An important new release in the Sir Arthur Bliss anniversary year, from a record company who have done so much to advance the cause of the composer. This is the recording made around a concert in Nottingham in February, where the Metamorphic Variations were appraised by Arcana’s Richard Whitehouse.
Chandos write in their press release: “Perhaps now overshadowed by his earlier ballet Checkmate, Miracle in the Gorbals was a tremendous hit for Bliss and the Sadler’s Wells Ballet company. First performed in 1944, it was repeated in every season through to 1950. Based on a scenario by Michael Benthall (inspired by Jerome K. Jerome and Dostoyevsky), the ballet features the appearance of a Christ-like figure amid Glasgow’s most infamous slum. This mysterious Stranger performs a miracle, reviving the Girl Suicide, who in despair had earlier thrown herself into the Clyde. The locals rejoice, but an Official (Benthall had in mind a priest) is jealous and, after a failed attempt to cast doubt on the virtue of the Stranger via the local Prostitute, has him slashed to death by a razor gang.
Bliss’s score employs a wide range of styles and harmonic language, and also exploits Leitmotifs for the principal characters. Originally titled Variations for Orchestra, Bliss composed the Metamorphic Variations towards the end of his life, during a late surge of creativity. Two of the sixteen movements were dropped before the first performance (given by the LSO and Vernon Handley in 1973) and for some reason were not re-instated at any of the later performances of the work until that given by Michael Seal and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra in February 2025, the day before they made this recording.
Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore have formed a formidable duo to release a new album, Tragic Magic, due out on 16 January 2026 via InFiné. Today they release the new single Melted Moon, one of “seven immersive, evocative songs” that make up the album. The press release details how, “together in freeform dialogue, voice and instrument, Barwick and Lattimore render a meditation on tragedy, wonder, and the restorative power of shared experience.”
The story continues: “Co-produced by Trevor Spencer (Fleet Foxes, Beach House), Tragic Magic came together in just nine days, a testament to the “musical telepathy,” as Barwick puts it, that has developed between the two artists over the years traveling the world as friends and tourmates. Sessions crossed improvisation with loose ideas they arrived in Paris with from Los Angeles, shortly after the January 2025 wildfires while still reeling for their community.
Barwick and Lattimore were given access to the extraordinary instrument collection of the Philharmonie de Paris’ Musée de la Musique in partnership with InFiné. The two artists embraced a divine setting, overwhelmed by the beauty and history at their fingertips. Lattimore selected three harps tracing the evolution of the instrument from 1728 to 1873, and Barwick chose several analog synthesizers that have shaped decades of exploratory music, including the Roland JUPITER and Sequential Circuits PROPHET-5, among other treasures.
“We were so lucky to have access to this experience. There was a lot of reverence, working with people with such warmth and enthusiasm, bringing these instruments into a modern context, literally taken off the shelves of the museum,” says Lattimore. “We wanted to honor the past while making music that we feel is a true expression of ourselves,” Barwick adds.
Today’s release of Melted Moon is accompanied by a video of Barwick and Lattimore performing the song live. Directed and edited by Joel Kazuo Knoernschild, the performance was filmed at Lou Lou’s Jungle Room at the Lafayette Hotel in San Diego this past April.”
The first single, Perpetual Adoration, is followed by the album’s closing track Melted Moon, a direct response to the Los Angeles wildfires in January 2025. The bold strokes of Lattimore’s harp soften as a calming chord progression asserts itself, before Barwick’s seraphic vocal adds a beautiful counter melody.
Barwick recalls “packing up her life under the dark ash clouds, “What do I need for these trips, but also, what do we need if we can’t come back to this house?” Lattimore lends a harp refrain that loops and echoes in the eventide, a measure in which she plays above as Barwick, uncharacteristically free of effects, offers her lyrics in poignant clarity, both haunting and hopeful (“Under the melted moon / The lights are all out / A strange taste in my mouth / You may never go home again / At least not the home you know”).
The notion embodies Tragic Magic as a whole: two artists and friends processing life through music, observing moments and working through emotions, contributing what they can to the world, within a lineage of creative expression and visionary invention represented by the very tools they used to realize this project.
