Jan 232017
 

Many musicians aspire to blend the old and the new, but few do so as dramatically as Alexander Vitzthum. What he considers the “old” on his upcoming album is not ’60s soul or ’50s beach-pop. He went centuries further back, to the monks’ vocal tradition of Gregorian Chant. And for the “new” side of the equation, he used the latest in electronics: vocoders, samples, computer effects.

It makes for a wild and surprising combination, hearing Gregorian chanting sounding like if Aphex Twin joined a monastery. Vitzthum has released one song so far in what he calls The Electric Requiem, his version of the traditional “Requiem Aeternam (Introit),” and promises more to come.

“I had this concept of mixing the classical music I studied in school with the electronic music that I’ve come to love since graduating,” he tells us. “These two things haven’t been blended before as far as I know, and so I wanted to push the idea further with this piece – the idea of combining the oldest western music we have with the newest. It’s set up as a call-and-response between the solo voice (cantus firmus) and the vocoder ensemble with some musical ideas interspersed. I sampled myself singing the traditional hymn tones, then added the vocoder and effects.” Continue reading »

Jan 122017
 
chance mcniff

In a blog post last year on reclusive electronic producer Chance McNiff, Vermont alt-weekly Seven Days wrote, “McNiff has been slightly dormant in putting out his creative production — [latest release] Sequoiahedron was released in 2013. Maybe if we clap our hands and believe, he’ll magically produce new tracks for us to ponder.” Well, it must have worked because a few days ago McNiff quietly dropped a new EP on Bandcamp. Titled Thoughts Count, the album is spare and haunting, channeling at times the ambient sides of Aphex Twin or Nicolas Jaar. Continue reading »