Long Play Festival at Public Records, BRIC, Issue Project Room and Brooklyn Academy of Music: May 2 - 4 | Christian Marclay's "The Clock" at MoMA: Feb 17 - May 11

This year, once again rather than attending the Seattle International Film Festival, I will be in the city of cities partaking in the abundance New York has to offer. This begins with Japan Society, and their shared screenings with The Metrograph, presenting the incomparable cinema of Mikio Naruse. Through the two-part, 30 film series, screened entirely on rare prints imported from collections in Japan, the two cinemas host this most explicit of examples of, "The Auteur as Salaryman", in their combined, "Mikio Naruse: The World Betrays Us". Across the way at Film Society at Lincoln Center, Jia Zhang-ke's masterful generational journey, "Caught by the Tides" begins it's US theatrical run with the director in attendance, alongside Roberto Minervini's "The Damned", and a retrospective of the films of the rarely screened Odersan filmmaker, Kira Muratova. To properly take in the city is to immerse oneself in music, film, dance and cinema premieres. Among these this year, are performances as diverse of the  Metropolitan Opera's presentation of the opera most lauded by Alex Ross in his books and writing for the New Yorker, on Richard Strauss' "Salome", and the same night, across Manhattan the avant-ambient leanings of Cosey Fanni Tutti's "Industrial Art" are on exhibit at Maxwell Graham. In which the Throbbing Gristle founder explores feminism, freedom and the politics of the personal, with "Time to Tell". Truly, no time spent in New York would be fully realized, without at least a night of theatre. The re-envisioned classic Cabaret, made famous by the 1972 film starring Liza Minnelli, now presented as Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club, in a new staging by Rebecca Frecknall will be such a night.

Similarly, the New York week wouldn’t be complete without a day revisiting the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection on view on the fourth and fifth floors. While there, also witnessing Rosa Barba's celluloid experiments, and Christian Marclay's staggering audio-visual installation, "The Clock". The run of Christian Marclay's installation at MoMA marks the work’s return to the United States for the first time since 2016, and for the first time to New York in nearly a dozen years. Of which the artist himself says of this superhuman work of assembly and editing, "‘It Became a Nightmare’: Christian Marclay on Creating Global Smash 'The Clock'". Similarly, an afternoon will be occupied at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the unmissable array of 14th to 19th century paintings on display, as well as the 19th and early 20th century wings on offer in the Robert Lehman Collection. In addition to the work in The Met's permanent wings, there is also an assembly of romantic paintings presented in, "Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature", and an exhibition of John Singer Sargent's work from his time in Paris. Following a day at the museums, Tim Hecker's engaged noise sculpting is on display at Public Records. Whatever you do, don't refer to Hecker's dissonant washes of sound as auditory products for wellness culture, the composer has established, "Tim Hecker Helped Popularize Ambient Music. He’s (Sort of) Sorry". After days on end of museum hopping, the opera, gallery openings and cinema screenings, most every night will be coming to a close during Ron Carter's 88th Birthday Celebration at the Blue Note, and in the AM hours to the tune of late-night sets at Midtown's Tomi Jazz.

The weekend commences with the highest density of performances to be found annually in Brooklyn, encapsulated in the three day, fifty performance, fifteen venue, Long Play Festival. Programmed and conceived by one of the central the East Coast mainstays of New Music and modern classical composition. In just a few short years, Bang On A Can have assembled a festival of a caliber which, "Long Play has Risen to the Top of New York Classical Music Festivals". From this formidable roster, this year's highlights include, Kim Gordon with Kassie Krut and I.U.D. at Pioneer Works, American Opera Projects plays Arvo Pärt at South Oxford Space, Idris Ackamoor and The Pyramids at BRIC Ballroom, Body / Head, Foodman, and Emptyset at Public Records, Carl Stone and Akaihirume at Issue Project Room, Moritz von Oswald Presents: Silencio at Roulette Intermedium, Salamanda at Public Records, Max Richter and the American Contemporary Music Ensemble at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, David Lang's "Darker", performed by Ensemble Signal at BRIC Ballroom, Tashi Wada with Julia Holter at Public Records, Sophia Jani "Six Pieces for Solo Violin", performed by Maiani da Silva at Issue Project Room, Ensemble Offspring plays Iannis Xenakis, Tujiko Noriko, Niecy Blues, and the Ben LaMar Gay Quartet all in rapid succession over the course of one day at Public Records. With the festival coming to a close around the American minimalist composer Terry Riley's 90th Birthday Tribute performed by Bang on a Can All-Stars, Pete Townshend, Gyan Riley, Krishna Bhatt, Valentina Magaletti, Nicole Mitchell and Suphala, at Pioneer Works.