Published post no.2,688 – Wednesday 15 October 2025
Nonesuch Records releases the soundtrack to Luca Guadagnino’s film After the Huntdigitally on October 10; it will be available on CD from October 17. After the Hunt stars Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield, Michael Stuhlbarg and Chloë Sevigny, and opens in cinemas from October 17, following its world premiere at the 2025 Venice International Film Festival. The album features the score by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, a selection of works by the composer John Adams, as well as additional music from the film by Ambitious Lovers, Julius Eastman, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Everything But The Girl among others. Find the full track list below.
From visionary filmmaker Luca Guadagnino, After the Hunt is a gripping psychological drama about a college professor (Julia Roberts) who finds herself at a personal and professional crossroads when a star student (Ayo Edebiri) levels an accusation against one of her colleagues (Andrew Garfield), and a dark secret from her own past threatens to come into the light. After the Hunt is written by Nora Garrett.
“I was excited to make a movie about now,” Guadagnino says. “After the Hunt is a thriller that asks not what is the truth of this event but how many truths are there? And who should decide which is right? And, as a filmmaker, it was also a way of exploring how to tell a story showing all the possibilities of truth without saying one point-of-view is most valuable.”
The film’s suspense, feeling, and questioning is heightened by the texturally inventive score from the two-time Oscar-winning team of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. This marks the fourth film Reznor and Ross have scored for Guadagnino. “I always show Trent and Atticus the full movie without any music first. Then we start talking about principles and ideas,” Guadagnino explains. “In this case it was all about creating doubt. They brought me these extraordinary piano notes that underline the question of do we believe this person or not. This theme of doubt starts up in the first scene and keeps expanding. And then, around the structure they created, we brought in pop music as well as contemporary composers like John Adams.”
Adams’ music has featured in almost all of Guadagnino’s work, beginning with I Am Love (2009). Inspired by and scored entirely to Adams’ pre-existing music, this was the first time Adams had allowed his work to be used in this way. Guadagnino subsequently featured pieces by Adams in his films A Bigger Splash (2015), Call My Be Your Name (2017), throughout the eight episodes of his miniseries We Are Who We Are (2020), as well as the documentaries Inconscio Italiano (2011) and Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams (2020).
“Adams’ music comes to me constantly. Discovering it was transformative and changed my life as a director forever,” admits Guadagnino. “It comes with a capacity of interpreting reality, interpreting the history of the reality, interpreting the history of the United States, and understanding even the boundaries of music to become a cunning exploration of the identity of human nature and the politic relationship that ties all us in.”
Filmmaker Luca Guadagnino is an Academy Award, BAFTA, and GRAMMY nominee. Over the last three decades, his career as a director, writer, producer, and designer has been defined by rigorous dedication to artistic craft and creative experimentation. Celebrated for his bold and emotionally resonant work, his films include The Protagonists (1999), I Am Love (2009), A Bigger Splash (2015), Call Me by Your Name (2017), Suspiria (2018), Bones and All (2022), Challengers (2024), and Queer (2024).
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are accomplished musicians, composers and producers who have achieved significant popular and critical success in both film and rock music. Most recently, the duo composed the scores for Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers and Queer. Both scores received wide acclaim, with Challengers winning Golden Globe and Critics Choice awards, as well as a GRAMMY nomination. Over the years, the pair has composed music for a diverse array of film and television projects, beginning with David Fincher’s The Social Network (2010), which earned them an Academy Award and a Golden Globe. Their next collaboration with Fincher, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2013), earned them a GRAMMY Award. Beyond their work in film, Reznor founded the iconic band Nine Inch Nails in 1988. Ross joined Reznor and the band in 2016.
John Adams occupies a unique position in the world of music. His works are among the most performed of all contemporary classical music, long embraced by the world’s leading orchestras and conductors, instrumental soloists and singers, choreographers, and opera directors. Nonesuch Records made its first record with Adams in 1985. He was signed exclusively to the label that year, and since then the company has released more than 40 first recordings and over 30 all-Adams albums, including the soundtrack to Luca Guadagnino’s I Am Love, as well as 2022’s 40-disc Collected Works box set.
