Sonar with David Torn – Tranceportation Vol. 2 (RareNoise, 2020), Samuel Hällkvist – Epik, Didaktik, Pastoral (BoogiePost Recordings, 2020), Thor de Force – The Build (Ropeadope, 2020)
Gary Husband & Markus Reuter – Music of Our Times (MoonJune, 2020)
Blaer – Yellow (Ronin Rhythm Records, 2020)
Giorgi Mikadze – Georgian Microjamz (RareNoise 2020)
![Sonar with David Torn – Tranceportation Vol.1 [RareNoise 2019]](https://i2.wp.com/www.musicforwatermelons.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/SonarTranceportation1_Cover-e1573755385279.jpg?resize=540%2C304)
What initially started as a follow-up of Vortex, eventually sprawled to more than 80 minutes of music and became a double album, whose second volume will be released in May 2020. In a move equal parts bold and conservative, Tranceportation Vol. 1 is moving the music of Sonar and their collaboration with David Torn ahead. Staying faithful to one of the rules that lies underneath the music of many Swiss postmininal musicians, that which says that minimal structures do not cage the music, instead unleash a new world of possibilities, Sonar and David Torn are now delving into new depths
AKKU Quintet manipulate the meaning of sounds, expand the emotional charge through an extensive use of repetition and sink those in deep polyrhythmic nets. Their music is full of narrative development, whether they are taking sometimes a prolonged or very short timeframes to evolve it, and they are playing themes in loop for multiple times with slight changes.
![Ikarus – Mosaismic [Ronin Rhythm Records 2019]](https://i0.wp.com/www.musicforwatermelons.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Ikarus-Mosaismic-Cover-Digital-1-e1558041135691.png?resize=540%2C304)
INTERVIEW with Ramón Oliveras in April 2019 – Architecture is not only an influence, but a nice way to describe my work as a composer or the way Ikarus is doing music
![Stephan Thelen – Fractal Guitar [MoonJune 2019]](https://i2.wp.com/www.musicforwatermelons.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Stephan3000-e1547660542725.jpg?resize=540%2C304)
When I go to a concert I like to hear the ideas behind the actual music and how these ideas unfold and evolve over the course of time. In other words, I’m always interested in a process that is based on a good and interesting idea which is presented in a very clear and transparent way. The idea itself can be very simple, but it should have the potential to create complex and interesting results. With Sonar we often very slowly build up a piece where one instrument starts and then others join in. In that way, you can clearly… Continue reading
Playlist 2018 Antonio Sanchez & Migration – Lines in the Sand David Lang – The Day Michael Gordon and Kronos Quartet – Clouded Yellow Nik Bartsch’s Ronin – Awase Dinosaur – Wonder Trail David Kollar Arve Henriksen – Illusions of a Separate World Quartet Diminished – Station Two Perfect Beings – Vier Trio Heinz Herbert – Yes Ingrid Laubrock – Contemporary Chaos Practices – Two Works For Orchestra With Soloists Makaya McCraven – Universal Beings Syndone – Mysoginia Xavi Reija – The Sound of the Earth Mark Wingfield – Tales from the Dreaming City Dominique Vantomme – Vegir Dwiki Dharmawan – Rumah Batu John… Continue reading
![Nik Bärtsch’s Ronin – Awase [ECM 2018]](https://i1.wp.com/www.musicforwatermelons.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/nik-baertsch-awase.jpg?resize=540%2C304)
The sign is a fracture that only ever opens onto the face of another sign (Roland Barthes) The music of Nik Bärtsch confines itself to the essential, at the moment when a sign opens and generates the next sign. Each sign contains those that will follow: a melody contains the scale it belongs to and the musicians who played it as well as a word contains the dictionary and all the people who spoke it previously; it contains all the songs that used only a few intervals that are part of it, that used part of the notes or its… Continue reading
![Sonar with David Torn – Vortex [RareNoise 2018]](https://i1.wp.com/www.musicforwatermelons.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/sonarvortex_cover.jpg?resize=540%2C304)
“Repetition does not change anything in the repeated object, but changes something in the mind of the observer” (Deleuze, Difference and Repetition in Margulis, On Repeat, Oxford University Press). Swiss band Sonar works to create this space between music and listening, between repetition and the listener since 2010. Their playing is made by clean guitars, overrepeated rhythmic patterns, slow, sinister and isomorphic grooves, stripped of barely all the melodic content. Resulting in an hypnotic, ancestral outcome, which changes with each listening, like if it were the perfect explanation of Deleuze’s sentence above. A line-up made by guitars, strictly tritone-tuned, played by Stephan… Continue reading