Mario Batkovic
Mario Batkovic

Editions Mego: ...Heaven is a work of contemporary church music. Centrally occupied with the subject of death, its conceptualisation was catalysed by Spiluttini’s discovering his mother’s preparations both for her own death and for his. He arrived at her home in 2015 to be led into the local church and shown the two adjacent places she had reserved for their urns. The tracks on Heaven together consist of an analogously personal and anticipatory negotiation with death.Partly derived from organ recordings made in the same church, the album frequently enlists Arvo Pärt’s compositional method of tintinnabuli. Aside from the thematic logic of its sacred associations, the method suits Spiluttini’s tendency, in spite of heavy and dynamic passages, to minimise tonal complexity. His characteristic uses of gnashing bass, restlessly irregular pacing and serrated distortion return. This time, they combine with pads, harps, fluttering organs and swooping choirs.

EM Records: ...Belgian composer Lieven Martens Moana, formerly known as Dolphins Into The Future, interprets and re-imagines Spaniard Juan Alberto Arteche Guel's 1990 Finis Africae album "Amazonia", a Balearic classic. Utilizing analog and digital instrumentation and recording techniques, Martens, inspired by Takemitsu, Ives, Joji Yuasa and others, refers to ethnomusicology, collage, sound art, electronic music and modern composition in the construction of a narrative take on the original release. Using excerpts from the original recording, which was re-issued by EM Records in 2015, as well as various other sound sources, "Three Amazonian Essays" was composed and recorded in early 2017. Available on CD and LP, this is an extension of the original Amazonian adventure.

ORANGE MILK RECORDS:...Nick Storring's eighth album (and third release for Orange Milk Records) takes the one-person-orchestra approach for which he is acclaimed and translates it to a single instrument: the piano. Recorded on everything from the innards of an old upright piano to a Disklavier (a computer-controlled acoustic piano) housed at Yamaha's Toronto offices, and using playing techniques that span conventional to idiosyncratic, Storring conjures a vast and vivid colour palette. Music from 'Wéi 成为' was composed for the choreography of his frequent collaborator, Yvonne Ng and began its life in a residency at the Banff Centre in December 2017. Just like the unique movement vocabulary found in Ng's quintet dance Wéi 成为, Storring's copiously layered score moves fluidly between tender lyrical phrases and driving interlocking figures, and from thick textural swarms to supple transparency.