posted by Ben Hogwood, with text from the press release
Andy Bell (Ride / Oasis) and Essex-based harp and synth duo Masal have released their new album Common Primitives, on the Sonic Cathedral label.
It’s their second collaboration, following 2023’s Tidal Love Numbers, and it’s a stunning, meditative collection which veers from kosmische to astral jazz by way of Turkish folk tunes and all the way back again.
The trio launched the album earlier this week with two incredible, intimate live shows at SJQ in Dalston, which saw them incorporating a cover of Faust’s proto-shoegaze classic Jennifer into their set.
The unlikely trio of Andy, plus Masal’s Özlem Şimşek and Alastair Johnson, first came together when the duo supported Andy at a show in Chelmsford in early 2022. Their first album – 2023’s acclaimed Tidal Love Numbers – consisted of four lengthy, almost ambient tracks and is included here on vinyl for the first time as part of a two-record set. By contrast, the seven tracks that make up Common Primitives are almost concise, but also a lot more layered and complex.
“We tend to work from initial, free-jammed ideas, building form and arrangement from there,” explains Alastair of their working method. “This album became a more iterative process where we went back over the ideas – adding, editing and cutting the original material. This approach led to more fleshed-out finished pieces and contrasts with the first album which all came together relatively quickly. Above all, we believe you should go where the vibe takes you.”
Published post no.3,043 – Saturday 10 October 2026
HAAi‘s second album in the space of a year has arrived. With the release of DIGITiSE (which I have reviewed for musicOMH), she completes the second part of an unwitting double album begun with HUMANiSE, in which she studies the relationship between humanity and AI.
An extremely topical and relevant subject at the moment of course, but there could be fewer better examples of the boost humanity can bring to music than the closing track on DIGITiSE. Talking Walls features Skybreak and Cantolegre, a children’s choir from Medellin, Colombia, where HAAi has played on several occasions. The bond she has formed with them extends to this rather lovely epilogue to an album whose musical roots lie in the nightclub. Talking Walls is the ideal postlude to all the primal energy that has gone before:
To hear DIGITiSE, you can head to HAAi’s Bandcamp page below:
The Quiet Details series welcomes back Brock Van Wey for a second contribution under his highly productive bvdub moniker, the series having swelled from four to 54 in that time.
Van Wey is known within electronic music for his versatility, and over the 75 minutes of this album he lays open the boundaries to include techno and a wide range of influences that suggest influences from across the globe.
What’s the music like?
Once again, bvdub harnesses a special blend of ambient immersion and invention.
The Rain Knows is a very powerful plain on which to set the album, a musical surge growing from small beginnings to a wave of seismic power. The original riff is retained, surrounded by white noise and vocals but still punching out its melody through the middle. It is however a mere prelude for the epic Skies of Seven, a vast panorama where immersive ambience is achieved over an irregular glitchy beat.
The album hovers in this state for much of its duration, with meditative vocals – some of them chopped up or overlayered – resting on a bed of thick textures, semi-riffs and beats that drift in and out of focus and clarity. When everything clicks the music moves forward at walking pace – as with surefooted beats of Time in Space and Three Nights Ago – but elsewhere it takes time to marvel at the scenery encountered along the way. Almost Home Now is one such moment, its music swirling up into the sky.
The big, panoramic settings suit headphone listening, the music an ideal accompaniment to the great outdoors.
Does it all work?
It does – with the usual fluency you would come to expect of a bvdub opus, executed on a grand scale.
Is it recommended?
Yes, to fans of the artist and the quiet details series alike. This is music to take the weight off your cares, but the detail within each layer ensures foreground listening is rewarded, too.
On this day in 1918, the composer Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry died. Parry is best known today for his sacred music, and in particular the rousing tune to William Blake’s text for Jerusalem, and the anthem I Was Glad, used in many a royal service.
Mark Padmore (tenor, above), Jonathan Biss (piano, below)
Wigmore Hall, London Thursday 24 September (lunchtime)
Schubert Der Wanderer an den Mond D870 (1826), Im Freien D880 (1826), Der Einsame D800 (1825), Der Winterabend D938 (1828) Schumann Kerner Lieder Op.35
Reviewed by Ben Hogwood Photo credits Marco Borggreve and Benjamin Ealovega
Storytelling is of course an essential part of any Lieder recital, but the extent to which Mark Padmore and Jonathan Biss brought the seventeen songs of this BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert to life was a joy to behold.
Padmore is one of Britain’s finest tenors, a versatile artist at ease in contemporary music as he equally is in Bach or Britten, for instance, with one of his strongest qualities an elegance to the delivery that suited these brighter examples of Schubert’s song output. So, too, did the pianism of Jonathan Biss, finding and projecting all of the composer’s countermelodies with consummate ease.
The pair began in the moonlight – naturally – Der Wanderer an den Mond beginning in strident fashion before the brighter light of its major key second half. Biss then led the phrasing for a beautifully poised account of Im Freien, before the chirpy crickets of Der Einsame raised a smile. In a magical account of Der Winterabend, from the early part of Schubert’s final year, time was taken to evoke the long evening and the slowly falling snow, with a memorable turn towards blissful peace, as tenor and pianist found themselves in easy, slow moving alignment.
The calm repose cast by this song was rudely broken by Schumann’s arresting Lust der Sturmnacht, the switch from sonorous B flat major to turbulent E flat minor something of a jolt. In his Kerner Lieder, Schumann writes less of a thematically linked cycle, but a common thread to the songs are their capture the feverish passions, good and bad, of his new marriage to Clara. Though there is union and delight in the potential happiness ahead, some of the songs are fraught and wracked with worry, making the group ripe for dramatic concert performance.
Padmore and Biss (above) homed in on the drama of Justinus Kerner’s verse, the tenor allowing his voice to fray a little when the emotion of the song demanded it. Such moments occurred towards the top of the register in Stille Liebe and Stirb’, Lieb’ und Freud’!, where earlier in the song he had clasped his hands in reverent prayer.
Auf das Trinkglas eines verstorbenen Freundes was a captivating centre piece of the cycle, majestic and sombre in equal turn, while the rousing Wanderung had the musical effect of putting on boots and coat for a long walk. Heights of expression were found in the devotional love expressed in Sehnsucht nach der Waldgegend, a Christmas present for Schumann’s new wife in the year of composition.
The extremes of movement made the stillness of Alte Laute all the more affecting, Padmore’s control held to perfection while Biss ensured once again that the phrases of Schumann’s countermelodies were beautifully sculpted.
As Padmore said, few encores could be entertained in the light of such a moving musical paragraph, yet one fitted perfectly – Schubert’s Frühlingsglaube, D686, lightening the mood without changing the tonality or elegance of delivery.
Padmore and Biss continue to finish each other’s sentence in this ideally matched partnership, at ease in each other’s company to forego obvious gestures other than the musical – which in this case resulted in a very special hour of music indeed.
You can listen back to this concert until 4 November on BBC Sounds
