John Metcalfe - Absense - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

John Metcalfe, who arranges songs for big names such as Coldplay, Simple Minds and The Pretenders, has produced albums with Peter Gabriel and has been touring for decades as a member of the Duke Quartet. Now he releases his debut album on the Neue Meister tag. Metcalfe has always been surrounded by music. As a child, he would listen to his father sing opera, before a love of Kraftwerk and Joy Division led to a stint as a drummer in a high school band. But it was a move to Manchester that really accelerated his development as an artist, and led to him finding his true calling. Joining cult band The Durutti Column, then signed to legendary tag Factory Records, brought him into the orbit of Tony Wilson and the Haçienda, formative events that would help foster his renegade spirit. Unimpressed with the strictures demanded by the classical recording industry, Metcalfe persuaded Wilson to launch the ground-breaking Factory Classical tag, aimed at unearthing exciting - and unconventional - new British talent. It was here that Metcalfe found a home, and the group that would come to define his musical career; the Duke Quartet. For nearly 30 years, they've existed at the vanguard of contemporary British music, innovating and delighting in equal measure. As a solo artist, Metcalfe explores electro-classical soundscapes and the boundaries between genres. His finely tuned compositions are neat yet grand in scale, both in terms of sound and the conceptual ideas underpinning them. Absence, the fifth record to bear his own name, is something of a departure for Metcalfe, framing bold images and themes with some of the most conventional song structures he's ever employed. But it's also his most affecting, deconstructing a subject he's been interested in since his childhood in New Zealand Dealing with loss.

Album Tracks 1. Monk's Mood 2. Coming on the Hudson 3. Light Blue 4. Ugly Beauty 5. Round About Midnight 6. Cool Copy 7. Easy Street 8. Ruby My Dear 9. Ask Him Now 10. Monk's Mood

Grammy-winning composer John Luther Adams always speaks with reverence about capturing the tone within the noise, and if any of his recent work can be said to take this mission directly to heart, it's Ilimaq. A true electro-acoustic recording that channels the energy, passion and precision of Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche, Ilimaq (which loosely translates from the native Alaskan Inupiaq language as spirit journeys) maps a vivid, phantasmagorical progression through cascades and firestorms of percussion, otherworldly ambient soundscapes, harmonic dissonance, melodic convergence and plenty more in the musical and sonic spaces between. Album Tracks 1. Descent 2. Under the Ice 3. The Sunken Gamelan 4. Untune the Sky 5. Ascension 1. Descent 2. Under the Ice 3. The Sunken Gamelan 4. Untune the Sky 5. Ascension