Kumz - You Should Know By Now - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

The combination of oboe, clarinet and bassoon attracted several French composers in the first half of the last century and inspired witty and elegant divertissements from the likes of Ibert, Francaix and Poulenc. But the character of the trio held an appeal to composers farther afield, as this album shows, and that appeal was by no means confined to 'light music', even if all the music on this album - from Switzerland, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary - shares a lightness and airiness of texture. The composers from eastern Europe - Lutoslawski, Schulhoff and Veress - all suffered under totalitarian regimes, and Schulhoff died at the hands of the Nazis, but their painful histories do not cast a long shadow over the pieces on this album. In fact, the origins of Lutoslawski's Trio are found precisely in the exercises of counterpoint he realized in the winter of 1944-5, when he had been forced to flee Warsaw, together with his mother, following the consequences of the Warsaw Rising. The Trio is a quirky, restlessly experimental work. The wind trio as laboratory also held appeal to Sandor Veress, who found a very personal synthesis of his own research into Hungarian folksong with the 12-tone theories of the Second Viennese School. The outer movements of his Sonatina abound in the madcap humor of his compatriot Ligeti, while the central Andante introduces a gravely memorable theme on the bassoon. Schulhoff's Divertissement is naturally the most French-sounding work on the album, a set of seven compact character sketches including a Charleston (No.4) and 'Florida' (No.6). Known in some quarters as the 'Russian Brahms' from the country of his birth, Paul Juon is the least-known figure here, but not the least accomplished, and his Arabesque is a substantial, four-movement structure launched in fine style by Commodo movement with echoes of Nielsen at his breeziest.

UK pressing of their 2007 album includes two bonus tracks, 'Everybody's Gonna Be Happy' and 'The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret' (Live). Universal.

Since assuming the recording moniker Hiro Kone in 2011, New York City-based electronic artist Nicky Mao has personalized a space predicated on dark layers interacting with rhythm. Mao's explorations often cast themselves against danceable structures, creating a duality of crisis and escapism.For Pure Expenditure, her debut on Dais Records, Mao continues to weave a labyrinth of electronic pattern, with an often economical usage of repeating sequences and ethereal stasis to drive the narrative. The title refers to the sovereign of a surplus energy, divorced from all imperatives of utility, which otherwise threatens to become morbid. Working from this creative theme, Mao uses this theoretical concept to seek out a long form statement without regard for any immediate interpretation or return. While the albums' seven tracks don't offer so much as a resolution to these conundrums as they do a case study, Mao's sound has developed forcibly into the conscientious voice of systematic injustice, albeit often without syntax. Pure Expenditure creates thought through concept and volume through space. Thematically, acclaimed visual artist Tauba Auerbach created the album art, lending a conceptual cohesion through her spectral dissection of structure and ornamental arrangement.