Terry Riley at Seattle Symphony: Feb 19 | The Decade of New York Minimalism

The year at Seattle Symphony began with the conclusion of Ludovic Morlot's tenure and the arrival of his successor, Thomas Dausgaard. As the 2019-2020 season commenced, under the aegis of the symphony's new Music Director, a set of final grand projects from Morlot's tenure were realized. These included the staging of Heiner Goebbels' "Surrogate Cities", and the inaugural event at the state-of-the-art Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center. This all day, all night event that opened the center was billed as a Contemporary Music Marathon, spanning 24 hours of modernist, New Music, and avant-garde composers. This month sees one of the first major contemporary programs under it's new director. Central to much of the symphony's past programming of contemporary composers has been the music of the mid-century minimalists. This particular school of minimalism began on the east coast of the United States in the early 1960s by a concurrent body of composers generally originating in and around academic and cultural centers in New York. La Monte Young, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass are credited with being among the first to develop compositional techniques that exploit this minimal approach, which included nods to jazz, early tape, electronic and computer music, and Indian traditions in duration and tonality. The movement later branched out to include an international body of composers including John Adams, Yoshi Wada, Phill Niblock, Charlemagne Palestine, Pauline Oliveros, Michael Nyman, and Gavin Bryars. Central to the New York scene's earliest forays of the sound's bridging of tradition and the avant-garde, were Tony Conrad, Angus MacLise, John Cale, Marian Zazeela, La Monte Young, and Terry Riley's durational explorations as The Theatre of Eternal Music. A collective music inspired by and under the tutorship of Indian spiritual advisor and musician, Pandit Pran Nath. Teaching at his Kirana Center for Indian Classical Music, Nath instructed in the Raga with a express focus on an extra-methodical and austere style, with a heavy emphasis on alap and slow tempo. His "Earth Groove: The Voice of Cosmic India" would be hugely influential to this body of musicians, particularly Terry Riley.

Having spent the decade of the 1950s in academic music circles, Riley studied composition at San Francisco State University, the San Francisco Conservatory, and University of California, Berkeley, under the instruction of Seymour Shifrin and Robert Erickson. During the latter, also spending time within the body of musicians around the San Francisco Tape Music Center, working with Morton Subotnick, Steve Reich, Pauline Oliveros, and Ramon Sender. A hiatus throughout the 1960s was spent in Europe traveling and taking in musical and cultural interests, supporting himself playing in piano bars. By the 1970s Riley had returned to the United States and found himself at ground zero for the genesis of the minimalist movement. Through their shared ventures as The Theatre of Eternal Music, alternately known as The Dream Syndicate, Riley would connect the ancient traditions of this form with the very cutting edge of western modernism. In the years surrounding his time playing under Nath, he made numerous trips to India over the course of their association to study and accompany him in performances, contributing tabla, tambura, and voice. The fruits of which would lead him back to the west coast, in 1971 he joined the Mills College faculty to teach Indian classical music. This era would be considered Riley's formalizing period, as it produced many of his most lasting and groundbreaking works. Lost or largely unavailable are many of The Dream Syndicate works, due to contentions with La Monte Young and the other musicians, but Riley's own "In C", "Reed Streams", "A Rainbow in Curved Air", "You're No Good", "Persian Surgery Dervishes", and "Descending Moonshine Dervishes", spanning the decade of 1965 to 1975, form the foundation of his profound contribution to 20th Century music. Returning to town this month at Seattle Symphony, seven years since the last occasion of Seattle Art Museum's reopening celebration in 2013 with Doug Aitken's "Mirror" installation accompanied by the outdoor performance of Steve Reich's "Clapping Music" and Riley's "In C". Concurrently, Riley will also be engaging in a series of west coast dates this spring with his son, Gyan. The master minimalist is now 85 years of age, having just recently celebrated his 40th anniversary collaborating with New York's Kronos Quartet, yet we can still expect "Performances of Joyous Futurism from this Minimalist Shaman".

