Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 2 December 2022.
The British multi-instrumentalist, orchestral arranger and composer Fiona Brice has drawn on her abundant talents to forge her new album, And You Know I Care. It’s a deep listening experience that raises the post-classical bar, eschewing the genre’s default melancholia for wider and richer dimensions of uplifting and exultant bliss – though the range and contrast ensure this is no new age-style panacea. Brice has drawn on all the experience gained working with the likes of John Grant, Anna Calvi, Jarvis Cocker, Kanye West, Beyoncé, Katherine Jenkins, Elbow, the BBC Concert and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestras, Royal Northern Sinfonia and the London Mozart Players. She toured with Placebo for ten years, and more recently Elbow, so to say Brice is in-demand is an understatement.
Music has the power to heal, a fact that has never been as relevant as it has over the challenging last few years. On his captivating album, The Couch Sessions, the brilliant multi-instrumentalist and composer Nicholas Payton provides a session of musical therapy that draws on the compositions and words of some of the music’s most visionary artists. The latest in a series that he has recorded pairing him with dream rhythm sections, Payton is joined by bassist Buster Williams and drummer Lenny White, who not only have forged one of the most distinctive rhythm tandems in recent decades but have also worked with many of the legendary artists to whom this album is dedicated.
A lot has happened to SUSS since their last vinyl release, 2020’s Promise. That album ended up on many best-of lists that year, and was cited by PopMatters as an “incredible country/ambient hybrid that is nothing short of peerless.” As the album’s title indicated, the music spoke to a future of promise, with the band looking toward new musical horizons. However, that promise was cut short with the loss of founding member Gary Leib, who passed away in 2021 soon after the completion of the Night Suite EP. After the difficult decision to move ahead as a trio, SUSS are back with their new self-titled double album. Taken as a whole, this work represents how wide the scope of ambient country music can be while also showing the journey of personal change that the band has undertaken over the last couple of years — the loss, the searching, the challenge, and, finally, the new hope on the horizon.
In the hazy aftermath of its completion, London-based singer-songwriter Sophie Jamieson noticed that water was a recurring theme throughout her long-awaited debut album Choosing. Though it was never a central part of her thinking while writing the eleven songs that make up the album, water appears in various forms, from raging storms with lashing rain, through the eeriness of vast expanses of still water, to overflowing bathtubs and the creeping ripples of a broken surface. Out now on Bella Union, Choosing is a strikingly personal document of a journey from a painful rock bottom of self-destruction, to a safer place imbued with the faint light of hope.
ARC Ensemble’s mission is to research and recover 20th century music that was suppressed, or marginalized by repressive regimes, war and exile. Their new album, Chamber Works by Alberto Hemsi, is part of their acclaimed Music in Exile series. Alberto Hemsi was born in 1898 in Turgutlu (also known as Cassaba), in Anatolia (present-day Turkey). Although there had been a Jewish presence in Anatolia for more than 2000 years, the population expanded considerably following the Alhambra Decree of 1492, with the arrival of Sephardim from Spain and Portugal. It then dwindled precipitously with the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, the rise of Nazism, the creation of the state of Israel, and the escalation of anti-Semitism in the Arab world. Having completed his training at the conservatory in Milan, Hemsi returned to Anatolia determined to collect and notate as much traditional Sephardic music as he possibly could.
Pop in your earpiece, close your eyes and embrace the wonders (and horrors) of augmented reality and prepare to travel 500 years into the future as Richard Dawson returns with… The Ruby Cord. These seven tracks plunge us into an unreal, fantastical and at times sinister future where social mores have mutated, ethical and physical boundaries have evaporated; a place where you no longer need to engage with anyone but yourself and your own imagination. It’s a leap into a future that is well within reach, in some cases already here.
Naarm/Melbourne alternative folk artist Hannah McKittrick is celebrating the release of her new album, The day has again bruised me. Written and recorded over the last two years, The day has again bruised me, is an album that captures both the searing heat of loss, and the expansive wave of love, across its concise seven songs, and a depiction of pursuing healing through gritted teeth. Weaving together folk songs, ambient atmospheres and smoky whispers of electro-acoustics, Hannah McKittrick – together with producer Theo Carbo – has created a series of creative, immersive worlds where emotion is surrounded and supported by textured instrumentation.
Other reviews you might enjoy:
- New music round-up (for w/e 18 November 2022)
- New music round-up (for w/e 11 November 2022)
- New music round-up (for w/e 26 November 2021)
David Edwards is the editor of The Blurb and a contributor on film and television
