A CLOSER LISTEN weekly #26
A CLOSER LISTEN weekly #26
An interview with Mario Diaz de Leon, Ukrainian Field Notes, and a lot of reviews
Dear Listeners! More or less back into the swing of things over here. I’ve still got to share my personal list, but it will have to wait. Since our last few newsletters were dominated by lists, this installment features an extra selection of reviews. 2023 is off to a great start! Also, David Murrieta Flores interviews Mario Diaz de Leon, Gianmarco Del Re returns once again with more Ukrainian Field Notes. And as always, check out the Upcoming Releases.
To Participate More Fully in the World ~ An Interview With Mario Diaz de Leon
Mario Diaz de Leon is an artist and professor from the US who has worked across different musical genres and styles as both composer and performer. We had the chance to talk with him over email, a conversation presented below with a few choice edits and formatting for clarity.
David Murrieta Flores (ACL): Hello Mario, please tell us a bit about your background and work, for readers who might be unfamiliar with your music.
Mario Diaz de Leon (MDL): Hello! I’m a musician based in NYC. I’ve been working concurrently in modern classical music, experimental electronic music, improvised music (in the trio Bloodmist), and metal (in the duo Luminous Vault). I would say that the breadth of my work is a reflection of my background. I’m originally from the Twin Cities, and started making music as a teenager in the 90s, playing in hardcore and metal bands, and also going to warehouse raves and creating electronic music. Around age 20 I became enamored with modern classical music as well as improvisation, and at that time I began studying formally and collaborating with ensembles, eventually completing a doctorate in music composition from Columbia University. Over the last 12 years I’ve made as many albums in my various projects and collaborations.
ACL: Your latest album, Heart Thread (2022), follows a series of themes that are made evident by even just glancing at the titles of your discography – theological concepts and the poetry of religion recur throughout. Why and how is religion important to your artistic practice?
MDL: I grew up without religion. My father was raised Catholic in Mexico City, and by the time he became a father he had renounced religion rather pointedly, due to the hypocrisy and corruption he witnessed in that church. My mother was raised Presbyterian in St. Louis (Missouri), and her perspective was agnostic and at the same time very open minded. Since we didn’t go to church, that also left me quite free to pursue my own path spiritually. From around the time I started playing music at age 10, I was very curious about religion and spirituality, reading books on comparative religion, mythology, and asking a lot of questions. By the time I started playing live in high school, I started having supernatural experiences in the form of spirit hauntings. These early experiences were rather traumatic, and at the same time had a big influence on how I approached writing music. So I would say they were pretty foundational, for better or worse. As I grew older the experiences changed in character and became much more positive, and alongside my study of music and spirituality, that’s continued to the present day.
Ukrainian Field Notes XIX
Episode XIX of UFN, opens with Grammy award winner Nadia Shpachenko sourcing artwork from her native Kharkiv and Roman Slavka highlighting fundraising initiatives in Dnipro. Meanwhile, Amphibian Man surfs with the sea devil, Ragapop take time off touring to answer our questions, Leftie calculates the life events / response ratio, Venture Silk speaks to us from The Netherlands, Ptakh considers Future Memories, Truffikss reaches Kyiv from Mariupol via a children’s home in Russia, Skungal goes digging to the bones in Barcelona, Mires plays placid tones, Tsatiory shares his experience from Mikolaiv, Ira Hoisa promotes cultural exchange in Vilnius, and essentialmiks tends to his potted plants in Odesa.
We also feature new releases by @lostlojic, Alien Body, Lugovskiy, Endless Melancholy and 58918012, together with a fundraising compilation by Concentric Records and a new rendition of Valentin Silvestrov‘s Silent Songs by Hélène Grimaud & Konstantin Krimmel on preorder from Deutsche Grammophon. To end on an upbeat note we’ve featured a fresh video by Vlad Fisun and Mykola Makeyev (aka C/TRO).
Plus, the new season of Nina Eba‘s Air Raid Siren dedicated to Ukrainian labels, with Mystictrax doing the honors, the fifth episode of our Ukrainian Field Notes podcast that aired on Resonance FM on 18-01-2023 featuring Kseniia Yanus and Yaryna Denisiuk from Neformat Family, and our sprawling Spotify playlist, composed of 40 tracks by our featured artists and / or recommended by them. It clocks in at 3 hours, with a wide selection of genres, from modern classical, to electronic, and from ambient, to pop & indie, via metal. Happy listening and happy reading, and please consider supporting the artists and Ukraine.