Seattle Symphony's Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center Opening and Contemporary Music Marathon: Mar 23 - 24 | Heiner Goebbels' "Surrogate Cities": Apr 25 - 26 | Ludovic Morlot's Final Season with Seattle Symphony

While the 2019 season will mark the end of his tenure as conductor and Music Director at Seattle Symphony, since his arrival in 2011 Ludovic Morlot has launched a number of significant modern music initiatives. Alex Ross positing that from the week of his debut, the conductor not only stepping out with a strong start musically, but a reshaping of the orchestra's image, effectively in many ways, the "Symphony’s New Leader Took Seattle by Storm". Not least among his accomplishments, the late-night [untitled] chamber music series which brought contemporary works back into symphony's lexicon, after almost a decade of being remiss in the frequency of their performance. Morlot brought a higher profile and further prestige to the city with his commissioning of "John Luther Adams Pulitzer Prize Winning 'Become Ocean'" which was recorded with the Seattle Symphony in 2013. Last summer also saw the conductor's hand at work in Adams' continuation of the cycle, with the premier of "Become Desert". Yet the seasonal [untitled] program may prove to be Morlot's greatest contemporary music contribution during his tenure. The series' installments cumulatively reading as a who's-who of 20th and 21st Century avant-garde and modernism. Including in its breadth works by such notable (and rarely performed) composers as George Crumb, György Ligeti, Iannis Xenakis, John Cage, Terry Riley and Giacinto Scelsi. Other high points include 2015's performance of Karlheinz Stockhausen's groundbreaking electro-acoustic, "Gesang der Jünglinge", and the series' initiation with the realization of Olivier Messiaen's massive symphonic work, "Turangalîla". In the way of other contemporary works,  this next month Seattle Symphony performs a compelling and rare Heiner Goebbels piece on the march of history through the modern urban diaspora. Featuring additional sound design work from Ensemble Modern's Norbert Ommer, vocalist Jocelyn B. Smith's sultry intimacy, and the spectrum of noir radio inflection to Dada theatrics supplied by David Moss, this large scale conceptual work bears some correspondence to the postmodern music theater of it's text contributor, Heiner Müller. To quote ECM Records, "Surrogate Cities" is; "Concerned with the dynamic power and the power dynamics of the modern city, it is an examination of the concrete jungle in all its complexity, complete with musical-historical flashbacks. Literary quotations and text setting are also integral to the work, and it incorporates words by Paul Auster, Hugo Hamilton, and Heiner Müller".

As the 2019-2020 season commences, under the aegis of the symphony's new Music Director Thomas Dausgaard, one final grand project of Morlot's tenure is to be realized. The month of March sees the opening of LMN Architects reconceiving the former Southbridge Music Discovery Center into a nexus of technology and heightened acoustic experience as Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center. The features of the facility as a versatile technology-enhanced performance and multimedia community space are detailed in Seattle Symphony's announcement; "Combining a modular surround video screen with 13 moveable panels, 10 ultra-short-throw projectors, motion-capture cameras, and a state-of-the-art Meyer Sound Constellation Acoustic System with 42 speakers and 30 microphones, the technology can create a 360° shared virtual experience or be adapatable to disappear into the background for a more traditional setting. A series of custom system presets will provide supportive acoustic environments for a variety of ensembles, and additional settings can be customized producing a range of possible acoustic environments. Cellist and experimental artist Seth Parker Woods will become Octave 9’s first Artist in Residence for the 2019-2020 season. During his residency, he will premiere a number of new works for cello and multimedia from a diverse group of composers and visual artists." A set of local press including Met's "Octave 9 Is Another Symphonic World", and Seattle Times' "You Have to Hear it to Believe It: Seattle Symphony’s Octave 9", proceeded its its public opening on March 3. GeekWire's "Inside Octave 9: A High-Tech Venue that lets Seattle Symphony Explore the Future of Music" offering a more in-depth assessment of the facility's resources on offer. Yet it will be the venue's inaugural event, the Contemporary Music Marathon, spanning 24 hours beginning March 23, to day's end on March 24th, that will be the true test of Octave 9's resources. Encompassing a qualitative body of 20th and 21st century composers, the day-in and day-out performance by an array of ensembles will include such works as John Luther Adams' "The Light Within" & "Songbirds", David Lang's "Breathless", Annea Lockwood's "In Our Name", and Kaija Saariaho's "Spins and Spells". Beginning in the long hours of the first night, Helmut Lachenmann's rarely performed work, "Serynade" is then followed in the early morning by political composer Frederic Rzewski's "Piano Piece No. 3 & 4", and the afternoon is ushered in with American minimalists, represented by Terry Riley's "G-Song", and Philip Glass' "String Quartet No. 6".

