Category: Classical music

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With 2022 poised to come to an end, it’s time once again to take a fond look back at the best albums of the year. For a reminder of the process and the rules behind the 5:4 Best Albums list, go here; and now for the music, each one of these ranks among the most brave, brazen and brilliant albums to have been released in 2022. If you haven’t already, do yourself a favour and get listening immediately.

30 | Juliana Hodkinson – Angel View

“Though they lack a literal visual element, the music more than makes up for that by operating in a way that is overtly suggestive of the tangibility of physical objects: we’re not merely hearing sounds, but hearing the means by which those sounds are made constantly and vividly suggested. A recurring feature is the juxtaposition of rhythmic regularity and nebulous sound forms. The former usually manifest as percussive repetitions, not just conventional instruments but also bits of metal and glass, the latter of which often sounds broken (or in the process of being broken). An interesting quality of this is a kind of artless frivolity, less the product of performers with exquisitely-crafted instruments striving for accuracy and clarity than a bunch of friends having fun, mucking around with bits and bobs of scrap material they’ve found lying around. […] The nebulous music … is more indicative of care and subtlety. […] The most nebulous of all, essentially serving as a paradigm for Angel View as a whole, is ‘No. 113 Dining Room’, in which an almost inaudible background pitch cluster is practically obliterated by occasional foreground clatter, the whole time giving the impression that the piece is poised to unleash something at any moment, resolved in the seven seconds of total collapse captured in ‘Come Back all is forgiven’.

The joy of listening to Angel View comes partly from its imaginative array of sounds and their unpredictable deployment, but just as much from trying to parse their implied inner imperative, the unspoken narrative that gives rise to such a bizarre cavalcade of small-scale sonic wonders.” [reviewed in May]

29 | Gwenno – Tresor

On Gwenno’s third album Tresor landscape and the natural world are intermingled with meditations on the self. As in her previous solo work, Gwenno’s unique musical language is infused with elements of folk and psychedelia. Singing again in Cornish (as on her last album Le Kov) lends the songs an ‘other’ quality, suggesting remoteness and ancientness, a world away from the mundanities of hectic contemporary living, a place to draw breath, to think, to be. That remoteness, or the isolation it creates, can be felt in opening track ‘An Stevel Nowydh’, a laid-back fantasy about desired company in solitude, its melodic simplicity enlivened with little stings, and with a lurking richness, even a glamour, lurking below but never breaking free. It finds a sibling of sorts in miniature instrumental ‘Men an toll’, an ethereal place of plinking tones and deep washes, with Gwenno’s voice emerging from within, her claim of being “Incapable / Of escaping / From this” ambiguous as to whether that’s positive or negative. ‘Tonnow’, sedate, dreamy and semi-drenched in reverb, speaks from a comparable place “under the waves” where “Lives the spirit of freedom”.

Yet Tresor doesn’t exist in some kind of utopian denial about the ‘real world’. In ‘N.Y.C.A.W.’ (the only song in Welsh), Gwenno switches to a kind of weary sprechgesang in order to directly address the audience, denouncing “the decisions made by cautious committees”, radiantly singing the uplifting refrain, “Wales is not for sale”. Though mixed, Tresor’s ultimate tone is one of cheerful optimism, closing track ‘Porth la’ looking to a way beyond past “shame” and “restrictions” to a hopeful future: “when you arrive / I will be here”. [CD / Vinyl / DL]

28 | Howard Shore – Crimes of the Future (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

For his latest score, accompanying David Cronenberg’s unsettling sci-fi Crimes of the Future, Howard Shore has returned to the atmosphere of his earlier soundtrack for Crash. Not in terms of timbre – where Crash was made up of a tangle of sharp overlapping guitar strands, Crimes of the Future is a burbling ballet of analogue synths – but in its dark nocturnal environment, within which sounds revolve and cycle round, simultaneously evocative and claustrophobic. As a shorthand for futurism, the synths are ideal, matching the clunky, squelchy technology used to create such elegant surgical art in the movie. These are expanded upon by a brass choir, providing sober chorale commentary on the florid synthesizer strands, and strings that create mysterious tremulous atmospheres while also mirroring the film’s intense intimacy with chamber music.

Deliberately using a minimal palette of motifs, sounds and gestures, Shore makes the music seemingly mesmerised – or horrified – by the on-screen narrative. Though much of the score is tense and poised, as if holding its breath, there are occasions when Shore punctures the surface, as in ‘Body Is Reality’ and ‘Inner Beauty Pageant’ where gentle but sharp beats appear, underpinned by bass and percussive movement. Equally, though, in tracks like ‘Brecken’ and ‘Primordial Rapture’, Shore takes the music in the opposite direction, inward to a place of delicate fragility and tenderness, highlighting the twisted, sensual beauty at the film’s heart. Crimes of the Future is yet another example of Shore’s superb gift at creating music that don’t merely parrot but embodies the essence of the accompanying story, laden with grime, gloss, gore and glamour. [Vinyl / DL]

27 | Ryoji Ikeda – Ultratronics

It would be plausible to assume that, after nearly three decades, Ryoji Ikeda must by now have exhausted all the possibilities that raw electronic sounds and data elements might offer. Ultratronics demonstrably proves otherwise. Ikeda’s work has in more recent years tended to focus on extended (often audiovisual) explorations and reflections on humanity’s multifarious relationships with data and technology. Here, though, the emphasis has returned to Ikeda’s earlier playful preoccupations with transforming bits and bleeps, tones and noise, and artificial speech into elaborate shapes, forms and patterns.

