Modern Classical – Page 3

The first thing that popped into my head during Justin Wright’s Music for Staying Warm was an interview with, believe it or not, Vangelis. In Sounds magazine in 1976, James Wynn gaped at the tone palette Vangelis conjured – not from a limitless synthesizer – but from the comparatively monochromatic Fender Rhodes piano, which produced “lyrical vibes, vibrant bass, an amazingly accurate music-box sound and all sorts of other things.” Listening to Wright’s work for (supposedly) string quintet, I scrambled to see who overdubbed oboe, bass clarinet, and… voices? Was there a harmoniser pedal?

Wright tastefully extracts a wide range of colors from his cello and the rest of the ensemble. Natural harmonics, bridge mutes, bow positioning, and other traditional trickery cause the listener to wonder which stringed (or non-stringed) instruments are in the band.

A major contributor to the colors of ‘Warmth’ is the recording studio. In ‘Modular Winter’ the low-register viola melody would be lost were it not for microphone placement. The solo cello in ‘Improvisation’ is offset by a much more reverberant violin. Panning and echo effects cradle ‘In Sunlight’ in wispy harmonics that waft around the ensemble like dandelion seeds.

The interplay between harmonic effects and melody also gives ‘In Sunlight’ the only real dissonance on the album. Everything else basks in diatonic comfort and first-inversion optimism. Any ‘motion’, i.e. phrase repetition, exists to reinforce the grounded, frozen-in-time atmosphere.

Speaking of time-freezing, five words that repel my synthesizer colleagues are “Check out my drone piece.” Fortunately, the tracks here labelled ‘Drone’ are not endless tones that force the listener to wager when a musician will fall asleep and drop their instrument. They contain phrases. They move. ‘Drone III – Saudade’ tells an almost Schubertian tonal story. It is warm.

The final movement’s ‘Taps’-like melody gently lays us in a bed of reassuring Coplandic harmonies and enough plagal cadences to keep one eye on the heavens. The listener is indeed ‘Staying Warm’ “…and all sorts of other things.”

Music For Staying Warm by Justin Wright is released by First Terrace Records on April 5 2019.

Words: Reed Hays

Ralph Heidel belongs to a new generation of musicians for whom the supposedly hard borders between genres mean very little. In the case of his debut album, we find him deploying his classical studies from Munich’s celebrated Academy of Music alongside the saxophone he began playing before he was a teenager, melded in with occasional bursts of the sort of glitchy electronics and bold synth strokes that modern classical musical seems to embrace most easily.

Ambitious, evolving tracks like ‘Kadiköy Shimmer’ or the serene ‘Während die Feigen’ or the thrilling, feisty punk-funk-with-strings of ‘Blurred Idiosyncrasy’ are peripatetic, expansive affairs, covering so much ground that it’s often hard to keep up. From austere orchestrations to bleating sax, questing piano runs and droning, distorted electronics, when viewed as a whole, Moments Of Resonance can be something of a dizzyingly complex affair, sometimes taking a reflective stance on pieces like ‘Our Kingdom’ and at others bordering on a noisy intensity that nods to the rapture of fire music.

It is a testament to Heidel’s gutsy vision that these eight pieces can hold together so well in spite of their purportedly incompatible genetic codes, placing him neatly into today’s vibrant and unapologetic fusion scene.

Moments Of Resonance by Ralph Heidel / Homo Ludens is released by Kryptox Records on April 5 2019.

Words: Mat Smith

Further.

Tag: Modern Classical

Justin Wright – Music For Staying Warm

Ralph Heidel // Homo Ludens – Moments Of Resonance