RECENT REVIEWS
Reviews are at the heart of ACL. Here are (excerpts from) a few of my favorite reviews we posted on the blog in the last few weeks.
Hannibal Chew III ~ El Borneo De Dios (Sinfonías Resgatadas en la Isla de Borneo) / Bardo Todol & Robert Millis ~ A Magnetic Road to Hell
Everybody loves leftovers ~ no cooking is involved, and the flavors have had time to marinate. In early January, we cover a few leftovers from the prior year that were submitted too late for coverage. One such tape is Hannibal Chew‘s El Borneo De Dios (Sinfonías Resgatadas en la Isla de Borneo), itself comprised of leftovers: splices of Gonçalo F Cardoso‘s Impressões de Outra Ilha (Borneo) rearranged as a phantasm. Pablo Picco’s cover art is a perfect depiction of the music: a colorful collage with its own rhyme and reason, highlighted by a remixed bird. Another Discrepant release, Bardo Todol & Robert Millis‘ A Magnetic Road to Hell, seems similar on the surface, but is different underneath. This tape is also a jumble of impressions, but is more of a conversation between nations and friends ~ in this case, Cordoba (Argentina) and Seattle (USA). Instead of exchanging words, these artists exchange sounds, subsequently blended and layered, origins obscured. Car horns blare while a choir sings; bells ring, dissolving in a bed of static drone. Halfway through the first side a rail car can be heard, suggesting a strange journey to an unfamiliar place.
William Ryan Fritch ~ Polarity
Polarity is a different but no less engaging album from William Ryan Fritch, the first of a trilogy addressing the planet’s water crisis. Fritch’s experimental and electronic tendencies come to the fore, eclipsing his orchestral bent (although it remains evident in the composition). The use of hydrophones, solenoids and transducers helped the composer to connect with the frequencies running through the earth, reflecting his experience on the documentary Newtok, about an Alaskan village on the edge of disaster.
Various Artists ~ From Ukraine, For Ukraine
tandard Deviation’s first charity compilation was released just as the invasion began, after which the label closed down for nine months to help their community in immediate ways. After some soul-searching, they came to the conclusion that music is also essential (we agree!) and solicited 20 musical contributions from neighbors and friends, including some recent favorites: Koloah (whose album appears on our Top Ten Ambient list), Katarina Gryvul (who appears on our Top Ten Electronic and overall Top 20 lists) and Splinter (UA), the leader of Corridor Audio, our 2022 Label of the Year. Now From Ukraine, For Ukraine joins Corridor Audio’s We Are Invincible and Flaming Pines Liberty (which appears on our Top Ten Drone list) as the best of the hundreds of Ukrainian compilations we’ve heard so far. One of the reasons is the unanimity of tone, which the label describes as “melancholic and fragile, yet hopeful.” Another is the sonic variety. But the most important is the overall quality; these songs prompt the listener to seek out other music by the same artists.
Cicada ~ Seeking the Sources of Streams
One of the highlights of the early year, Seeking the Sources of Streams sounds just like its title and its inspiration. Piano notes sparkle like sunlight on water; strings swirl like eddies around stones. The music sounds as cool and crisp as a drink from an unpolluted spring. The cover art is a gorgeous reflection of the journey taken by Jesy Chiang, the composer for the Taiwan ensemble. Her hike in the Central Mountain Range led her to later adventures, accompanied by the other players. Together they encountered the relationship between earth and water, mountain and stream: fallen trees feeding the soil, water seeking its source, spiritual impressions becoming droplets of notes.
Le Millipede ~ Legs and Birds
Legs and Birds has been in the works for a while, a series of singles given to friends, only one copy made of each (save for three copies of a double-sided single). This year, as Sufjan Stevens once did with his friends-and-family Christmas EPs, the entire series has been collected for public consumption. We hope that the original copies will be treasured for life, but we’re glad to have access to the music, which is presented in original fashion: two discs, the first featuring ten “legs” from The Notwist’s trombonist, the other including seven tracks of birdsong. Yes, you read that right ~ Mathias Götz, as Le Millipede, has recorded his own personalized version of For the Birds, and it soars.
Ian Wellman ~ Sedge
We last heard from Ian Wellman mid-pandemic, with the dour yet lovely On the Darkest Day, You took My Hand and Swore It Will Be Okay. During that era, we wondered if Wellman really believed in “the light at the end of the tunnel.” On Sedge, we realize that he does. Sedge is the reflection of a long-dreamt of journey to New Mexico’s Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge to experience the sandhill crane migrations. The densest flocks number up to 15,000. So. Many. Birds. Wellman records the birds from dawn until dusk, capturing the ebb and flow of the flock, while capturing noteworthy juxtapositions along the way.
