“It is with the deepest sadness that we share the passing at the age of 80 of this extraordinary and great musician from pneumonia on the 9th October 2024 after a short illness. We were privileged to work for and be trusted by him for many years and although his spirit will live on we will miss him greatly.”
This tribute to Finnish conductor Leif Segerstam from his manager, Patrick Garvey, illustrates just how popular he was – and the conductor’s page on the website is now filled with a tribute to his artistry as a conductor and composer.
Arcana pays tribute with a short playlist of Finnish music conducted by Segerstam, including excerpts from a fascinating set of ballet scores by Sibelius reviewed by Arcana back in 2015. The playlist includes Segerstam’s own Symphony no.12 – one of more than 370 that he completed.
This is the long-awaited debut album from Roland Leesker, the German producer at the heart of the Get Physical record company for almost a decade and a half.
With a set of solo tracks and collaborations, he describes the first piece of work solely under his own name rather than one supporting others. “I thought it could be nice for a change to produce a few new tracks myself, focusing on what got me here in the first place: Music and the joy it brings, creating it. So this is me, Searching For Peace“
What’s the music like?
Not entirely peaceful! As it turns out, Leesker has a fine line in the production of house tracks, heavily flavoured with disco – and each of the cuts on this album make a strong impact. Along with the best house music producers he has a talent for translating less into more, so that what feels like minimal starting material becomes something really substantial.
To that end, Keep On is a slinky electro disco number, with a winning bass line. Let It All Go has a good, slightly slower disco strut to go with its sultry spoken word contribution from Dan Diamond. What Is has a flavour of Chicago house, nodding to a period that clearly influences Leesker – but doesn’t dominate his music too much.
Does it all work?
It does – especially in a dark room!
Is it recommended?
Very much so – a classy house album, tightly structured and delivering the goods one beat at a time.
For fans of… Booka Shade, Modeselektor, Gui Boratto
Listen & Buy
Published post no.2,327 – Thursday 10 October 2024
published by Ben Hogwood, text taken from the press release.
Bibio has announced the imminent release of Phantom Brickworks (LP II) on Warp Records on 22 November. The first excerpt from the album, DINORWIC, can be heard here:
PHANTOM BRICKWORKS is an ongoing ambient/drone project by English musician and producer Stephen James Wilkinson aka Bibio, inspired by nature, landscape and places haunted by the faint ghosts of industry. It explores the human echoes still present in various sites around Britain which Wilkinson visited, observing their gradual decline.
“Human beings are highly sensitive to the atmospheres of places, which can be enhanced or dramatically altered when you learn the context of their history… echoes and voices can sometimes be heard, in some way or another. Places sometimes have things to say,” says Wilkinson. He continues, “Since releasing ‘PHANTOM BRICKWORKS’ in 2017, I have come to realise that it is an ongoing project. Although elements of ‘PHANTOM BRICKWORKS’ have seeped into my other albums over the years, it feels like its own separate entity.”
PHANTOM BRICKWORKS (LPII) brings attention to new sites; some are intriguing, vast scars on the natural landscape, others survive only in local memories, historic clips and photographs. A few remain submerged from ordinary sight, while some exist purely as legends and stories. Under blankets of improvised evolving loops of piano and baritone guitar, the muffled spectres of working life can be heard, implying nature will come for everything and eventually hide the scars.
“When I announced the first ‘PHANTOM BRICKWORKS’ album, I discussed how places can be charged with meaning, depending on what they’d been through. That observation continues with the new album. It consists of mostly improvised music, using some of the same techniques as before as well as developing new ones that are unique to this album. Some familiar territory is revisited, both musically and in terms of the types of locations that interest me. North Wales plays a significant role, but this album reaches beyond – extending into the realms of legends, as stories passed down through generations can sometimes haunt a place more vividly,” says Wilkinson.
published by Ben Hogwood, text taken from the press release. Photo (c) Paul Heartfield
The much-loved band Tunng are returning, celebrating 20 years since their first release. In those two decades they have maintained a fascinating musical balance, with a blend of electronica, folk and leftfield pop that has consistently marked them out as a band of special interest. Now the announcement of a new album in early 2025 comes with the following press release:
“Time flies when you’re being Tunng. Can it really be over two decades since the band’s genre-blurring, self-styled ‘pagan folktronica’ first emerged from an east London studio. It surely can, and what’s more, January 2025 will mark the twentieth anniversary of This is Tunng…Mother’s Daughter and Other Songs, a debut longplayer whose acoustic guitars and poetic disquisitions on nature, mythology and the human condition, courtesy of Sam Genders, sieved through fellow band founder Mike Lindsay’s lattice of fractured beats and crackling electronics, still sounds like an impiously postmodern wedding of the rustic and the synthetic, the arcane and the futurist.
That 20-year-old signature sound makes a warm return on Tunng’s eighth studio album, Love You All Over Again, a winning amalgam of texture and melody, disconcerting imagery and shapeshifting production, predicated, Lindsay reveals, on a conscious reacquainting with the band’s first principles. “I went back to the first two albums just to listen to how we fused genres – things like Davy Graham, Pentangle, the Expanding Records catalogue and the Wicker Man soundtrack. Over the years, Tunng’s sound has varied and twisted, but at the root there is always a flavour of what Sam and I made on that first album. Rather than searching for a new avenue we went back to what we used to do, which, after all this time, felt like it was a new avenue… Love You All Over Again is our way of coming full circle.”
Lead single Didn’t Know Why, which you can watch above, is a dauntless face-off between metallic synths and pellucid guitar arpeggiation with lyrics about a familiar Tunng song character, Jenny. “It’s very Tunng: dark but then warm and melancholic. Sam heard this and immediately brought back the murderous Jenny, who has appeared on two previous Tunng albums”. Genders offers his take on Jenny. “She once represented a kind of romantic ideal – ‘the one’ – but now she’s a sort of every-person – a kind of archetype of all of us!”
Love You All Over Again is an album that gets to the very essence of Tunng. “For Tunng to work, it has to feel surprising, odd and unpredictable, and the new album has all that. It’s all about Tunng being back, as a family, within our original boundaries, bringing the love to all who have been a part of our journey over 20 years.” Lindsay sums up nicely.
At the end of September we heard of the sad death of pioneering Sri Lankan / British cellist Rohan de Saram, at the age of 85.
As this obituary in the Strad indicates, de Saram was a key figure in contemporary music, holding the position of cellist with the Arditti Quartet from 1979 until 2005, as well as premiering a number of new solo works. The short playlist below gives an indication of his solo recordings, from a cycle of Bach suites to work by Dallapiccola:
Arcana.fm 