The typically narrow limits of his palette are defined practically within the minute-and-a-half of introductory track ‘ultratronics 00’, whereupon Ikeda proceeds through a kaleidoscope of ever-changing beat formations. A garbled voice and radar-like tones embellish the punchiness of ‘01’, made more exhilarating by regular crescendos of radiance and, toward its end, a sustained plateau that rises and builds. ‘02’ initially goes in the opposite direction, plunging into a sustained warm sonic bath, until a repeating robotic “beep” acts as a catalyst for a middle sequence of intense glitch. There are echoes of Kraftwerk in the electronic counting of ‘04’ as well as the more languid squelchy percussion of ‘05’ which features more of those radiant swells. ‘09’ embraces the edgy rhythms of Trent Reznor as the backdrop to its bursts of buzz, whereas ‘10’ ejects beats completely, manifesting as a soft gritty cloud with burbling elements behind.

As in all Ikeda’s output, the sounds themselves are often startlingly inelegant, even ugly, but the beauty comes in the way Ikeda creates such intricate, multifaceted choreographies from them, by turns delirious and ecstatic. [CD / DL]

26 | Lera Auerbach – 24 Preludes for Violin and Piano & Oskolki

“An important aspect … that renders these narratives so intimate is the empathetic relationship shared by the instruments. They play together, mourn together, run and drift together, always simpatico in the way they take turns, pass ideas back and forth, and even when they allow the other time alone. At all times there’s the sense of two agents united by a single outlook, motivation, behaviour and objective. […] Very little about these pieces feels like conventional chamber music …; not only do the Preludes convey discrete narratives, but the nature of these narratives is such that they pull us in, making us question what’s happening and why. […]

The way No. 1 presents an attempt at forcefulness leading to a far from triumphant outcome is typical of many of the Preludes. In No. 7 the violin obsesses over a single phrase as if it’s life depended on it; over the course of 60 seconds these repetitions sound more and more confused, the piano’s initial reinforcement becoming out of focus. One of the most impressive … narrative progressions comes in the combination of Preludes 14 and 15… . No. 14 is all flash and rapidity until its weird coda, where everything falls apart at the seams; No. 15 continues in its wake – the sound of deep reverberation heard throughout – as a ghostly lullaby, the melody singing precariously on high harmonics.

Katya Moeller and Ksenia Nosikova articulate these dramas with complete immediacy and conviction; from both composing and performing perspectives, this is chamber music at its absolute best.” [reviewed in June]

25 | Una Corda – Voolujoon

Following a gap of over a decade, Una Corda’s second album features eight works by fellow Estonians written for the ensemble’s unique combination of kannel, harpsichord and harp. Margo Kõlar’s Kärestik [whitewater] is an essay in transforming arpeggio patterns, alternately clear and oblique, flowing and fragmented, its playfulness matched by a sense of something being figured out along the way. More lyrical is René Eespere’s Tres Sorores [three sisters], a piece that, for all its apparent attractiveness and clarity has an impenetrable quality, as if it were playing out passively at a distance rather than actively to the listener. This only makes it more intriguing, though, particularly in its later stages when the music gets progressively slower, as if the trio were needing to consider more carefully what’s happening, instantly shedding that veneer of passivity.

Lauri Jõeleht’s Cantus angelorum (featured on 5:4 three years ago) is treated to an intricate performance where its interplay of melody and chords is highly dramatic, the latter becoming akin to the deep resonance of gongs. The work maintains an air of thoughtfulness despite being punctuated by ebullient gestures, though its sudden dance-like eruption partway through is a wondrously unexpected moment. Best of all is Bellbuzzbox by Elo Masing, composed in 2008. It seems to transform evocations of bells into water droplets, falling in patterns that appear to be cycling round in patterns, to hypnotic effect. Its soundworld becomes deeply engrossing, channelling these sounds into what seem like independent layers of a complex machine, before turning them marvellously strange and alien. [CD / DL]

24 | Harry Partch – Delusion of the Fury

Ensemble Musikfabrik’s painstaking recreations of Harry Partch’s weird and wonderful array of microtonal instruments are shown off to glorious effect in this new recording of the composer’s 1960s theatre piece Delusion of the Fury. The music most definitely lives up to subtitle, “a ritual of dream and delusion”, occupying a bizarre soundworld that moves quickly between relaxed and mannered, natural and heavily stylised modes of articulation. Yet for all its strangeness, Partch nonetheless establishes a tone that’s both serious and solemn, even if the specifics of its narrative are often allusive or inscrutable.

As they always do, Musikfabrik throw themselves into this performance with complete gusto. This is revealing in more ways than one: there’s a kind of hermetically-sealed quality to the music that, from a ritualistic perspective, suggests it’s less about an intended outcome of the ritual than the act of the ritual itself that’s of paramount importance. The implied corollary of this is that Delusion of the Fury is not a ritual performed for some external faithful but internally, for those actually taking part. None of which, incredibly, makes it any less engaging to listen to, navigating through its ever-changing sequences of rhythmic patterns, chants and refrains, marvelling at its bewildering cavalcade of timbres and juxtapositions (which still sound surprisingly exotic), all the while clarifying afresh just how radical and forward-looking Partch was. Absolutely nothing about this music sounds more than half a century old. [CD / DL]

23 | Belle and Sebastian – A Bit of Previous

The more time i’ve spent time A Bit of Previous the more impressed i am by the consistency and imagination that the band continues to demonstrate after more than a quarter of a century. These twelve songs all feel weighty in the sense that they come from the perspective of age and its (hopefully) acquired wisdom. The output of that wisdom goes two ways, inward and outward.

The former is expressed as self-reflection. ‘Young and Stupid’ is an affectionate nostalgia-trip tribute to adolescence, a time when – in the best sense – “nothing matters”, and a reminder perhaps to retain some of that outlook and not take things too seriously later in life. This is extended in the high energy realism of ‘Talk to Me, Talk to Me’, obviating fears of losing control because “now I realise it’s all for nothing”. A more poignant examination of hopes versus outcomes is explored in ‘Deathbed of my Dreams’ a song evoking lounge crooners from yesteryear.