Colin Stetson ~ Chimaera I
Colin Stetson is one among a number of contemporary experimental musicians who have carved out careers as composers for film and television. In 2022 alone the artist released soundtracks for two films and a docuseries about NASA. It seems only natural that that style of composition would inflect other parts of his practice, transforming the imagery and narrative that undergird it. The two compositions on Stetson’s latest album length release Chimaera I do indeed represent a departure of sorts from the style of performance for which he became known in the early 2010s. Gone is the more percussive and melodic orientation of earlier albums such as All this I do for Glory and his well-known experimentations with voice on his breakthrough release New History of Warfare Vol. 2: Judges.
Drum & Lace ~ Frost EP
There’s an amusing story behind Blue Monday (not the world’s incredible top-selling 12″ record of all time by New Order, which didn’t make any money because the die-cut sleeve was so expensive, but the holiday), which we missed by a week. We apologize for writing this post on the fourth Monday of January instead of the third, dubbed “The Most Depressing Day of the Year” ~ but Drum & Lace‘s EP wasn’t out yet, and we didn’t want to make your day worse by telling you about music you couldn’t yet hear.
Francisco López ~ untitled #408
Andrew Weathers and Cody Yantis’ brand new Rural Situationism label launches this week with untitled #408, a striking sound work from Francisco López. The label has planned 10 site-specific field recording discs for the year, followed by “an end of year journal with related text, photos, and other ephemera.” We’re extremely happy to see a new imprint in this genre, as so many have fallen by the wayside in recent years, although we applaud the continuing efforts of such labels as Unfathomless, Gruenrekorder, Impulsive Habitat, Green Field Recordings and others who continue to celebrate the power of sound. There is likely none better to launch the label than López, one of the leaders in the field, pun intended. The sheer number of López’ releases speaks to his dedication. Now on untitled #408 (in addition to his titled recordings), the artist shows no sign of slowing down; in fact, the new recording is one of his most fluid releases to date, a single, visceral, 74-minute piece. The listener is left to their own devices in terms of interpretation, the only clue the location of the American Southwest. A soft start leads quickly to an arid turn, reminiscent of cracked ground and rusted machinery. A hot wind blows; a scorpion tests the air with its tail.
UPCOMING RELEASES
(complete list with Bandcamp links here)
Ready for some new music in the new year? We’ve got you covered. When snow and ice keep us inside, music makes us feel warm. With hundreds of albums already announced, 2023 is swiftly shaping up to be a stellar year in sound. Our Winter Music Preview will provide all the details, but those who want a quick burst ~ just the tracks, m’am ~ can find them below. New music is added daily; we hope you’ll find your next favorite album right here!
asher tuil ~ Automatism (Room40, 27 January)
Bandler Ching ~ Coaxial (Sdban Ultra, 27 January)
Beats & Pieces Big Band ~ Good Days (27 January)
Buddha Sentenza ~ High Tech Low Life (27 January)
Calum Builder ~ Murmuration (Barefoot, 27 January)
Christiana Galsatus ~ Without Night (Slow & Steady Records, 27 January)
Deathprod ~ Compositions (Smalltown Supersound, 27 January)
Flechtheim ~ Transitions (Distrackt, 27 January)
Groupshow ~ Greatest Hits (Faitiche, 27 January)
Hammock ~ Love in the Void (Hammock Music, 27 January)
