Bleep

Douglas Dare - Milkteeth

Milkteeth, the third LP from art-pop savant Douglas Dare, is about as baroque as pop can get. There is plenty of Rufus Wainwright and Sufjan Stevens to the stirring chamber arrangements of tracks like ‘Silly Games’, while Dare’s combination of stateliness, poise and a rather British kind of outsider-artist sensibility channels the best of Patrick Wolf. Erased Tapes might be best known for instrumental music, but Douglas Dare’s Milkteeth adds new strings to the bow of both label and artist. Douglas Dare returns to Erased Tapes with his introspective song-writerly craft, but his third outing Milkteeth sees the English singer-songwriter strip back on the sonics for a disarmingly intimate affair. ‘Silly Games’ is a paean to the loss of childhood innocence, told through Dare’s dulcet vocal and his newfound instrumental joy — the autoharp — which bestows all of Milkteeth with the rustic musk of a folk classic.

Art Ensemble of Chicago - We Are On The Edge: A 50th Anniversary Celebration

Established in 1969, The Art Ensemble of Chicago’s peerless musical innovation has found them at the forefront of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) for half a century, all the while churning out maddeningly talented musicians, including Anthony Braxton and Wadada Leo Smith. We Are On The Edge: A 50th Anniversary Celebration commemorates their monumental achievement with a sprawling record of a blazing live performance in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Surviving members Roscoe Mitchell and Famoudou Don Moye lead the charge, assembling a formidable cast of major players in experimental jazz, including Moor Mother, Jean Cook and Nicole Mitchell.

Penguin Cafe - Handfuls of Night

Bandleader Arthur Jeffes, the driving force behind Penguin Cafe, was approached by Greenpeace to compose four pieces corresponding to four different breeds of penguins. The project, intended to raise awareness of the endangered species of the Antarctic, later developed into Handfuls of Night, and the cold winds of its source material are keenly felt throughout. Icy strings move like powder snow across a perfect white landscape of nylon and steel strings.

Lubomyr Melnyk - Melnyk: Fallen Trees

Known as ‘The Prophet of the Piano’ for his lifelong dedication to the instrument and esoteric playing style, Lubomyr Melnyk is a musician truly unlike any other. Fallen Trees is yet another chapter in the septuagenarian’s study of the piano’s practical limitations, which began in 1978 with the release of KMH: Piano Music in the Continuous Mode. Melnyk’s inimitable style is such that a moment’s silence never once passes on Fallen Trees; great washes of piano notes fill the air like flurries of leaves in a bluster of wind, impactful as a musical statement as it is an environmental one.