:::: ALBUMS OF 2017 ::::

TOP ALBUMS OF 2017 IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER
--------------------------------------------------------------
V/A  "Lessons"  (Front & Follow)
Porter Ricks  "Anguilla Electrica"  (Tresor)
V/A  "Mono No Aware"  (PAN)
Bell Witch  "Mirror Reaper"  (Profound Lore)
Ryuichi Sakamoto  "async"  (Commmons)
Pye Corner Audio  "Stasis"  (Ghost Box)
Slowdive  "Slowdive"  (Dead Oceans)
Circuit des Yeux  "Reaching for Indigo"  (Drag City)
Otto A. Totland  "The Lost"  (Sonic Pieces)
Pan Daijing  "Lack"  (PAN)
Coil  "Time Machines"  Reissue  (Dais)
Phurpa  "Rituals Of Bön I & II"  (Zoharum)
The Body & Full of Hell  "Ascending a Mountain of Heavy Light"  (Thrill Jockey)
Jefre Cantu-Ledesma  "On The Echoing Green"  (Mexican Summer)
Ben Frost  "The Centre Cannot Hold" & "Super Dark Times - Soundtrack"  (Mute/Orchard)
David Bowie   "New Career in a New Town" Box Set Reissue   (Parlophone)
Angelo Badalamenti & Dean Hurley  "Twin Peaks: The Return" & "Anthology Resource Vol.1  (Rhino/Sacred Bones)
Johnny Jewel   "Windswept" & "Themes for Television"  (Italians Do It Better)
Brian Eno  "Warm Jets...", "Taking Tiger Mountain...", "Another Green World", "Before & After Science" LP Reissues  (EMI)
Mary Jane Leach & Jocy De Oliveira  "Pipe Dreams" & "Estorias for Voice and Electronic Instruments" Reissues  (Blume)
Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza  "Azioni / Reazioni "1967-1969"  (Die Schachtel)
Alice Coltrane  "The Ecstatic Music Of Alice Coltrane: Turiyasangitananda"  (Luaka Bop)
Jaimie Branch & Irreversible Entanglements  "Fly or Die" & "S/T"  (International Anthem)
V/A  "Pop Makossa: The Invasive Dance Beat of Cameroon 1976-1984"  (Analog Africa)
Terry Riley  "Persian Surgery Dervishes" LP Reissue  (Aguirre)
Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe  "Levitation Praxis Pt. 4"  (Distort Decay Sustain)
Lankum  "Between the Earth and the Sky"  (Rough Trade)
Yasuaki Shimizu  "Kakashi"   Reissue (Palto Flats)
Midori Takada  "Through the Looking Glass"  Reissue  (WRWTFWW)
Arne Nordheim  "Electric"  LP Reissue  (Rune Grammofon)
Bernard Parmegiani  "Rock"  (Transversales)

