Articles
2009 Top 10s and 20s
King Midas Sound
Starke

Albums
36
Aardvarck
Matias Aguayo
Anaphoria
Anduin
Arbol + Fibla
Aufgang
Beneva vs. Clark Nova
Black to Comm
Bvdub
Cornstar
Dinky
Enola
Fieldhead
FOURM / Shinkei / Turra
Billy Gomberg
The Green Kingdom
Chihei Hatakeyama
Ian Hawgood
Marek Hemmann
Khate
King Midas Sound
Marcel Knopf
Robot Koch
Lambent
Shinobu Nemoto
Olekranon
Laurent Perrier
Piano Magic
Porzellan
Pylône
Ryonkt
Shadyzane
Slow
Small Color
Solomun
The Sound of Lucrecia
Stray Ghost
The Use of Ashes
Sylvie Walder

Compilations / Mixes
Sebo K
Will Saul
Tama Sumo
VOLTT Amsterdam Vol. 1

EPs
Blindhæð
Roberto Bosco
Franco Cangelli
Dieb
dub KULT
Abe Duque/Blake Baxter
Gemmy
Christopher Hobbs
Duncan Ó Ceallaigh
Christopher Roberts
The Sight Below
Two Fourteen
Van Der Papen
Andy Vaz
Vetrix
Eddie Zarook

DVD
Optofonica

Shadyzane: Steps of the Sun
Matter Records

The London-based artist composer Chris White has composed scores for feature films, television series, animations, and documentaries, so it's only natural his Steps of the Sun album should exude a powerful cinematic character (the inclusion of “Springtones for Tarkovsky” confirms as much). Since graduating from the UK National Film and Television School (with a Masters in Composition for Film and Television), White has composed scores for projects such as Ela (directed by Silvana Aguirre and short-listed for an Oscar in 2008) and One Hundred Mornings (directed by Connor Horgan), and, as a touring musician, he's also shared the stage with Ray Charles and Paul McCartney, among others. Steps of the Sun isn't his debut but a follow-up to the 2003 full-length Under the Shady Tree and 2006 EP Deepening Repetitions.

“A Winter Music” initially paints a landscape of shadowy industrial character, with White's tenor saxophone and Lewis McCallum's bass clarinet the voices pushing their way through the gloom, before dusting itself off and turning into a jazzy gallop. Sounding like Jon Hassell emoting at late-night club in New York's lower east side, “Microclimate (Tobacco Kiosk)” casts a dark jazz spell with a muted trumpet howl, while the exotic closer “September” finds White's saxophone wending its way through Moroccan back alleys. White demonstrates his composing chops in “Springtones for Tarkovsky,” which perpetuates that ponderous vibe with a through-composed, strings-laden chamber setting of meditative design.

Interestingly, the quieter the material gets, the stronger an impression it makes. That's never more true than in the case of “Slowbird,” which spreads the sparsest of bass tones (courtesy of Wayne Nunes) across a near-barren backdrop (listen closely and you'll hear the clicking sounds of a film projector as well as snatches of environmental noise—whistles, rustlings, etc.) for twelve transporting minutes. Stripping a track's sound back so severely is a bold gesture that in this case pays off, with “Slowbird” (rather similar, interestingly enough, in spirit to Eno's Music For Airports) ultimately registering as the album's most striking and most memorable composition.

December 2009