The latter comes by way of outward advice, again drawing on the “nothing matters” attitude in the soft but urgent beauty of ‘Do It for Your Country’, with the reminder that “The world is just a game … So banish all your fears”. ‘Unnecessary Drama’ imparts a mixture of advice and observations in a more rock-fuelled context, while ‘Come On Home’ takes a more jazzy approach with the encouragement to “Follow in my footsteps, noble page / Never fear from time or cold or age”. Most heartfelt of all is closing track ‘Working Boy in New York City’, an impassioned anthem to inclusion: “Everybody gets an even shot at making heaven / Wide is the gate”. [CD / Vinyl / DL]

22 | Töfie – Organic Love

There’s been a clear progression since French singer Töfie’s so-so 2015 debut album Power of Ten and much more impressive follow-up From Earth three years later. Following a gap of another four years, Organic Love is one of the most compelling pop albums of the year. Not that any of it really sounds like pop; each of its nine songs seems to have been sculpted from opposite, incongruous extremes of light and dark, heavy and weightless. Those opposites manifest most obviously in the way Töfie herself emerges as a diaphanous, floating presence, breathy, enraptured, seemingly at odds with the earthy, grounded accompaniments that permeate each track. At times, her voice is so gossamer-like that she makes the concept of ‘song’ moot, as in opening track ‘Horizons’, which through its first half practically functions as an instrumental, her words like thin bands of air in the sky, later glitched beyond recognition and folded back into the texture.

This opener is a paradigm of what’s to come, taking the track’s initial tone of ecstatic wonder and developing it through crunchy beats and acrobatic electronica. Another standout is the short but decidedly not sweet ‘Gothyou’ where, though no less glory-fuelled, the music takes a turn for the surly and aggressive, obsessively cycling round and round to the breathy refrain “don’t compromise / go fuck yourself”. Perhaps the most impressive marriage of contrasting musical elements is ‘Stannah To Heaven’, a song that manages to sound very slow and very fast simultaneously, along the way moving between precise certainty and vague ruminating vocalise. [CD / Vinyl / Cassette / DL]

21 | Ülo Krigul – Liquid Turns

One of Estonia’s most radical and consistently engaging composers, Ülo Krigul’s first portrait disc focuses on his work featuring voices, performed by the country’s most outstanding vocal group, the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir. The 6-part cycle Aga vaata aina üles [But always look up] moves from a place of simple, wordless serenity to harmonically complex obsession and rapture, along the way taking in rhythmic chanting, wild declamations and mellifluous overlapping textures. This is the music at its most direct, elsewhere Krigul seeks more to evoke and suggest, to much more powerful effect. And the Sea Arose draws on an exchange between Jesus and his disciple Peter to create a fascinating soundworld of confidence and tension, conjuring up the sound of the sea while filling the music with a bristling sense of excitement.

Most beautiful of all – one of the most beautiful things i’ve heard all year – is Vesi ise, where an oblique, circular text referencing water is turned into an electroacoustic masterclass in abstract mystery, the choir and electronics blending into a single, inseparable voice. All three of these pieces are expanded and developed further in the title track, where Krigul approaches them, as the title suggests, like different forms of liquid, blending and mixing, diluting and condensing them, setting up swells and storms, accumulating them into a huge climax, most of the time keeping the sources remote, offering tantalising glimpses of syllables moving here and there above a warm underlying sonic seabed. [CD / DL]

20 | Orphax – Spectrum

“The essence of each track is the placement of sustained tones in different degrees of proximity to each other, so as to cause various forms of sympathetic and disruptive resonance (to call them ‘consonance’ and ‘dissonance’ in this context doesn’t really make sense). A key aspect is the dronal nature of these resonances which, as with all music of this kind, raises two interesting listening quandaries, both to do with the perception of change. The first arises from the way pure electronic tones reverberate throughout the space (obviously, this wouldn’t apply if listening through headphones); turning or tilting the head often causes the emphasis (and even the nature) of the tones to change. The second is due to Orphax’s patience with these pitch superpositions, to the extent that – in conjunction with the first quandary, since it’s difficult to listen without moving one’s head at all – it can be difficult to know whether a perceived change is real or imaginary.

i like this kind of messing with the mind and ears, it’s an extra layer of somewhat puzzling stimulation that makes it impossible to switch off at any point. And it’s this that makes Spectrum … such a unique listening experience, as a lot will depend on the context in which the act of listening takes place. […] Drone music can be polarising in terms of listener involvement, but i particularly like the way nothing in Spectrum feels passive, encouraging a constant, active engagement, both enjoying the sounds themselves and the slow transformations they undergo.” [reviewed in May]

19 | Tālivaldis Ķeniņš – Symphonies Nos. 5 & 8

“[In] Symphony No. 5 … Ķeniņš hits the ground not merely running but practically at a sprint, the opening Molto animato underpinned by a driving rhythmic motif, something that characterises both of these symphonies overall. […] the urge to ruminate is challenged and ultimately undone by its metric impulse, … slowly infiltrating the line of melodic thought such that, at its high point … it fragments, leading to a thoughtful aftermath until the chugging returns to usher in what amounts to the finale. […] It’s a superbly unpredictable way to bring the symphony to a close, opting not to tap into all the boundless energy but instead petering out in a surprisingly introspective fashion.

[In] Symphony No. 8 “Sinfonia concertata” …, the first movement practically pits everyone against everyone else, the instruments all seeming to vie for attention during the opening couple of minutes. Whereupon the real antagonist steps up, blasts from the organ getting the orchestra riled up and triggering a highly rhythmic response. Though titled ‘Chorale’, the middle movement is highly unconventional, a fact established at its outset in a wonderfully weird assemblage of low drones, high clusters, remote wind filigree, discreet organ chords and a genuinely bizarre unstable muted trombone idea that sounds like a cross between a lament and drunken rambling. […] There’s a lot to get excited about in this music, and these superb performances … make a strong case for Tālivaldis Ķeniņš becoming a much more familiar name in the history of the symphony.” [reviewed in May]