A year has now passes since favorable ratings, and public appetite for spectacle motivated both liberal and conservative media to elevate a reality TV celebrity, media mogul and real estate magnate to one of the most influential positions of power in the world. All the while, the other aspect of the dominant two party system marginalized their more viable candidate. Consequently we find ourselves in in an environment in which high and low-level attacks have been leveled at the remaining journalistic press and even the First Amendment itself. These effects amplified by the net overabundance of the 21st Century, in which media sources are decentralized, but not necessarily diversified, presenting a new set of dangers to the less digitally savvy. Between the polarization of the commercial news sources, and self constructed corridors of social media posts by like-minded individuals, America not only receives different information, as a divided nation, we perceive different realities. Yet it remains, without true journalism, there can be no Democracy. All of this will no doubt be accelerated in the changed information environment, as the end of decades of hard-fought battles conclude with the repeal of Net Neutrality. Less travel this year, both domestic and international translated as being essentially grounded here in the United States, with the noise and confusion spinning out from the fallout of the election cycle. In the midst of it all, it was a great relief to find memorable performances, festivals and exhibitions domestically. Gallery-going and the cinema played an even more prominent role, hitting near the mark of 300 films seen, it was another record setting year in catching films in the theater. A highlight in performance was the occasion of a rare Northwest visit from the world-class dancers of Company Wayne McGregor and their presentation of A Winged Victory for the Sullen's "Atomos". The most notable arts event witnessed this year was the third-annual Paul Allen funded Seattle Art Fair, initial speculation on it's inaugural launch as to the fair being another philanthropist vanity project have been dispelled. This year's fair saw an expanded body of galleries, some 84 in total, along with it's program of talks, on-and-off site performances and collateral events. The latter under the umbrella of the fair's Project series, presenting immersive and large-scale works spanning sculpture, performance, and installation beyond the art fair booth and into adjacent neighborhoods of the city. Taken with the concurrently running "Out of Sight" exhibition, returning for its third-annual survey of contemporary art in the Pacific Northwest, the new curatorial team under the direction of exhibition caretaker, Scott Lawrimore, produced a national caliber event.

Reflecting the further changing economic and cultural landscape of Seattle two regional festivals which had previously brought an international scope to the city had closing and transitional years in 2015. That year saw the final installments of the region's two dominant festivals of electronic, neoclassical and experimental music. The final Northwest edition of Rafael Anton Irisarri's Substrata Festival came and went, and in an open letter Decibel Festival's 13th year closed with programming director Sean Horton's farewell to the city. Horton has since announced the revival of the Decibel in 2018 in a Los Angeles iteration, with proposed Seattle satellite mini-festival to follow. In the two years since the closing of these expansive international forums, Seattle's monthly showcases of electronic and experimental sounds, Elevator, Secondnature, MOTOR, Patchwerks, False Prophet and Wayward Music Series have filled the void, produced a string of memorable one-off events. Elevator's maturation in 2016 into exhibition curation with the inauguration of Corridor Festival was hailed as a unmitigated success in local press. It's daylong meeting of audio-visual media, installation art, music and performance has evolved into the city's best new festival for cutting edge sounds. Certainly moreso than Paul Allen's less successful migration into music and media with the launch of Upstream. Though there were gems buried even here, with showcases curated by Kremwerk and False Prophet, offering up sets by Boy Harsher, Not Waving, Pye Corner Audio and JLIN. The end of the summer season saw the shuttering of the Elevator monthly, yet it's programmers will continue the festival into 2018, promising an equally forward thinking festival of light, sound, and movement from the media and performance underground this coming February.

In music it was another year of circuitous paths to the year's more memorable sounds. Streaming and digital distribution has certainly freed channels of access and stages of separation between producer and audience. It has also bbrought to the fore the issue of accepting poor royalties for the benefit of expansive exposure. In the midst of this age of over-abundance, there are whole forms and centuries of music that are not being served by the predominant streaming platforms. Much like the marginalization of global cinema on Netflix and Amazon, jazz and classical music are finding themselves particularly under-served on the platforms that define the digital market. For the those that rely on Apple Music and the iTunes player and library system, Robinson Meyer's "The Tragedy of iTunes and Classical Music", details the woes of the player and archiving particulars for the The Atlantic. With the architecture of streaming services like Pandora and Spotify even less attuned to the duration, composer and fidelity concerns that are significant for genres outside of pop music, jazz guitarist Mark Ribot writes, "If Streaming is the Future, You Can Kiss Jazz and Other Genres Goodbye". Like in the case of the 12 decades of cinema not being represented on the dominant commercial platforms, independent music has begun their own enterprises to better serve their own interests, "Independent Music Labels and Young Artists Offer Streaming, on Their Terms". But if this almost singular foray of independent labels and artists in the streaming environment is representative of the market, it reveals much in, "Drip.FM's Closing and The Challenging Future of Sustainable Creative Technologies".

