Category: LIBRARY

5 spacious and dynamic works, minimal – in a Feldmanesque rather than minimalist sense – by the remarkable but seldom heard contemporary Italian composer Fausto Razzi, who works in these pieces with dynamics and harmonics to gripping effect; each sound its own statement – and produced through a mastery of subtle, and often extended, technique. Great credit has to be extended too to the exquisite interpretation and performance by pianist Matteo Ramos Aravelos, whose grasp of detail – especially of dynamics – is profound. Razzi, now 85 and certainly not a household name spent his professional life in music, first as a pioneer of computer music and then as a specialist in early C17 Italian opera and mannerist vocal music – at the same time quietly producing radical pieces like those on this record; his seems to be a musical mind content to plough its own furrow. And these works – and this recording too – make an important contribution to the contemporary repertoire for piano – with a sound as perfect as any sound that is human can achieve.

DOWNLOAD WHOLE ALBUM:
MP3 – £6.99
FLAC – £9.99

Bob Downes was a name you’d see everywhere in the late ‘60s/early ‘70s – always up to his neck in something interesting and experimental. Last year I tracked down a composition of his for Alphorns for the Probes series (it will be in No.22) and a few months later he sent me an unreleased recording of his 1970 Dream Journey, a great dance composition that speaks volumes about the general musical climate of the time (it’s for 3 percussionists, two flautists, saxophone, trumpet and bass). I asked if there were more and we soon shuffled this compilation together, which covers a lot of ground: from solo to 65-piece wind band, recording experiments to library music and the years 1970 to 2004. And, of course, Alphorns. Several tracks feature the legendary John Stevens, classical percussionist Derek Hogg and bassist Daryl Runswick. It’s constantly engaging, inventive and a pleasure to listen to; and it’s also a fascinating window onto a (sadly) vanished aesthetic.

DOWNLOAD WHOLE ALBUM:
MP3 – £6.99 FLAC – £9.99

DOWNLOAD WHOLE ALBUM:
MP3 – £6.99
FLAC – £9.99

Buy album as CD (£12.50 POST FREE)

This is such a remarkable piece of work I don’t know where to begin. Anyone who liked the idea-rich, sonically breathtaking and compositionally daring pop music of the ‘60s, will recognise in these 20 perfectly crafted songs a similar mixture of pop-sensibility and radical innovation, but now recast in contemporary terms and not as pastiche or imitation. If you have hesitated thus far, now’s the time to enter the intensely musical world of the Drakian Academy, where unassuming virtuosity and state of the art studio practice are merely means to greater ends. I know we’ve all heard everything these days, but you haven’t heard this.

DOWNLOAD WHOLE ALBUM:
(Includes lyric sheet)
MP3 – £6.99
FLAC – £9.99

Buy album as CD(£12.50 POST FREE)

TRACK PRICE:
MP3: £0.70p|FLAC: £1.00

Buy album as CD (£12.50 POST FREE)