The King's Noyse are a terrific ensemble who have made a lot of very good discs indeed over the years. This is among them. It is billed as a disc from 1995 of dance music and song from Italy between about 1580 and 1650, which though strictly accurate, may be a little misleading. Lively dance rhythms are certainly there, but a good deal of the disc is contemplative and sometimes rather melancholy in feel. There are single works by both Monteverdi and Gesualdo but the other works are largely by much more obscure composers, and although I know a little of some like Rovetta and Castello, most were completely new to me. I always like to be introduced to new composers, and the music is very fine throughout the disc.

Matt Haimovitz’s Venetian cello was made by Matteo Gofriller in 1710, ten years before J. S. Bach put pen to paper for his six solo cello suites. Domenico Gabrielli’s seven Ricercari, the direct precursors to Bach’s masterpieces, may have been the first notes heard on this extraordinary instrument.

Teunis van der Zwart and Alexander Melnikov have chosen to pay tribute to Giovanni Punto, now unknown to most music lovers, even though he truly established the cor basse (horn focused on the low register) by devoting no less than sixteen concertos to it. It was he who inspired Beethoven's famous Sonata op.17; the pieces by Danzi and Ries also bear the mark of his legacy. This recording provides an opportunity to discover the unique sound of this instrument in four emblematic works.

A revelatory discovery in the Tinariwen archives, Kel Tinariwen is an early cassette tape recorded in the early 90s that never received a wider release, and sheds new light on the band's already rich history. Not having yet developed the fuller band sound that they became internationally established with, Kel Tinariwen features their trademark hypnotic guitar lines and call-and-response vocals weaving in between raw drum machine rhythms and keyboard melodies that almost evoke an Arabic take on 80s synth-pop. There's distinct parallels with the sounds found on this tape and the work uncovered in recent years by cratedigger labels such as Awesome Tapes From Africa, Sahel Sounds and Sublime Frequencies.

Did you know that there's a tunnel under Ocean Blvd is the ninth studio album from acclaimed singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey, comprising 16 tracks and interludes with features including Father John Misty, Tommy Genesis, Jon Batiste, Bleachers and more. It follows the prolific artist's 2021 albums Chemtrails Over The Country Club and Blue Banisters.

Groovy, psychedelic, droney and hypnotic, Atsuko Chiba's latest offering takes listeners down a path of epic sprawling soundscapes. Water, It Feels Like It’s Growing is as stylistically diverse as it is thematically-anchored, as oddly catchy as it is thoroughly challenging. Asymmetric, yet seamless time signatures, otherworldly synthetic frequencies, patented harmonies, raga-inspired melodies, cryptic lyrics and orchestral arrangements co-exist within this surreal musical tale recounting one’s relation to their environment.

The genesis of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony Number 3 in E-Flat Major, the “Eroica”, has long been brought into connection with the composer’s early admiration for Napoleon. Indeed, Beethoven had initially intended to entitle the work “Bonaparte”, but he withdrew the dedication when the Corsican, as First Consul of a military-backed republic, crowned himself emperor on 2 December 1804. Nonetheless, Beethoven did complete the composition, which is influenced by both French Revolution music and Bachian polyphony, and the first movement is indeed heroic in character. As such, we may assume that Beethoven, while torn between cosmopolitan notions and Austrian patriotism, still held fast to the revolutionary ideals of “liberty, equality, fraternity”. At the same time, the second movement, a funeral march, shows that he equally wished to commemorate the victims of conflict and war, thus giving form to the dark side of the “heroic” story.

For Anastassiya Dranchuk's debut album 'Rites de Passage', the choice of pieces by Tchaikovsky, Say, Schubert and Liszt was no coincidence. The plays had and still have a special emotional meaning in Anastassiya's life. For her, the individual compositions represent rites of passage (rites de passage, a concept from ethnology): they tell of the transition from childhood to adulthood, peace/war, birth/death… In general, it is an emotionally and tonally very colourful, technically demanding programme, which has the most diverse dualities on the topic.

The now infamous story of how J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations received their name – that Bach was asked to write them as a sleep aide of sorts for Count Kaiserling, whose assistant (Goldberg) would play music to help the Count fall asleep – has been found to be a somewhat unlikely and dubious account. Still, with few competing explanations, this at least makes for a good story. The variations have been analyzed and dissected by theoreticians, mathematicians, and even numerologists perhaps more than any other of Bach's works.

Morsefest 2020 was an event that I’m still amazed actually happened! For a time, the pandemic meant that having a Morsefest was going to be out of the question. However as restrictions started to ease, we began investigating whether we could run Morsefest as a live stream with perhaps a very small crowd. Slowly the pieces came together for two nights: an evening where we visited the very best songs from the Cover To Cover albums, followed by a night that focused on my new Sola Gratia album. With a small group of massively supportive fans and helpers gathered we made Morsefest history! People tuned in from all over the world and even had Zoom Morsefest parties!