KillDry ~ Pool of the Black Star (27 January)
Mohamad Zatari Trio ~ Istehial (Zehra, 27 January)
Purple Decades ~ Journey Test (Beacon Sound, 27 January)
Ruhail Qaisar ~ Fatima (Danse Noir, 27 January)
Scott L. Miller & Zeitgeist ~ Coincident (New Focus, 27 January)
sourmilk ~ Everybody Is Turning To Gold (Ombrelle Concrete, 27 January)
Tomas Hallonsten ~ Monolog (thanatosis, 27 January)
Tvärvägen ~ A Great Circle Route (Hare Tracks, 27 January)
Wolf Eyes ~ Difficult Messages (Disciples, 27 January)
Jason M. Yu ~ I Am Here, Now (Infloresce, 28 January)
Shall Remain Nameless ~ Dream of a Sampler Life (28 January)
Henrik Lindstrand ~ Klangland (One Little Independent, 29 January)
Dry Thrust ~ The Less You Sleep (TROST, 30 January)
Kowashima / Mochizuki / Henritzi ~ Chinmoku wa ishikure ni yadoru bouryoku (TROST, 30 January)
CEM ~ Music for Spaces (Psychic Liberation/Pain Liberation, 31 January)
Grant Chapman ~ Indentations (Métron, 31 January)
Mattias Puech ~ Mt. Hadamard National Park (Hallow Ground, 31 January)
moshlmoss ~ Stones of Paradise (night cruising, 31 January)
Coultrain ~ MUNDUS (577 Records, 1 February)
Pointless Geometry ~ OPLA-GTI (1 February)
Bios Contrast ~ Meltwater Pulse (2 February)
Atom™ ~ Nacht (raster, 3 February)
Brett Naucke ~ Cast a Double Shadow (Ceremony of Seasons, 3 February)
Chad W. Clark ~ Vast Mass (3 February)
Daniele Bogon ~ Del Suono e Della Luce (Slowcraft, 3 February)
David Curington ~ Assured Listening Experience (Square Ears, 3 February)
Devin Sarno ~ Misshapen Heart (Perceived Sound, 3 February)
The Light Surgeons ~ SuperEverything* (Utter, 3 February)
loscil // Lawrence English ~ Colours of Air (kranky, 3 February)
Paurl Walsh ~ Pocket Worlds (Debacle, 3 February)
Sailcloth ~ Resting Fields (3 February)
William St. Hugh ~ Anomaly (3 February)
V/A ~ From Above Vol. 3 (Lumière Noire, 3 February)
Yair Cohen ~ One (3 February)
Zane Trow ~ envoûteuse haleine (Room40, 3 February)
David Boulter ~ Factory (Clay Pipe Music, 4 February)
Anthony Pateras ~ Two Solos (Futura Resistenza, 6 February)
Boris Rogowski ~ The Waste Land (Piano and Coffee, 10 February)
Chris LiButti ~ Symbolic Victories (Personal Archives, 10 February)
DDENT ~ Ex Auditu (Chien Noir, 10 February)
Earth House Hold ~ How Deep Is Your Devotion (A Strangely Isolated Place, 10 February)
Field Lines Cartographer ~ This Vibrating Earth (Castles in Space, 10 February)
Giron ~ Something Strange in the Mountains (Verlag System, 10 February)
Hollie Kenniff ~ We All Have Places That We Miss (Western Vinyl, 10 February)
hubris. ~ The One Above (dunk!records, 10 February)
McKain/Murray/Radichel/Weeks ~ Live at Century (Personal Archives, 10 February)
Miharo Ogura ~ Ogura Plays Stockhausen (thanatosis, 10 February)
N. Hertzberg ~ Jazz Hands (Personal Archives, 10 February)
øjeRum/Scanner ~ Vågnende Jeg Ser De Døde (Room40, 10 February)
ZA! & La TransMegaCobla ~ S/T (co-released on 9 labels, 10 February)
The OO-Ray ~ Generate (Audiobulb, 11 February)
Ozan Aydn ~ A Turning Point (11 February)
Marla Hlady & Christof Migone ~ Swan Song (Cronica, 14 February)
Maze & Lindholm ~ Carillon sans timbre ni marteau – Vol1 (Totalism, 15 February)
Mirek Coutigny ~ Through Empty Landscapes and New Beginnings (Icarus/Consouling Sounds, 15 February)
Roxane Métayer ~ Perlée de sève (Marionette, 15 February)
Guy Gelem ~ Passing by and Through (Whitelabrecs, 16 February)
Astroturf Noise ~ Blazing/Freezing (577 Records, 17 February)
Bruno Duplant ~ Quelques instants d’éternité (Moving Furniture, 17 February)
Elskavon ~ Origins (Western Vinyl, 17 February)
Harry Christelis ~ Nurture the Child/Challenge the Adult (17 February)
