Showing posts with label cello. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cello. Show all posts

Friday, 16 January 2026

MIDORI JAEGER — EXASPERATE

'Exasperate' feels like a heist. It's the way cellist midori jaeger plays her instrument in a syncopated dance of pizzicato swirl, body-popping its way through a what might as well be a tangle of red lasers and tip-toeing through shadows. It's fitting, given that jaeger says the song is centred on the "overpowering urge to break away from old patterns, to so desperately want the new at any cost, but to feel overwhelming regret for things lost." It makes sense that we have this sense of minimal noir jazz, like a break-in, except this is a break-out — from the old and what no longer serves, but to what, and at what cost?

"I’ll leave this door wide open / To remember how you filled my days, oh but now / I want something unfamiliar, unpredictable" she sings, amidst a lyrical labyrinth delivered in jaeger's cool tones and tumbling vocal style.

On a broadly jazz-inflected canvas, the London-based composer paints a bristling blend of organic and artifial, with icy reverb on her woody cello lines and understated synth gently blooping alongside intricate clattering percussion (provided by co-producer Felix Higginbottom). It feels earthy yet augmented, an idiosyncracy that more or less reflects the song's raison d'etre: restlessness, the desire and constant push for newness. Though sonically harmonious, this cocktail of living instruments and the synthetic figuratively creates the tension inherent in an unnatural pairing, a desperation like a tree wanting to uproot and sprint off into the sunset.


  • 🔔 'Exasperate' is taken from (Un)planted (due out 9th March), the result of ten days of recording in Lisbon. It's the first in a pair of upcoming EPs by midori jaeger.
  • 🔔 Another track has already been released from the EP, namely 'dark green' — gentler and warmer than 'exasperate', but with a similar minimalism and that same characteristic stamp of living-and-breathing crossed with buttons-and-waveforms.
  • 🔔 The EP's confessional cover art (as seen above) is the work of Glasgow-based photographer Inigo Blake.

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Friday, 30 April 2021

ODALIE — LES HYBRES


A robust pizzicato arpeggio picks its way through the aching air of ‘Les Hybres’, a hybrid track by French musicmaker Odalie. Urgency arrives as ticking modular synth chimes in like a clock ticking too quickly through the seconds, the bow now drawing across the strings and giving an extra richness to the track.

It’s not just this difference in organic sounds though, but the subsequent evolution of the track as the synthesiser grows into a many limbed beast, a creature of plasma that tumbles and twists as the cello strains and scratches below. Human and machine, soft and harsh, ‘Les Hybres’ is the exploration of biomechanical creativity.



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Thursday, 1 October 2020

LIGETI QUARTET — S'ISCRAVAMENTU (COMPOSED BY CHRISTIAN MASON)

⌾ LISTEN TO LIGETI QUARTET, S'ISCRAVAMENTU (COMPOSED BY CHRISTIAN MASON) ⌾

The gales of sound in 'S'iscravamentu', conjured up by UK's very own Ligeti Quartet, are deep glowing squalls that dive into the dramatic scenery of Sardinia, its jutting outcrops, jagged coastline, carpets of macchia, ultramarine seas.

Concocted by English composer Christian Mason, the piece recreates the sea shanty-esque registers of Sardinia's own tenores — polyphonic folk singing that, uniquely for Europe, is actually a form of overtone (throat) singing. As such, Ligeti Quartet's treatment of Mason's reworking of this UNESCO-recognised folk music is necessarily rich and variegated.

Thick harmonies hang heavy in the air, and the scratch and staccato of the strings is resolutely tangible, but quieter moments see the instruments become thin, veils of sound lost in their own rapture of unnerving silent howls. The physicality of the instruments — their wood, the strings, the hands that play them — is such that you could imagine literally picking up and handling this music. It's that spirit of solidity that really reflects the resonant, guttural songs at the root of this composition.


  • 🔔 'S'Iscravamentu' is taken from Ligeti Quartet's debut album Songbooks, Vol. 1, marking their 10th year of playing as a quartet. It contains two vocal-inspired projects — one following the Sardinian cantu a tenòre tradition, the other Tuvan throat singing — composed for strings by Christian Mason. It also features one song originally by Nunavut singer and composer, Tanya Tagaq.

    Scheduled for release on 9th October via UK label nonclassical, you can pre-order Songbooks, Vol. 1 from Bandcamp now, or peruse the album tracklist below at your leisure.

    Ligeti Quartet — Songbooks, Vol. 1 tracklist
    1. Sai Ma (Racing Horses)
    Tuvan Songbook
    2. Dyngylday (Good-for-nothing)
    3. Eki Attar (The Best Steeds)
    4. Kuda Yry (Wedding Song)
    5. Ezir-Kara (‘Black Eagle’)
    Sardinian Songbook
    6. S'iscravamentu (Deposition of Christ)
    7. Ballate a Ballu Tundu (Dance a Circle Dance)
    8. Satiras (Satire)
    9. Muttos (Motets)
    10. Sivunittinni (The Future Ones) by Tanya Tagaq


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