Conversely streaming and direct digital distribution has also made what was in the past the locus of curatorial vision; the record label, less of a less singular go-to. No question, the well curated label is still the best bet at finding more of related sounds when you're attuned to their frequency. Self releasing platforms like the growing audience direct community of Bandcamp, have made the record label less central. Yet it remains the case that the record label can often be a superior path toward discovering new cultures and artists amid the over-abundance of the online world. In the way of cutting edge electronic and experimental sounds, Raster-Noton, Tri-Angle, Blackest Ever Black, PAN, Editions Mego, and Touch, have all delivered catalogs of quality, often groundbreaking work this year. Experimental, black and doom metal continued it's influential hybridization on labels like Southern Lord, Deathwish, Sargent House, Profound Lore, and Relapse. Neoclassical and chamber music were served by labels like Erased Tapes, and Denovali, as well as centuries-spanning institutions like Deutsche Grammophon expanding into the territory of young contemporary composers like Max Richter, and Jóhann Jóhannsson. American indies like Sacred Bones and Temporary Residence continued to step up their game, with ever expanding diversification and discovery of new talent. In the world of modern jazz, Scandinavia continues to dominate the field of innovation, Johannes Rød's recent, "Free Jazz and Improvisation on Vinyl 1965-1985" published by Norwegian vanguard imprint Rune Grammofon traced independent free jazz and improv labels between 1965 and 1985, from the beginning of ESP-Disk through to the ascendant digital formats. With some 60 labels are covered in the volume, and forewords by Mats Gustafsson and label founder, Rune Kristoffersen, there are few better single introductions to this particular brand of what The Guardian's Richard Williams calls, "Norwegian Blues". The significance of the ECM label to the extended Scandinavian scene and it's embracing of classical, jazz, improvisation and experimentation, can't be overstated. The year also saw existing and new American imprints releasing work pushing at the boundaries of the very definition of jazz, bold forays into form and style were heard on Eremite and Chicago's International Anthem. 

Reissue imprints expanded their catalogs with titles spanning decades of overlooked, rare and seminal work. RVNG continues to release lost wonders from the fringes of psychedelia and early electronic music, as well as adventurous contemporary work, with a willful obliviousness to genre. Black Editions have begun their massive undertaking of reissuing the back catalog of legendary Japanese label P.S.F. with the passing of the label's maven, Hideo Ikeezumi. As an introduction, you'd not go wrong in making your point of entry into this world Alan Cummings piece for Forced Exposure on the origins of Keiji Haino, and his influential role in the deep Japanese underground of the 1970s, "Pitch-Black Convulsions: Watashi Dake? in the Context of Underground Japan". The San Francisco Bay Area label, Superior Viaduct have continued their strong launch by reaching further into he discographies of post-punk, modern composition, out-rock and free jazz. And UK-based labels Soul Jazz and WRWTFWW have unearthed some rare and much sought-after gems this past year in the form of Yasuaki Shimizu's "Kakashi" and Midori Takada's "Through the Looking Glass" from her incomparable soundworld explored by The Guardian in their, "Ambient Pioneer Midori Takada: 'Everything on this Earth has a Sound'". Concurrently, on the other side of the planet American's own brief bloom of synth psychedelia, and Germany's Kosmische electronics were both documented on Soul Jazz' "Deutsche Elektronische Musik: Experimental German Rock and Electronic Music 1971-81" and "Space, Energy and Light: Experimental Electronic and Acoustic Soundscapes 1961 - 88". The year saw an endless stream of shock, horror and genre cinema soundtrack reissues . The landscape these bands and composers have re-emerged into has been unquestionably shaped by the burgeoning reissue revival mining decades of subterranean soundtracks, musique concrete, neofolk, jazz and experimental work that have adorned much of the 20th Century's cult cinema. These rich veins continue to be mined by reissue institutions like, Death Waltz, Mondo, and WaxWork, in new editions often corresponding with restorations and re-release of quality archival imprints for genre film like Arrow Films and Scream Factory. There are seeming whole new genres being born of the thematic beds of atmosphere and constructed worlds of Italian Giallo, French Fantastique and British Psychedelic, Pagan and Folk Horror of the late 1960s and 70s. As well as the following American horror explosion of the late 1970s and 80s, and the lines of kinship shared with the composers of early electronic music and concrete psychedelia who produced many of the soundtracks of the time.

