thenewobjective

[thenewobjective]

Mary Pedicini and Asher Levitas ~ I Wish We Could Tell You Everything

You stare into a reflective pool. Everything you think, feel, imagine, or remember is projected into the pool for transmission. An unknown alien species receives your message, with a wealth of others from across humankind. What do you choose to share? What do you attempt to hide? Are you inspired or horrified by the idea of these mystery recipients? This is the premise of a brief new release by…

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Sarah Bahr x Sound.Codes ~ Safien Album / Susana López ~ Materia Vibrante

Do you prefer music to direct you outward or inward? Even without words of instruction, our favourite artists cause us to investigate our innermost experience, or to interrogate the world around us. Two recent albums use drones as sonic probes to chart inner and outer space. Whether directed into a building, an ocean, or the human condition, art is a kind of echolocation that pinpoints our…

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Glacier ~ More Distant/More Violent

Last year we reviewed A Distant, Violent Shudder, a sludgy behemoth of an album that we compared to a glacier cleaving and falling into the sea.  This year the Boston quintet returns with the sequel-minded More Distant/More Violent, featuring one new track and four remixes.  Yet it would be improper to call this a remix album, as the tracks flow together in new and exciting ways; better to call…

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Reid Willis ~ Reliquary

Reliquary proposes the idea of an album as a “living archive,” both tomb and shrine: a sonic snapshot of the artist when the final masters are created.  In the old days, months or even years might pass between recording and distribution; in the new era, both can occur the same day. Reid Willis‘ advantage is that his music is genre fluid. As a pianist, he uses the form of modern composition to…

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Hammock ~ Nevertheless

Nevertheless is a word that Marc Byrd, half of Hammock along with Andrew Thompson, grew accustomed to hearing at funerals in the Deep South. “A loved one is gone.  Nevertheless …”  The word was meant to convey reflection, recalibration, a pause between considerations, as in Selah. The duo is no stranger to sorrow and loss, which has informed their music for decades.  This makes them well-suited…

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Ranges ~ Sin

What’s in the box?  Not, as one might reasonably expect from the concept, Gwyneth Paltrow’s head. Instead, a lucky 77 will receive 7 7″ records and 37 will also receive 7 pieces of ephemera: a shot glass, cigar, matches, poker deck, pair of dice, poster and shirt.  On the flip side of the 7″ records, listeners will discover 7 songs that are available only in this form; no digital copies exist.…

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First Half Highlights ~ The Top 20

We’re about to take a short summer break (back on Monday), but first, we’re excited to present our staff picks for the first half of 2025.  We invited each writer to choose two albums or EPs released from January 1-June 30 and covered on our site.  While there was no frontrunner (as only two releases received multiple votes), the consensus was that this has been an incredibly strong year for…

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Ten Tracks That Sound Like Summer

Summer is as much about the feeling of summer as the season itself; in like manner, summer music is as much about the sound as it is the season of release. Many summer albums are not released in summer, while classic summer tracks can drop at any time of year.  This playlist collects tracks released in all four seasons, united by their summer vibe. This year has been characterized by war and…

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Richard Skelton ~ The Second Chamber

We’ve been covering Richard Skelton for so long that our earliest reviews appeared on another site.  While the composert’s sound has evolved over the years, it has retained an elegiac, heartfelt quality. The Second Chamber celebrates the 20th anniversary of Skelton’s debut album on Sustain-Release.  Recorded over the past few years, the new set returns the artist to his early template of strings…

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Melaine Dalibert & David Sylvian ~ Vermilion Hours

It is fascinating how the limitations of physical media have an impact on the music it is designed to carry. One of the best examples, although probably apocryphal, is how the Compact Disc was engineered to contain the full duration of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which (depending on the conductor) can last about 70 minutes. Otherwise, the developers may have stuck with an hour’s duration, and we…

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Silence Quartet ~ Denial

When people feel powerless in the face of societal upheaval, it becomes more common to live in denial. This is the starting point for Silence Quartet‘s album, which translates this questionable coping mechanism into music.  The fact that these tracks were recorded at night adds to a sense of secrecy; the sideways and diagonal approach to the composition imitates the trajectory of a life thrown…

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galen tipton & Shmu

Last summer we covered galen tipton & Holly Waxwing‘s keepsakeFM, which six months later became one of our top twenty albums of the year, as well as one of the happiest.  The vibe continues on dewCLAWS as tipton collaborates with Shmu, while inviting seven other contributors, an Orange Milk hallmark.  While not structured as a mixtape, the album’s energy level remains high, thanks to an overload…

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Machine Listening ~ Environments 12: new concepts in acoustic enrichment

Hearing of the Environments series, we wondered how we missed such a thing, until we saw the dates: an album a year from 1969-79, each side portraying a single environment.  The final installment offered “Alpine Blizzard” and “Country Thunderstorm,” with nude artwork that generated controversy and caused some mail order companies to cancel their orders! This all seems quaint now, but those were…

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Exformal Records ~ Exformal Zones

Copenhagen’s Exformal Records is less than a year old, and is making a major move with its latest batch. Mads Kjeldgaard’s label launched as an experimental imprint, its highlight to date a 12-hour album from the founder himself, originally available with a bag of tea. The newest expression is a field recording series titled Exformal Zones: A Practice of Presence.  With matching graphic design,…

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Ukrainian Field Notes XLV

Most of this month’s interviews were recorded when I visited Ukraine back in May. In Lviv I had the privilege of taking part in a jamming session with veterans held by Victory Beats at the Superhumans Center, a specialist clinic for the treatment and rehabilitation of war victims. Under the guidance of Volodymyr Nedogoda, Rost Tatomyr and music therapy advocate Nigel Osborne veterans were…

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emptyset ~ Dissever

Before the Tate Modern was a gallery, it was the Bankside power station, generating electricity for London between 1891 and 1981. While much of the building was converted into gallery space, it was decided that the imposing space of the Turbine Hall should be left empty and open. It’s a move that has paid off; the vastness of the space is enough to quieten even the noisiest visitor upon arrival…

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Sleep Number ~ Sunspill

This is the first day of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. As followers have come to expect, it is also the day to uncork a new edition of VISUALS Wine’s Ritual of Senses series.  Sunspill completes the third year of the series, which since 2022 has been uniting meteorologists, music lovers and oenophiles in a unique and multi-sensory…