I was going through a couple external hds earlier in search of a rare Ingmar Bergman film ("Music in Darkness" from 1948) that has only been released PAL/Region 2, which I discovered only after buying it :( It was advertised as "all regions" and only the dvd itself had the regional specs. Pffff! How and why there are films by one of the greatest directors of all time that are not globally available or still sitting on shelves in the Janus archives or wherever else - this is just beyond me. Then there are early Bergman films that have never been remastered and only exist as original vhs tapes - how is this possible? Imagine the frustration of cherishing the last 6 or 7 symphonies by any composer but at the same time having almost no opportunity to fall in love with his or her earlier efforts? Or traveling from I dunno, New York to Slovenia just to be able to listen to a brilliant disc with encoding issues (not everyone is aware of blogs or p2p, you know!) Well, this has nothing to do with the music at hand...that is, I just realized lol; sometimes I need to smack myself 'upside the head' or you would be at risk of taking a long dull rant-trip with me. Superfluous eyeball workouts.
If I upset myself any further over Swedish cinema I'm going to need a dr. and pills flown in from the Island of Faro ;)
The point was that whilst sifting around I found as usual endless amounts of releases that I have no memory of - or barely. The thoroughly contemporary music-making on this cd is one such example. I will say that I just played it through and I'm not that taken with it; the music is for solo bass clarinet, and a couple pieces call for tape as well. There's just a consistency here, which is the music does not vary as much as I would expect. There are interesting moments, but as a whole I'd likely play this in the background. Lovers of more abstract, modern music will enjoy this - of course I think that counts for perhaps 20% of the visitors here if that! So I hope this description saves you from or whets your modern appetite for the music. If you are familiar with the Attacca "Ladder of Escape" releases well you will want to have this either way. I quite like some of the others, and currently there are 14 volumes.
I'm going to guess that the most familiar names here for listeners are composers Brian Ferneyhough and Isang Yun. I am always an advocate for exploring any art - so even though I managed to make this release sound less than appealing for most ears - it only takes 1 minute to d/l and sample for yourself :)
As I mentioned I do like some of the other volumes, so have a look at the entire series here:
Enjoy or feel perplexed or both
Ladder_of_Escape-Works_for_Bassclarinet-Tzadik.zip
http://www65.zippyshare.com/v/3GhEPxe8/file.html