In pursuit of related atmospheres of the corrupted, disused and abandoned landscapes, both real and imagined, the essential reading from Frieze, "Decline and Fall: Tracing the History of Ruins in Art, from 18th-Century Painting to 21st-century Film", maps an emergent art of ruins that can be found in the world of the Hauntological. The Wire offering the greatest tutorial of the musical branch hosted by Mark Fisher aka K-Punk, with their "Revenant Forms: The Meaning Of Hauntology", describing the collective headspace of "Alternative Nostalgia" as coined by Phil Harrison in the pages of The Quietus. Pye Corner Audio are perhaps the most purist in their recreation and reclamation of our proto-electronic heritage. While their music fits in nicely with the techno-mystic cult built up by other early practitioners around the likes of J.G. Ballard, M.R. James, Nigel Kneale, and the a reverie for all things BBC Radiophonic Workshop, it's conceptually less abstruse and sonically more authentic. With the great majority of Pye Corner's output sounding like it could have been recorded pre-1984. What his work shares with Ballard, and some of his 1980s offspring like David Cronenberg and John Carpenter is the fascination for desolate spaces of leaded, weighty tension and a pre-computer era mix of future-fantasy and weary trepidation for our imminent 21st Century technoscape. The now-retro aspect of Dystopian Modernity that The Oxford Dictionary attributes to Ballard's work as being occupied with "eros, thanatos, mass media and emergent technologies", is more explicitly realized in the loose collective of artists around London's The Outer Church, Front & Follow, and the themes of Julian House's Ghost Box label. House himself being the preeminent Hauntological practitioner of "Magical Unrealism" in the world of graphic design and aesthetics. Work that should be considered alongside his compatriot, Richard Littler's Scarfolk Council, in it's sculpting of their own "Alternative Nostalgia" as a darkly mystic parallel perception of the era. Littler's ongoing project stands as a fully realized plumbing of the paranoid, propagandistic, discomfiting spaces depicting, "Why the 1970s was the Most Terrifying Decade".

In live music this year offered up massive servings from the particular low lit territory branching out from the global offshoots of black and doom metal. No small percentage of the lineup of the inaugural Northwest Terror Fest comprised these explorers of the metal hinterlands. With a previous Southwest iteration, Terror Fest's three days and nights at Seattle's Neumos, Barboza and The Highline, were assembled under the compelling opportunity to, "Bring Warning to America: An Interview with Terrorfest founder David Rodgers". Rodger's wider curatorial vision for the festival was detailed in Decibel's, "It's Good to Have Goals and Dreams Can Come True". His programming for the Northwest edition encompassing everything from the gloaming atmosphere and doom riffs of Wolves in the Throne Room, to Samothrace, Graves at Sea, Cephalic Carnage, Cult Leader, Yob, Heiress, Bell Witch, and the dark neofolk of Marissa Nadler. The unexpected reforming of many of the most notable of the 1990s shoegaze and dreampop bands, some "25 Years After its Imperial Phase", has been surprising in its diversity and success. The most improbable return of them all came when it was announced that Slowdive would be performing a one-off at the Primavera Sound Festival in 2014. Following in the wake of the massively received event, the band recognizing the ongoing dedication of their fanbase in interview with The Quietus, "There Seems To Be A Lot Of Love Out There: A Slowdive Interview", suggesting the very real possibility of a reformation as the, "Slowdive Reunion Expands with More Shows, Possibility of New Music". This past summer they reassemble for the first new recordings in 22 years on the self titled "Slowdive" for Bloomington Indiana independent label, Dead Oceans. Home to Ryley Walker's folk-concrete tapestries and the the spectral vocal transmissions of Juliana Barwick. The label is a perfect framing for the album, which concurrently offers a poppier expansion of their sound while retaining all the abstract charm of their greatest work.

