive, resulting in a relatively compact cycle of compositions.

The metaphor of burning holds two meanings. Fire moves in ways that appear intuitive, changing shape moment by moment, and relentlessly insistent. Here, Malone moves from harnessing the fractaline beauty of mathematics to reveling in the impact of feelings, of foresight, of something more undefined and from within. But burning is a process of change in which transformation spreads from a nexus point to rapidly consume whatever it encounters. The freedom found in the process of composing and realizing Burning Song is one that opens innumerable doors of possibility. In the fertility of ashes grows whatever comes next.

Published post no.3,065 – Sunday 1 November 2026

New music – Council: This Day, Every Day (Bedroom Community)

Posted on by
Reply

posted by Ben Hogwood, with text from the press release

Council, the collaborative project of American singer-songwriter and composer Gabriel Kahane and Finnish violinist and conductor Pekka Kuusisto, have released their debut album This Day, Every Day via Bedroom Community.

The album follows the singles Panic (feat. Elizabeth Ziman) and mirrorworld, which features synth and drum programming by Nick Sanborn of Sylvan Esso.

Council brings together two artists who have spent their careers refusing easy categories. American singer-songwriter and composer Gabriel Kahane has built a singular body of work spanning song, contemporary classical music and orchestral writing, collaborating with artists from Sufjan Stevens and Phoebe Bridgers to the San Francisco Symphony. Finnish violinist Pekka Kuusisto is equally difficult to contain: an internationally celebrated soloist, conductor and champion of new music whose practice moves freely through contemporary composition, folk traditions, electronics and improvisation. Together, they make something neither would make alone.

The seeds of Council were planted in 2015, when Kuusisto met Kahane and immediately began quizzing him about a tiny orchestration detail on one of his records. Kahane’s first reaction was essentially: who is this guy? A year later, after performing together in Helsinki, he was “immediately smitten by his sound, his musicianship, his whole vibe.” Long-distance collaborations became writing retreats in Finland and the United States, and over the following decade a shared musical language took shape. This Day, Every Day is its first full-length document.

Across twelve tracks, piano, guitar, acoustic and electric violin, harmonium, percussion, electronics and close, finely shaped vocals form a sound world that can be intimate one moment and violently expansive the next. The songs move between private experience and the wider pressures of contemporary life: mental illness, grief, memory, friendship, fatherhood, war, political disillusionment and the psychological exhaustion of the digital age.

Opening single Panic establishes the album’s central impulse. That willingness to expose what is normally concealed runs throughout the record. Tetris places fighter pilots killing time between missions against a relentlessly propulsive violin figure. Crawlspace turns intimacy into something dreamlike and subterranean. mirrorworld featuring synth and drum programming by Nick Sanborn of Sylvan Esso, enters the distorted reality of conspiracy, online performance and information overload. Elsewhere, The End of Days Inn asks uncomfortable questions about the artist’s own complicity in the systems they criticise.

The album was co-produced with Kahane’s longtime collaborator Joseph Lorge, whose subtle interventions help shape its unusually tactile sound; additional guests include Elizabeth Ziman, Eliza Bagg, Samuli Kosminen, Logan Strosahl and Ted Poor.

For Kuusisto, Council is “the two of us trying to make sense of a number of things by exposing vulnerable parts of ourselves to each other.” The result is a record that is tender in both senses of the word: gentle and comforting, but also raw, exposed and painful to the touch.

Published post no.3,064 – Saturday 31 October 2026

On this day in 1876: the premiere of Brahms’ String Quartet no.3

Posted on by
Reply

by Ben Hogwood Image unknown credit, used courtesy of Wikipedia

On this day 150 years ago, the first performance of Brahms’s Third String Quartet took place in Berlin.

It is the lesser known of the three published Brahms quartets, but has a certain Autumnal beauty and lightness ideal for this time of year.

It was dedicated to cellist Professor Theodor Wilhelm Engelmann, and published just before his Symphony no.1. You can enjoy a performance of the quartet below, given by the Castalian Quartet at the Wigmore Hall in 2020:

Published post no.3,063 – Friday 30 October 2026

In appreciation: Stephen Kovacevich

Posted on by
Reply

by Ben Hogwood Photo: David Thompson/EMI Classics

Earlier this week we learned of the sad news that leading pianist Stephen Kovacevich had passed away at the age of 86.

A truly great pianist, Kovacevich was in later years an insightful conductor too. I was very fortunate to meet him at his house back in 2015, where he gave an interview full of insight, humour and generous detail. His generosity and geniality shone through at that meeting, but so did a fierce creative intensity running through his finest recordings.

I have put together a Tidal playlist which you can access by clicking here

Published post no.3,062 – Thursday 29 October 2026