Hior Chronik ~ Tell Me Your Story (Bigo & Twigetti, 17 February)
ILUITEQ ~ Reflections from the Road (n5MD, 17 February)
Julien Grassen Barbe ~ Loup Vert (L’Histoire Inconnue du Disque, 17 February)
Machinefabriek ~ + (17 February)
Northern Lights ~ As Above (17 February)
Sounding Society ~ Homecoming Medley or Society Into Sound (Gotta Let It Out, 17 February)
Peter Kvidera ~ Verism (Whitelabrecs, 18 February)
Erik Hall ~ Canto Ostinato (Western Vinyl, 22 February)
Alexander Tucker + Keith Collins ~ Fifth Continent (Subtext, 24 February)
Camp of Wolves ~ Planetar (Subexotic, 24 February)
Drew Gardner ~ The Return (Astral Spirits, 24 February)
Earth Trax ~ Closer Now (Lapsus, 24 February)
Giants of Discovery ~ And It’s Goodnight From the Human Race (Subexotic, 24 February)
Grand River ~ All Above (Editions Mego, 24 February)
Heinali ~ Kyiv Eternal (Injazero, 24 February)
John Bence ~ Archangels (Thrill Jockey, 24 February)
Langham Research Centre and John Butcher ~ Six Hands at an Open Door (Persistence of Sound, 24 February)
Letters from Mouse ~ St. Swithin’s Day Storm (Subexotic, 24 February)
Masayoshi Miyazaki ~ China Life (Flaming Pines, 24 February)
The Mountain King / Gate to Xibalba ~ Split Album (Cursed Monk, 24 February)
The Necks ~ Travel (Northern Spy, 24 February)
plygid ~ Sensory Shell (Big Tent, 24 February)
3Phaz ~ Ends Meet (Discrepant, 24 February)
Megan Alice Clune ~ Furtive Glances (Room40, 25 February)
BULBUL ~ Silence! (Rock Is Hell, 28 February)
Alex Ward Item 4 Furthered ~ Furthered (577 Records, 3 March)
AMP ~ Echoesfromtheholocene (Ampbase, 3 March)
Erik Levander ~ Kvad (Supple 9, 3 March)
Frederic D. Oberland ~ Solstices (Zamzamrec, 3 March)
Garreth Broke ~ Hiding (Reworks) (piano and coffee records, 3 March)
Kate Carr ~ false dawn (Flaming Pines, 3 March)
Kate NV ~ WOW (RVNG Int., 3 March)
Mark Harris / John 3:16 ~ Procession (Alrealon Musique, 3 March)
Mathieu P ~ Conducere (Safeword, 3 March)
PoiL Ueda ~ S/T (Dur & Doux, 3 March)
Sanah Kadoura ~ Duality (3 March)
Matt Rösner ~ Empty, Expanding, Collapsing (Room40, 4 March)
Jeugdbrand ~ Siamese Dream (Team) (Edições CN, 6 March)
Philip Samartzis ~ Atmospheres and Disturbances (Room40, 7 March)
Elsa Bergman Playon Crayon ~ Playon Crayon (Bergman Inspelningar, 9 March)
Francesco Fabris & Ben Frost ~ Vakning (Room40, 10 March)
Lei Liang ~ Hearing Landscapes/Hearing Icescapes (New Focus, 10 March)
Lia Kohl ~ The Ceiling Reposes (American Dreams, 10 March)
Tomo-Nakaguchi ~ The Long Night in Winter Light (Audiobulb, 11 March)
Bill Seaman & Steve Vitiello ~ The Clear Distance (Room40, 14 March)
Early Fern ~ Perpetual Care (Métron, 15 March)
Lorenz Weber ~ earth beats (15 March)
Fargo ~ Geli (Kapitaen Platte, 17 March)
Gerald Cleaver, Brandon Lopez, Hprizm ~ In the Wilderness (577 Records, 17 March)
Niklas Paschburg ~ Panta Rhei (7K!, 17 March)
Tørrfall ~ S/T (Den Pene Inngang, 21 March)
Elijah McLaughlin Ensemble ~ III (Astral Spirits, 24 March)
Les Dunes ~ S/T (Kapitaen Platte, 24 March)
Neal Cowley ~ Battery Life (Mote, 24 March)
Richard Orton ~ Hemlock Stone (Persistence of Sound, 24 March)
YoshimiOizumikiYoshiduO – To The Forest To Live A Truer Life (Thrill Jockey, 24 March)
A Journey of Giraffes ~ Empress Nouveau (Somewherecold, 31 March)
Richard Skelton ~ selenodesy (Phantom Limb, 31 March)
Rob Mazurek – Exploding Star Orchestra ~ Lightning Dreamers (International Anthem, 31 March)
Fire-Toolz ~ I am upset because I see something that is not there. (Hausu Mountain, 7 April)
Sleep Research Facility/Llyn Y Cwn ~ Cargo/Posidonia (Cold Spring, 7 April)
Macgray ~ Collapse (Les Yeux Orange, 13 April)