Zdunik - Symphonies & Duo - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Following Karl Weigl's Cello Concerto, we are now releasing his last two String Quartets, his seventh and eighth such works, which were neither commissioned works nor performed during his lifetime. The premiere of Quartet No. 7 was held at the Austrian Institute in New York in 1956, seven years after the composer's death, and the Concord Quartet premiered Quartet No. 8 at Lincoln Center in New York only years later, in 1973. Weigl completed his next-to-last quartet in January 1942 and in this work much more clearly than in it's successor adheres to the finely felt lyricism generally distinguishing him as a composer. It is a work without »screams« and hardly anything would lead us to suspect that it is not a composition from Weigl's years in Vienna. The same cannot be said of his eighth and last quartet. Weigl knew how to shock his listeners without needing to seek refuge in unresolved dissonances. And this quartet indeed is shocking. The first movement is blunt and mysterious at one and the same time. With it's dotted motif the fugued development section strives toward a coda that in the end modulates from minor to major without prior warning. An agonizing but tender melancholy marks the following movement only Weigl was able to send waves of gloomy brooding through such gentle pondering. The conclusion has the effect of a lonely, mute scream in the night.

Klezfactor - Klezmachine [COMPACT DISCS] date 05/27/2008

Limited vinyl LP repressing of this 1980 . Hopeton Brown, better known as Scientist, has been a pioneering figure in the world of dub for nearly 40 years. His early love of electronics proved fruitful when (still a teenager) he was hired at King Tubby's studio in Kingston. Brown quickly ascended the ranks and became heir to Tubby's throne, producing imaginative and technically impressive mixes that solidified his forward-looking nickname. Introducing Scientist - The Best Dub Album in the World, his debut LP, lives up to its boastful title. Recorded with Sly & Robbie at Channel One Studio and mixed at King Tubby's, the album features hypnotic basslines, reverb-drenched keyboards, and fluid, start-stop rhythms. Opening track InchSteppers,Inch with its well-balanced phrasing and organic contours, shows Scientist's mastery of the studio-as-instrument concept. On InchScientific,Inch the effects-laden guitars are stretched to their outer limit to create magnificent, spaced-out textures and muted tension. Introducing Scientist displays the talents of a man obsessed with every element of production, drawing out the very best of the dub form.