Jordan De La Sierra - Gymnosphere: Song of the Rose - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Black Void is nihilistic aggression and desperation in the form of music. Furious and unrepentant in attitude, it builds on the philosophical works of Friedrich Nietzsche, burning with the filthy flame of punk and black metal. InchWhen it's impossible to find a starting point for knowledge, how can there be any kind of ethics? How can anyone argue that morality exists? How can we claim to know anything at all?Inch In the midst of this dirty metaphysical whirlwind stands vocalist and bass player Lars Are Nedland, longtime member of Borknagar and Solefald, and the driving force of melodic hard rock band White Void. Spearheading a trio completed by drummer Tobias Solbakk (Ihsahn, White Void, In Vain) and guitarist Jostein Thomassen (Borknagar, Profane Burial), he sets the stage for Black Void to be everything that White Void is not Monochrome, nihilistic, filthy, violent and raw. Black Void, then, is the flipside of White Void A full-on rejection of the philosophy of Albert Camus, a fullon rejection of a soft, melodic approach in music and a full-on rejection of a playful, tongue-in-cheek attitude. Black Void has the sensitivity of a buzz-saw and the light-heartedness of a funeral agent. With that as a backdrop, InchAntithesisInch becomes an album that pays respect to fifty years of punk and forty years of black metal, sounding like a punk with a mohawk fighting a dude in corpsepaint as it races along. Add to that guest vocal appearances by black metal royalties Sakis Tolis of Rotting Christ and Hoest of Taake, InchAntithesisInch appears as a statement of sorts A nihilistic musical outburst flipping off morality and hailing aggression while at the same time forcing your foot to tap to it's relentless drive. It's all in the black and white. TRACKLISTING 1 Void 2 Reject Everything 3 Death to Morality 4 Tenebrism of Life 5 No Right, No Wrong 6 It's not Surgery, it's a Kn

Although distinctly their own, the band's sound draws on influences far and wide, with echoes of African rhythms, free jazz textures, electronic dance music, krautrock and Indonesian gamelan music. 'Nonagonic Now' was recorded at the fittingly named Frederick Street Sound and Light Exploration Society, a venue run collectively by the band and others in the Wellington creative music scene. Creative and exploratory it certainly is, to a dazzling level matched only by the sequins and shine of their radiating costumes. If Orchestra of Spheres illuminate themselves as a stellar, cosmic form, this record is grounded to this earth by a strong rhythmic force, which pumps continually from the opener 'Hypercube'. Setting a subconscious canon for the rest of the album that weaves in and out of tracks, it emerges in hypnotic guise on 'Rotate' and as space funk on 'Hypersphere'.

SOMM Recordings is honored to one of the last recordings made by the much-loved and admired soprano Sally Silver before her death at the age of 51 in 2018. Silver's third on SOMM, La vie d'une rose returns to the evocatively perfumed songs of Jules Massenet following 2015's well-received Les amoureuses sont des folles. Accompanied again by the renowned conductor- pianist Richard Bonynge - who also provides a moving, specially written tribute - she is joined by the mezzo-soprano Christine Tocci on six duets. The 25 (of Massenet's 285) mélodies heard here offer a marked contrast to the familiar image of the composer's famed operatic credentials. As Massenet expert Hervé Oléon says in his authoritative booklet notes InchMassenet, the song composer, was, in his own words, rather more at home in salons - this 'bourgeois artist at the fireside' as he liked to describe himselfInch. Embracing a multitude of emotions, sacred and profane, these songs employ wide-ranging forms and a broad musical palette to always captivating ends while also revealing a composer perpetually developing, keen to experiment and looking towards the future. La vie d'une rose is produced by the late soprano's husband Jeremy Silver (Director of the Opera School at the University of Cape Town) who also provides the translation of Hervé Oléon's booklet notes. Of Sally Silver's previous releases with SOMM, her first volume of Massenet songs, Les amoureuses sont des folles (SOMMCD 0151), received the coveted Orphée d'or from L'Académie du disque lyrique and was a Recording of the Month for MusicWeb International, who described it as InchA pure delight... [Silver and Bonynge] bring inspired, sympathetic, thoughtfully nuanced readings to these songsInch. Songs by William Vincent Wallace (SOMMCD 0131) was hailed by Classical Ear as InchA full of delightful discoveries distinguished by persuasive perfor