18 | Jenny Hval – Classic Objects

One of the defining features of Jenny Hval’s latest album is its free form approach to song. There are notions of “verses” and “choruses”, but for the most part each of these eight songs is a fluid progression through its respective lyrics, contorting structurally as required. The fact that they don’t sound overtly unconventional – still less, experimental – is a testament to their clarity, in terms of both words and music. The title track is an excellent example of this, unfolding as a focused stream of poetry, yet the gentle pulse and tilting underlying harmonies effortlessly provide shape and structure to this stream. This song also features one of the most striking things in Hval’s songs: the sudden shift, at the chorus, away from low-key intimacy into bright radiance. In ‘Cemetery of Splendour’ the effect is even more impressive, launching from minimal burbling synth patterns into full-blown ecstatic glory.

i say glory, yet it’s vital to reflect on the seriousness of Hval’s lyrics. i’ve always found endlessly beguiling the way Hval’s pure, crystalline voice often articulates such raw, provocative lyrical content. ‘American Coffee’ is a reflection on aspects of Hval’s mother, its intensity expressed with surprisingly upbeat, even cheery melismas. Yet it works, both by conveying love despite pain, and by inviting us to reflect on our own emotional response. The best synthesis of all this comes in ‘Jupiter’. Hval’s chugging verses are again answered by erupting choruses, yet the greater contrast comes in its overall structure: the words peter out barely halfway through the song, which continues into an epic expansion, filled with powerful pulsations, breaths and whispers. Absolutely breathtaking. [CD / Vinyl / DL]

17 | Mitski – Laurel Hell

Eleven songs lasting a little over half an hour says a lot about the brevity on Mitski’s sixth album. But it’s precisely that brevity that makes these intensely personal songs as potent as they are, offering the briefest of windows into emotionally wrought situations and sentiments. Perhaps it’s a coping mechanism of sorts, but the tragedy and heartache in Laurel Hell is articulated through upbeat styles and tropes, many of them evoking music from the past. This collision of moods can make for appropriately uncomfortable listening. ‘Stay Soft’ features the telling lyric, “Open up your heart / Like the gates of Hell”, recounting the damaging implications of vulnerability, that can cause one “to harden up”. It’s one of two songs to reference knives, of which the other, ‘Working for the Knife’ is even more challenging, Mitski’s measured delivery constantly arriving back at “the knife” that consistently seems to cut into her life.

The conflicted attitude is conveyed with more power in a couple of anthemic numbers, both fast ’80s throwbacks, ‘The Only Heartbreaker’ and ‘Love Me More’. The former is a self-critical study, sidestepping the driving beats and synths to confess to being a “loser” and the “bad guy” (the song’s subsequent swell comes almost like a reassuring hug) while the latter is a different kind of confessional, effusively stating the need and desire for love from a place of isolation. Yet i can’t help feeling the most powerful song of all is one of the quietest: ‘There’s Nothing Left Here For You’ is three minutes of dark tension, flailing from a place of frustration. It’s most painfully poignant moment comes halfway through, bursting into radiance at the words “You could touch fire” – before being abruptly, and completely, silenced. [CD / Vinyl / DL]

16 | JH – APEIROZOAN

“‘Gyre’ is principally characterised by the presence of deep rumble, against which a complex chord slowly emerges before these two elements gradually die back to reveal a softer chord that may or may not have been present throughout the preceding half hour. ‘The Thousand Pointed Star’ slowly pieces together a wall of sound […] that undergoes a number of apparent surges (some, i think, imaginary) before gradually dissipating until only crackling vestiges of sound remain. […] The other four sections cannot in any meaningful way be so succinctly summarised. They are extensive, immersive soundscapes characterised by a careful, sculptural approach to the juxtaposition and development of their limited palette of sounds. […] Yet pretty much none of those sources … are particularly identifiable, transformed and concentrated here into a collection of elemental sonic forces corresponding to a myriad colours of noise and harmony. That being said, nothing about APEIROZOAN sounds ‘raw’; it’s clear that every single sound we’re hearing is the product of a process that has led to that form. […]

It’s only reasonable to note that a work lasting five-and-a-half hours is going to be a daunting prospect for many listeners. To an extent i think this is an entirely appropriate, even essential, part of engaging with APEIROZOAN. It’s not just another piece of music, not just another album; the title hints at infinity and to enter into Hamilton’s sonic universe is to become immersed – and, perhaps, lost – in a musical infinitude.” [reviewed in June]

Apple isn’t exactly new to the audio space. The iPod first got MP3 players into a wider audience’s pocket, and the iPhone has been built from the ground up to have music as a central part of the user experience. 

Over the years Apple’s weight in the audio arena has become massively influential. Its massive AirPods headphone line of super popular in-ear and over-ear options are everywhere, its Music streaming app is the second-largest in the world with an estimated 85 million subscribers (opens in new tab), and even new Macs from the MacBook Air M2 to the Mac Studio have built-in high-impedance headphone jacks for weirdos like me to listen to our high res music through. 

Why, then, was 2022 so disappointing on the audio front?

There have been new headphone launches like the AirPods Pro 2, announcements around new Apple Music features like Apple Music Sing, and the afore-mentioned new Macs catering to music professionals. But it’s less about what did happen, and more about what didn’t happen. The things that Apple promised that have never been delivered. 2022 was a year in Apple audio of ‘come on, Apple’ rather than a year of  ‘yes, thank you Apple!’

As the year draws to a close and 2023 looms, it’s time to look back on the highs and lows of 2022 — and the many Apple goodies apparently waiting to serenade our ears over the next 12 months.

2022: the year of not very much

Ok, so what did we actually get from Apple this year? The biggest thing that Apple gave us where the AirPods Pro 2, the latest in the AirPods family.

The buds offer vastly improved noise canceling over the previous model, better find-my functionality, and better touch controls on the stems. It was a nice upgrade, with our Editor in Chief Gerald loving the new noise canceling in his AirPods Pro 2 review. 

But they remain the same on the outside, with a very similar design to the outgoing model. Similar enough that if you didn’t tell your friends at football practice that you’ve got the older model and introduced them as the newer model instead, it’s likely they’d believe you.