After the Hunt track list:
Disc 1
Clock, One
A Child Is Born – Tony Bennett, Bill Evans
Let’s Walk – Mark Harelik, Victoria Clark, Adam Guettel
After the Hunt, One – Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross
It’s Gonna Rain – Ambitious Lovers
György Ligeti: Piano Concerto: II. Lento e deserto – Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Asko Ensemble, Reinbert de Leeuw
Terrible Love – The National
John Adams: Gnarly Buttons: II. Hoe-down (Mad Cow) – John Adams, London Sinfonietta
John Adams: Gnarly Buttons: III. Put Your Loving Arms Around Me – John Adams, London Sinfonietta
After the Hunt, Two – Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross
Break With – Ryuichi Sakamoto
Disc 2
Clock, Two
Julius Eastman: Evil Ni**er – Julius Eastman, Frank Ferko, Janet Kattas, Patricia Martin
L’incontro – Piero Ciampi
John Adams: The Death of Klinghoffer, Act II: “It is as if our earthly life were spent miserably” – Kent Nagano, Orchestra of the Opéra de Lyon, The London Opera Chorus
John Adams: The Death of Klinghoffer, Act II: Desert Chorus – Kent Nagano, Orchestra of the Opéra de Lyon, The London Opera Chorus
After the Hunt, Three
John Adams: City Noir: III. Boulevard Night – David Robertson, St. Louis Symphony
É Preciso Perdoar – Ambitious Lovers
Nothing Left To Lose – Everything But The Girl
Soundtrack compiled by Luca Guadagnino & Matthew Rankin
Earlier this week we learned of the sad news of the death of choral conductor and organist Martin Neary. Neary was known primarily for his work with the choir at Wesminster Abbey, put in to perspective by this fine obituary of his work on the Presto website. I wanted to take the opportunity to put together a short playlist of some of Neary’s recordings, which you can find below.
The funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997 was an incredibly intense event, a memorable occasion where it seemed the UK – and especially London, where I was – ground to a halt for an hour. The music that stayed in our consciousness afterwards, as well as Elton John’s reworking of Candle In The Wind, was the remarkable Song for Athene by John Tavener. Neary ensured it was given the best possible performance, which speaks volumes for his musicality and temperament.
Song For Athene leads the playlist below, which concludes with Neary playing Widor’s effervescent Toccata:
edited from the press release with extra words by Ben Hogwood
MF Robots build upon the success of first single Hello Sunshine on their own imprint Good People Records (a joint venture with Republic Of Music) with Children of the World, the Afro-soul-funk fuelled second single taken from the forthcoming album III (three), out Feb 2026.
It is a ray of late summer sunshine for sure, with a singalong chorus that proves difficult to shift after a few listens, and a breezy, funky vibe with Afro grooves added.
Jan Kincaid, co-founder of MF Robots, comments : Children of the World is a freewheeling fun ride, through a hazy summer block party, dancing, hanging out, a neighbourhood homage to simpler times, to innocence but also with a “Go get it, the world is YOURS” message to ourselves to not lose that youthful ,driving energy for life ,the sense that anything is possible ,that we have when we are younger and less burnt by a tricky world….”We wanted this to have a kind of feeling like a freewheeling bike ride at sunset, not really going anywhere In particular but with the sun on your skin ,losing yourself to a perfect moment”… Sunshine is indeed something you could think of a lot with this second single and the album to follow. MF Robots hope you enjoy this release as much as they did making it!
This release follow their 2021 Break the Wall record (reviewed on Arcana here) which was released to rave reviews. Collaborating for the first time while recording and performing with one of the UK’s most successful Acid Jazz bands, The Brand New Heavies in 2013, founder / drummer Jan Kincaid and vocalist Dawn Joseph discovered immediate musical chemistry and began writing songs together right away. They soon left the band to concentrate on their own work, starting MF Robots (Music For Robots) and releasing an eponymous debut in 2018. The album was so well received that the duo soon morphed into a band as they found themselves in-demand at venues and festivals all over Europe including being personally invite on tour across Europe by Lenny Kravitz.
The forthcoming long player III represents a new sonic and song benchmark for Jan and Dawn, reflecting the MF Robots project coalescing and maturing while fine-tuning their material, both on the road and in the studio.
You can explore purchase options for Children of the World by clicking here
Published post no.2,672 – Monday 29 September 2025
Arcana.fm 