Modernism, experimentation and the avant-garde were served up by performances from the last living member of one the vanguard German synth outfits of the 1970s, and the Ukrainian progenitor of Continuous Music. Kosmische would very well not exist without the trio of explorers, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Dieter Moebius, and Conrad Schnitzler, and their ventures together as Cluster. The elder and final member of this defining outfit, Roedelius chronicled their genesis within the Krautrock and Kosmnische scenes for Perfect Sound Forever as an outcome of Schnitzler's love of Joseph Beuys and the Fluxus movement. On the night of his extended performance in Seattle one could hear the confluence of Elektronische and Krautrock, alongside the reciprocal inspiration the trio had on the then-developing solo career of Brian Eno. The legendary producer's now canonical "Music for Films" and first volume in the ambient series, "Music for Airports" followed directly on the heels of the collaborations spawned by this meeting of "Cluster & Eno", and their second album, "After the Heat". Cluster's legacy extending far beyond 1970s and early 80s European synthesizer music, their hand can be seen in "The Discreet Music of Brian Eno", and the very formation of modern ambient music. This year also saw the return of Ukrainian composer Lubomyr Melnyk after his appearance at the final Northwest edition of Substrata Festival. His self-coined Continuous Music bears some relation to the longform Indian Ragas of LaMonte Young or Terry Riley, while embracing the density of Charlemagne Palestine, wedded to the repetitive patterned dichotomy of minimalism vs maximalism heard in Steve Reich or Philip Glass. Through marathon performances bending those forms to the service of tonal, harmonious beauty, the composer's perspective from the piano bench sees him, "Lightning-fast Pianist Lubomyr Melnyk: 'When I Play I Turn into an Eagle Flying'". Returning for his fourth occasion in Seattle, Typonexus Globalist Series presented two nights hosted at their Nuclear Recital series and Chapel Performance Space, featuring music from this, "Enigmatic Ukrainian-born Pianist, Who Looks like Rasputin's Doppelgänger".

Contemporary electronics were seen and heard in two deeply explorative sets from The Head Technician himself, Martin Jenkins, and the return of Sean Canty and Miles Whittaker's refashioning of dance music into a cerebral body-impacting experience of noise and rhythm. Jenkins appearing in the unlikeliest of settings within Upstream Festival under his Pye Corner Audio moniker, working a set from his masterful "Stasis" album for Julian House's Ghost Box label. And on the following night, a enveloping evening of music from The House in the Woods, transported a private living room concert setting into a one-off extra-spacial dimension. Canty and Whittaker's work as Demdike Stare has expressed influences equally from mid-Century Modernism, concrete and late 1970s and 80s industrial, alongside two decades of British underground techno, bass and garage music. A sound The Quietus called, "An Unholy Matrimony: In Interview with Demdike Stare", probably best epitomized by their collected "Elemental" series of 2012. The Wire's cover feature on the duo dug deep into their circumnavigation of the pigeonholing that Canty and Whittaker began to find themselves in following the collection's release. The dance music signifiers more boldly displayed in the distended takes on UK bass music and jungle, as heard on the "Test Pressing" series successfully led to the recalibrating of their listenership for the next move in, "How Demdike Stare Traded Darkness for Dancefloor Naivety on Wonderland". Both the duo's night at Kremwerk this past summer, and "Wonderland" are of two minds; a frisson-charged electronic dance music album with peripheral vantages into an inner, brooding persona. The resulting hours of darkly propulsive, rhythmic dancefloor moves, listened as a precision-honed assembly of fractured and angular concrete sounds bent and refashioned to workmanlike utility.