Apart from that? Dolby Atmos and Spatial Audio continue to receive updates, which is fun if you like wearing headphones while you’re watching movies and TV. For music, Spatial Audio remains a strange experiment that leaves a weird taste in my mouth – and outright makes some music sound awful if it’s left on. There are now more Apple Music lossless tracks too, with more of that Hi-res lossless logo to be found on various songs. But support for the highest 24-bit 192 kHz bitrate remains spotty, with most tracks only available in 16-bit 44.1 kHz bitrate which, given Apple’s lofty goals, isn’t really good enough.

Apple’s promised/rumored 2022

This year was supposed to be pretty great for Apple audio. While they were never actually promised, a new large ‘HomePod 2’ has been on the cards for a while and is still yet to show its face. There are the aforementioned lofty goals of Apple Music lossless that is yet to show any fruit, even though the likes of Tidal and even Amazon Music have far more comprehensive high-res lossless libraries that continue to grow as the services mature. 

That’s nothing to be said of the aging AirPods Max, which continue to struggle to justify their large price tags, despite rumors that they would be receiving an upgrade this year.

Then there was the big one that everyone was looking forward to. In late 2021, Apple acquired a new classical music streaming app called PrimePhonic and promptly made the service unavailable on the app store. 

Since then, more classical music has become available on Apple Music – but one thing that remains a swirl in Apple’s rumor mill is the arrival of Apple Classical, the dedicated classical music app that’s supposed to replace PrimePhonic. 

Maybe we’re never getting it, and instead, PrimePhonic’s library has simply been added to Apple Music’s over the last 13 months. If nothing else, it is weird that we haven’t heard anything about it. Like, at all. It’s also, as with so many other branches of the Apple audio tree that’s been slowly drying out this year, incredibly disappointing.

Looking into 2023: What Apple could do

While this year may have been boring and slightly disappointing, there are lots of exciting things that Apple might introduce in 2023. Rumours and promises that where never fulfilled this year could come to fruition in the next – so let’s see what those are.

Apple Classical:
We’ve talked a little about it already, but the Apple Classical app could still launch. PrimePhonic had some great features, including the way in which it paid artists and composers through a pay-per-time listened payment model, instead of a pay-per-full song stream like other streaming services. 

Given that classical pieces tend to be a lot longer, this model made more sense. Bringing this to a new app, or even building it into the existing Apple Music app, would benefit the musicians involved greatly. 

Not only that but PrimePhonic had a search system tailored to the complexities of the classical genre, helping you find precise recordings of pieces by the greatest composers of all time. That’s lost until Apple re-instates the feature somewhere, e that in a new app or within the existing Apple Music service. This has been a long time coming, so hopefully, we’ll see it arrive sometime in 2023.

The HomePod 2:
The original HomePod is starting to get a little long in the tooth now, and some people’s devices are starting to show their age with software issues that somewhat dim the experience. One rumor that’s been floating around for some time is the release of the HomePod 2. We’re not expecting much of a redesign, but the potential for new Siri integrations and better sound quality are potential upgrades to the device.

The HomePod/Apple TV hybrid:
The HomePod does now have the ability to link up to Apple TV to be used as a kind of cylindrical sound bar, with multiple speakers linking up for a surround sound analog. One of the most exciting rumors is the idea of an Apple TV and HomePod hybrid, combining the two into a device that can just slip under a TV and provide both a great Apple TV experience and improved TV sound. We heard about this one late this year, so we think we might see more in 2023.

An AirPods Max refresh:
The AirPods Max have been around for a little while now, and they are well due an upgrade. They are one of Apple’s premium audio devices, and still look the part, but they don’t quite hold up anymore. Competitors from the likes of Sony and Bose have now started to overtake them in some key ways, such as noise canceling and even sound quality. Expect a slight cosmetic redesign, but also hopefully a look at the sound signature and the noise canceling performance. We all know what I want of course — proper support for Apple Hi-res lossless.

What we want most

Ok, so those are what Apple might actually do… but what about the stuff we really want? Our (or in this case, my) Apple audio pipe dreams. Things I think Apple should do to really make them the tippiest top of the audio tree. They’ve got the tools dotted around various products: they just need to capitalize on them.

Steal some of the coolest Spotify’s features:
I’ve already talked, at some length, about the features that Apple needs to nab from its rivals. While it’s better (in my eyes, at least) than Spotify in a range of ways, there are some fun bits that the green circle does better. Apple Music needs more fun gimmicks – think in-app round-ups at the end of the year like Spotify wrapped, or those fun song progress bars that come with big movie releases. I want a lightsaber progress bar when I listen to the Star Wars soundtrack, damn it!

Support for true Apple Lossless in the AirPods line:
So I know that there just isn’t the bandwidth in even the latest Bluetooth version to handle the high bitrates of the hi-res lossless ALACs that Apple Music hi-res lossless uses. Does that excuse the fact that Apple Music can’t pump those codecs down a wire for them to remain unmolested by a DAC in the AirPods Max? No, absolutely not. 

With Apple’s most premium headphones I should be able to listen to Apple Music in its best form, even if there aren’t that many tracks that use the highest quality. If we’re truly praying to the audio gods for some more miracles, I’d love to see some audio black magic into getting those bit rates over a wireless signal. Who knows, Bluetooth might have a massive breakthrough next year, or Tim will sacrifice enough tributes for Apple and the dark audio forces to work something out.

Collate all your apps, Apple:
I’ve always thought it weird just how different the audio apps in Apple’s repertoire are. The separation of my library from Apple music in the Apple Music app on my MacBook makes sense in that I can hop over to iTunes and buy tracks, but it feels very disjointed in app. When I click the artist’s name on an album in Apple Music, I am taken to their artist page so that I can see that artist’s page. When I do it in my library, I am — I have to click ‘view in Apple Music’ instead. It doesn’t feel slick and consistent with Apple’s usual attention to detail, with three different ways of doing something depending on where I am in the app. 

