Paper Trio — Light in the Dark - Music by Carl Nielsen

Paper Trio consists of Danish musicians Thomas Agergaard (reed player) and Randi Pontoppidan (vocals) as well as American double bassist Greg Cohen. Here they have delivered a classical recording of music by Danish composer Carl Nielsen, who lived during the late Romantic period and early 20th century. His music retains the sweet tunefulness of earlier Romantic styles, but is structurally more freeform, like much of what was coming out in the early 20th century. This is generally my favourite era of classical music, containing my favorite composers such as Debussy and Mahler. Compared to these, Nielsen might be called a 'neo-classicist', akin to Jean Sibelius, although his work has its experimental moments as well. The music played here is chamber music, of course, as it is performed by a trio. They selectively choose to modernize the music in some instances, while in others they simply adapt it to the available instrumentation, and play it in a manner one might expect from a classical recording.

LIKΣN — La Toute Multiple

Beginning in 2021, LIKΣN hit the road with their wind instrument-driven work, La Toute Multiple, bringing the audience closer to the interplay between musician and instrument, with microphones set to pick up the intimate sounds created that aren't heard by the audience. With a sound engineer in tow, Timothée Quost composed a unique experience for the audience centred around a six-chapter piece based on Jean Genet's Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs. After this long period of touring, LIKΣN recorded their performance to La Toute Multiple to the masses.

Alive With Static

Olion Interview

Active since the early 2020’s, Olion is one of the key projects within the euro wall-noise scene. To date, it’s put out around seventy releases- taking in both physical and digital form- with stand-alone releases, splits, and collaborations. Sound-wise, their output moves between pummelling, thick-yet oddly soothing. To more texturally layered, and forays into ANW. Behind the project is Olek Browiński from Olsztyn in northern Poland, and he kindly agreed to give us an email interview

Won’t You Ragnarok with Me?

A Julian Cope Primmer

Erupting into the mainstream on February 19th 1981, The Teardrop Explodes’ debut ‘Top of the Pops’ television performance featuring their brassy, bouncy hit ‘Reward’ is to this day probably the moment from which most people recall Julian Cope. If your image of Julian remains that of an earnest young budding pop star sporting a fleece-collared flying jacket and a shaggy bowlcut of shoulder-length tresses, if you failed to maintain pace with his entry into the cosmos, if you dismissively describe him (as I’ve seen thereabouts) as “a Smash Hits pin-up”, you have one hell of a lot of catching up to do. Musique Machine have tasked me with leading their readers through the psychedelic jungle and beyond, here, and I have to say that Julian probably merits the ‘beginners’ guide to’ / ‘recommended records’ treatment more than just about any other artist in the music sphere, at least in terms of how public perception and the ‘reality’ (if such a word is appropriate in this extreme case) have a near-unbridgeable gulf.