Podcasts too – it’s a very useful app, but just merge it into Apple Music. It looks too different from Apple Music at the moment to feel like it’s part of a cohesive design language, and when Spotify lets you listen to all kinds of audio in one app, the separation feels weird. Bring it all together, Apple — simplify.

Persuade people to switch over:
A streaming platform lives and dies by its userbase, and Apple Music’s still trails behind Spotify’s. I wondered what feature would make the Spotify faithful switch over? Make an Apple Music subscription much cheaper than Spotify premium? Give users the ability to transfer their playlists across services? 

Is it likely we’ll see these features launch over? Perhaps not. Would they be fantastic additions? Absolutely yes, and they may even get some more users across.

The final word

All in all, Apple has some work to do. 2022 has been disappointing from an audio perspective, with empty promises, rumors and little innovation. Sure, a new product in the AirPods Pro 2 — but launches have otherwise been threadbare, and it’s started to feel a little like audio has been mostly ignored by Apple this year.

2023 is a new year, and should bring loads more new features, however. There is plenty of reason to be hopeful — there are loads of new products rumored that Apple may announce, from that HomePod/TV combo to new AirPods Max. 

So while 2022 may not have been the year that audio fans have been waiting for, or even expecting, a more robust product line up in 2023 would be music to our ears.

I’d say that 2022 marked an official return to normalcy except there’s something still off about our sense of time. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, in fact all of 2020, seems so very long ago, and yet as I enter 2023 with a teenager heading to college in a matter of months, life is also passing by faster than ever.

Whether slow or fast, I did manage to find time for some memorable experiences this year. Here are a dozen of my favorites (plus one not-so-great).

Things Fell Apart: BBC documentarian Jon Ronson’s podcast series “Things Fell Apart” looks at the origins of several hot-button culture war battles, including book banning, critical race theory, abortion, and cancel culture. Beyond being a deep dive into recent history, what I like about these stories is they illustrate the shades of grey we all have within our opinions about any given topic, and how we might come to more consensus or understanding if we approach others with curiosity, and even kindness, rather than forming a prejudgment. Two standout episodes: “A Miracle,” recounting the day evangelist Tammy Faye Bakker invited an AIDS patient onto her popular TV show, and “Believe the Children,” about how one day care worker got caught up in the Satanic panic of the 1980s.

“From the Top” in San Antonio: In April, TPR hosted the popular NPR music program “From the Top,” showcasing talented teens who perform classical music. Three San Antonio-area musicians were recorded in our studios, along with kids from north Texas who traveled to San Antonio for the taping. Hosts Peter Dugan and Charles Yang engaged the performers in fun conversation about their lives and musical studies, and the kids tore it up on performances of music by Andrès Martin, Franz Schubert, and Lera Auerbach. It was inspiring to be in the same room with so much great music-making. Two episodes of the show were culled from the recordings, and broadcast to a nationwide audience in May and June.

Cinema Tuesdays returns in person: After two years of online Amazon watch parties, TPR’s summer film series, Cinema Tuesdays, returned to in-person screenings again, much to my delight. I was happy we were able to keep the community connected through the online events, but there’s simply no substitute for the theatrical experience, with an audience. Because of the closing of the Bijou, TPR worked with Santikos Entertainment to try out three different locations for the summer film series, my favorite of which for Cinema Tuesdays may be the Northwest theater. Highlight shows this summer? “Casablanca,” “Malcolm X,” a terrific Buster Keaton night with critic and author Dana Stevens, and the Mexican film “Enamorada,” which I’ve been trying to track down and program for five years. It was worth the wait!

California Road Trip: I’ve driven to New Mexico several times. I’ve driven to Tennessee and back. But I’ve never driven as far or as long as I had this summer when the family packed up and headed west to California. It took roughly two and a half days of driving to reach the coast, and I’d do it again in a second, because I love passing through the desolate desert landscape so much. (If you’d like to see some photos, follow this link to my Tumblr blog.) In Los Angeles, we visited Disneyland, Universal Studios Hollywood (where I got to see the “Psycho” house in person!), and the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. Along the way, we dipped our toes in the Pacific, spent an afternoon hiking around Joshua Tree National Park, and got…

COVID: Toward the tail end of our trip to California, three of us tested positive for COVID, and so our drive home was adorned with Kleenex and punctuated by coughs. We were all vaccinated and boosted; thankfully none of the symptoms were very strong, save for a short time when I felt a little dizzy, and my ears were so stopped up I felt like I had plugs in them.

Austin Butler in “Elvis”: He doesn’t look much like him, but Austin Butler completely sold me as Elvis Presley in Baz Luhrmann’s dazzling, kinetic biopic. The voice, the physical mannerisms, and the stage moves, are all spot on. There’s also a real emotional heft to the performance. He’s a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination, and maybe even the win. And of the Luhrmann films I’ve seen, this is my favorite since “Romeo + Juliet.” Check the clip below — “Elvis” doesn’t just tell you about how audiences responded to him in his prime, but it actually makes you feel the same way, today. It’s exciting.

A Tribute to Disney at Jazz, TX: When drummer Brandon Guerra and saxophonist Adam Carrillo told me they were programming a “Tribute to the Music of Walt Disney” show at Jazz, TX, I knew we had to get it on the radio. Disney songs are the modern versions of old standards. Like the music of Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, or Duke Ellington in the 1930s, everyone today knows Disney songs—and as Carrillo pointed out to me, the songs are deceptively simple: “We both discovered this music is very complex, if not harder than ‘jazz,’ which kind of blew my mind. In my own musical playing away from Disney-related stuff … I’m using a lot of those concepts that I learned from the Disney show.”

The Disney show continues to be a popular night at Jazz, TX, selling out each time it’s offered, so if you want to go, don’t sleep on it!

Vikingur Ólafsson – “From Afar” Among all the new music releases I listened to this year, Víkingur Ólafsson’s double album “From Afar” was my favorite. On this, his “most personal” release, the pianist builds a collection of miniatures and shorter works from Johannes Brahms, Wolfgang Mozart, Franz Schubert, around music by the album’s dedicatee, György Kurtág, a composer still active today in his 90s. The result is a meditative collection of moody music for a quiet evening at home, which I’ve enjoyed on several occasions this year. Ólafsson also revels in sharing something new with his listeners, and here there are two surprises—the album was recorded twice, on grand piano and on a felt-covered upright, making an interesting aural comparison. Also, I was immediately taken with a composition from Ólafsson’s native Iceland, a setting of “Ave Maria” by Sigvaldi Kaldalóns. Listen below.

Going Viral on Twitter: I’ve been on Twitter since 2009, and have a modest number of followers on my account. Rarely does any one tweet of mine get more than a couple dozen “likes.” So imagine my surprise when I casually posted an image snapped from my television poking fun at the erasure of cigarettes from old movie stills and images. The one tweet made over 633,000 Impressions, and garnered over 6,100 “likes.” I spent most of the weekend observing it keep going, and going, and occasionally responding to replies. It was weird, bewildering, and kind of fun! But not something I’d wish to happen all the time. (And for the record, I’m not in favor of cigarettes or smoking. Just against dumb revisionist censorship.)

Denzel on Criterion: Fans of Denzel Washington were lucky to get not one but three stellar films starring him in deluxe home video versions this year thanks to the Criterion Collection. There was the interracial romance “Mississippi Masala,” which in 1991 opened a window to hidden communities in the South, the neo-noir “Devil in a Blue Dress,” where Washington finds himself learning how to be a detective in 1940s Los Angeles, and finally the towering “Malcolm X,” one of the greatest biopics ever put on screen, that should have cleaned up at the Oscars, but wuz robbed instead. All three are amazing performances that demonstrate Washington’s range, using his commanding voice, physical self and whole body.

Elton John in concert: Our tickets high in the rafters at the Alamodome having been secured over a year ago, the wait was worth it to see Elton John perform. “Tonight is my 81st concert in Texas,” he announced at one point, before adding that it would also be his last. The set list was heavy on hits but not without some deep cuts, including “Have Mercy on the Criminal” and “Burn Down the Mission,” the title of which probably plays very differently in San Antonio than anyplace else! Still in great voice, John brought along a crackerjack band that included legendary percussionist Ray Cooper.

KPAC’s 40th brings new music and an old format: On November 7, 1982, classical station KPAC first signed on the air to the sounds of Bach’s “Brandenburg Concerto No. 3.” Forty years later, we celebrated with the live premiere and recording of a brand new work, the moving chamber opera “Ribas-Dominicci” by South Texas composer Nathan Felix. Also in November, I hosted a series of throwback all-vinyl hours on the radio, playing some classic recordings in the KPAC library, as well as showcasing brand new vinyl releases that sound amazing. Thanks to Universal Music Group for supporting the project and sending us albums by Hilary Hahn, Lang Lang, Lara Somogyi and others.

Onstage in “The Nutcracker” One of my great regrets in life is that I never took any theater classes in high school or college. I was just too shy to go on stage and attempt to “act.” So I was delighted to finally be a part of the theatrical experience in November for a few minutes as Mother Ginger in Ballet San Antonio’s annual production of “The Nutcracker.” All I had to do was get painted up, wheeled out on stage, and act crazy for two minutes! It was loads of fun, and thanks to everyone at Ballet San Antonio for making it so.

Other things I enjoyed this year? Reading Margo Price’s memoir, “Maybe We’ll Make It,” seeing Bob Dylan in concert at the Majestic Theatre, and Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical movie “The Fabelmans.”

Highlights over a year of emergence. In 2023, I turn 50. What else will the year bring? What are you hoping for in the New Year? Let me know anytime, through email or on Twitter.

Happy New Year!

i’m returning to the world of the miniature today, with Rolf Wallin‘s 60-second orchestral piece Soundspeed. There’s only so much you can expect from a minute’s worth of music, but i like what Wallin manages to cram into this tiny piece.

As the title makes clear, this is music all about speed, though even from the get-go, while the brass and percussion drive things along, string notes pull downwards, applying drag to the momentum. Fifteen seconds in and, in a wonderful mini-climax, those glissandi multiply and cause everything to slip-slide, in the process triggering two sets of bongos to briefly go wild.

The result is that the orchestra shifts down into a lower gear, though while the speed seems to have reduced (a rhythmic illusion, as there’s no actual tempo change) both the amount and the intensity of material soon feel significantly ramped up, repetitive patterns hammered out all over the place, while the winds madly cascade up and down. The closing moments emerge into energised, overlapping string flurries, until the brass and percussion return to propel the piece onwards again, careening into its final barline like a train slamming into the buffers.

Soundspeed was commissioned by the Oslo Philharmonic to mark their centenary; this performance was given by them at a celebration concert in late August 2019, conducted by Vasily Petrenko.

Full score

Legendary music producer Thom Bell has died at the age of 79, according to Deadline. His lawyer, Michael Silver, confirmed his death to the outlet.

Bell was best known for his work with the “Mighty Three” partners, Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, to create the Sound of Philadelphia. As a songwriter, musician, producer, and arranger, Bell established a legacy as a pivotal figure in 1970s soul and impacted the genre beyond measure.

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According to his Songwriters Hall of Fame biography, Bell was born in Jamaica in 1943 and studied classical music in his youth. By his teenage years, Bell met up with and joined Gamble in The Romeos and learned to play instruments. In his early 20s, the musical pioneer became a staff writer and touring conductor for The Twist singer Chubby Checker.

Bell’s first production job was with The Delfonics, crafting the signature sound of their hits “La La Means I Love You” and “Didn’t I Blow Your Mind.” In 1972 he produced the debut album by The Stylistics

His full resume includes working with Teddy Pendergrass, Johnny Mathis, Dionne Warwick, The Temptations, Phyllis Hyman, Dee Dee Bridgwater, The O’Jays, Elton John, Lou Rawls, Little Anthony and The Imperials, Dusty Springfield, David Byrne, Joss Stone, Fatboy Slim, and more.

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Inducted into the SHOF in 2006, Bells career accolades include winning the first-ever Best Producer of the Year Grammy Award in 1975, receiving a star on Philadelphia’s Music Alliance’s Walk of Fame in 1993, and receiving the Grammy Trustees Award in 2016.

“Thom Bell left an indelible and everlasting mark on the history of popular music, but even more so, he will be remembered by all who knew him as a kind and loving friend and family man. The music world has truly lost one of the greats,” expressed his attorney in a statement to Billboard.

Bell is survived by his wife, Vanessa, and his children, Royal, Troy, Tia, Mark, Cybell, and Christopher. VIBE sends our deepest condolences to the Bell family and all those affected by this loss

Click here to read the full article.

With such a wide choice available, how can we possibly narrow down the entire body of English folksongs to just ten of the best?

Answer: with a great deal of head-scratching. See for yourself what you think of our selections, and whether we’ve left any crucial contenders off our list.

Best English folk songs

Scarborough Fair

Though many people know this song from Simon & Garfunkel, it actually predates them by several hundred years, with roots that go all the way back to the Middle Ages.
Its lyrics, referring to an old market fair in Yorkshire that started sometime in the 14th century, are beautifully poetic: a young man delegates impossible tasks to his former lover, demanding that she complete them before she comes back to him.
In return she requests impossible things of him, saying she will perform her tasks when he performs his. It’s an eloquent expression of yearning, of insecurity, of lovers talking and acting at cross-purposes. But the soul of this song really rests in its haunting melody.

Blow the Wind Southerly

This folk song from Tyneside, Northumberland, tells of a woman desperately hoping for a southerly wind to blow her lover over the sea back to her.

Its text first appeared in 1834 in the collection ‘The Bishoprick Garland’ by Sir Cuthbert Sharpe. But it was the English contralto Kathleen Ferrier who drew widespread attention to it with her famous 1949 recording. Since then it has had a number of well-known advocates, among them the Welsh operatic bass-baritone Bryn Terfel and the English cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, who recorded an exquisite cello version of it for a music video in 2020.

Greensleeves

There is a lot of uncertainty surrounding this folk song. Many believe that it was composed by King Henry VIII for his lover and future Queen Consort Anne Boleyn, even though it’s based on an Italian style of composition that did not reach England until after Henry VIII’s death.

Others argue about its meaning, with some insisting that Greensleeves was a prostitute (‘green’ being a word with sexual connotations that often referred, at the time, to the grass stains on a woman’s clothes from having sex outdoors). Whatever your take, it is undeniably one of the most enduringly popular English folk songs, and one that has been regularly harnessed over the years by artists from all sorts of disciplines ranging from the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams to the team behind the American television series Lassie.

The Whitby Lad

This song about a young thief sentenced to life in a penal colony in Australia is one of a number of transportation ballads – a genre rooted in the 18th century that served as a warning against crime and bad company to young men and women.

With its spiky melody and lyrics (‘Oh to see me aged father a-trembling at the bar/Likewise my own dear mother, she’s a-tearing her grey hair), this one is as spooky as the chilly north Yorkshire seaside town that gave birth to it.

Sweet Nightingale

Thought to have been imported to England by Cornish Tin Mining lads in the 1800s, this ostensibly innocent ballad was first published in Robert Bell’s Ancient Poems of the Peasantry of England, 1857, with the note ‘this curious ditty – said to be the translation from the ancient Cornish tongue…we first heard in Germany.’ Telling the story of two lovers, who listen to the sweet song of the nightingale – a euphemism for making love – it’s a typical example of a chorus song, in which verses from solo singer are alternated with a repeated refrain sung by the community.

The Four Loom Weaver

This song, originally called ‘The Poor Cotton Wayver’, was originally published in the depression years following the Napoleonic Wars. It tells of the economic crisis of 1819-20, when many handloom weavers lost their work due to the rise of the steam-driven weaving machines. With its stark, affecting melody, it’s probably the most celebrated industrial ballad, a genre documenting the struggles of people working hard in increasingly obsolete jobs.

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Bobby Shafto

Robert Shafto – an 18th British politician who served as MP for County Durham between 1760 and 1790 – is probably the subject of this North East English song.

He doesn’t come out of it altogether well: we learn how he broke the heart of his fiancée, Bridget Belasyse, when he married Anne Duncombe, heiress to one of the richest commoners in England at the time; how poor Belasyse was so distraught that she died of a broken heart. But how much can we believe? According to facts, Belasyse died of tuberculosis a couple of weeks before the wedding, not after, as the song maintains. So who knows. Either way, though, Bobby Shafto owes much to this bouncy folk song for keeping his memory alive.

Oh No John

With its mention of tying garters, wandering hands and crowing cocks, amongst other indiscretions, this saucy little song was originally deemed problematic.

It wasn’t until Cecil Sharp, the famous Edwardian folksong collector, came along, that it won widespread favour with the public. He cleaned it up, removing its two naughtiest verses, then published it in Novello’s School Songs. It has since become one of England’s most popular folk songs, sung in multiple arrangements and recorded by a wide range of pop and folk artists.

The Water of Tyne

First printed in Bell’s Northern Bards, in 1812, this beautiful love song is sung from the perspective of a woman separated from her lover by the Tyne river that divides Durham and Northumberland.

The original dialect is Geordie, but like many folk songs, it has been sung in many variations, by both men and women. We love this one, recorded by Sir Thomas Allen during the height of the pandemic, when the song’s words about separation seemed more poignant than ever.

Pastime with Good Company

Now this song really was written by Henry VIII, and is regarded as the most famous of his compositions. It was composed shortly after his coronation and is thought to have been intended for Catherine of Aragon. With its catchy tune and jaunty rhythm, it quickly became popular, and was regularly heard at fairs and taverns, as well as at court, where it allegedly held a special place in Queen Elizabeth I’s affections. It remains a favourite piece in choral repertoires.