#ghost ensemble

Composed by Catherine Lamb Performed by Ghost Ensemble

Margaret Lancaster: flute Sky Macklay: oboe Ben Richter: accordion Lucia Stavros: harp Chris Nappi: hammered dulcimer Martine Thomas: viola Tyler J Borden: cello James Ilgenfritz: contrabass Gregory Chudzik: contrabass

Recorded at The Bunker Studio, Brooklyn, New York, NY

Aux Meadows — Draw Near (self-released)

Lea Bertucci + Olivia Block — I Know the Number of the Sand and the Measure of the Sea (Room40) A first meeting, hopefully not the last, between avant musicians Lea Bertucci and Olivia Block, this recording is at turns exploratory and emphatic in compositions that use just the basics, reel-to-reel tape recorders, a few field recordings, and Bertucci’s voice. The outcomes are anything but basic, rather seeming like an essential example of both artists’ work.

Sir Richard Bishop — Hillbilly Ragas (Drag City)

Circuit des Yeux — Halo on the Inside (Matador)

Flock of Dimes — The Life You Save (Sub Pop)

Rebecca Foon and Aliayta Foon-Dancoes — Reverie (Constellation) Violinist and cellist siblings join for an album of what might best be called contemporary classical. Rebecca Foon has post-rock bona fides and Aliayta Foon-Dancoes is both an accomplished composer and a Ph.D. candidate in Composition at Princeton. Their respective practices come together in music that befits the album’s title, meditative, at its best transportive.

Catherine Lamb / Ghost Ensemble — Interius/Exterius (Greyfade)

David Grubbs — Whistle From Above (Drag City)

Guided By Voices — Universe Room (GBV Inc.)

Jürg Frey / Reinier van Houdt — Composer, alone (Elsewhere)

Liza Lim — String Creatures (NMC) Composer Liza Lim’s writing for string instruments has become ever more pliable, with effects not used as decoration, but serving as fundamental components on both local and formal levels. String Creatures has been recorded by JACK Quartet, who are some of the best exponents one could hope for in this repertoire. Moving strings away from idiomatic playing techniques into a fluid environment in which noise inhabits the music alongside pitch and rhythm as an equal partner, the recording is both challenging and inspiring.

Alberto Ginastera/ Miró Quartet — String Quartets (Pentatone) Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983) was an Argentinian composer who used a broad palette of musical styles, incorporating folk music as well as clusters and microtones. His three string quartets include all the various musical elements that defined his work, and they are varied yet distilled concoctions that make a strong case for his profile to be raised. The Miró Quartet give these pieces attention and care, and it will prove difficult for another group to top them.

Jessica Moss — Unfolding (Constellation)

The Necks — Disquiet (Northern Spy)

Pierre Boulez / Quatuor Diotima — Livre pour Quatuor (Pentatone)

Pierre Boulez / Ralph van Raat — Piano Works (Naxos) This year was the centennial of composer/conductor Pierre Boulez’s birth and among the various tributes in the form of concerts, books, and recordings, pianist Ralph van Raat’s traversal of rare and underserved pieces is a real find, one that will contribute to the discourse surrounding Boulez’s watershed year of 1945, as well as the transition he made to different techniques in his late style.

Alan Sparhawk — With Trampled by Turtles (Sub Pop) After the loss of his wife and creative partner, Mimi Sparhawk, Alan Sparhawk disbanded their group Low and did a solo album (White Roses My God) which gave voice to the sometimes voicelessness of grief, the vocals distorted by the use of a vocoder. On With Trampled by Turtles, Sparhawk joins fellow Minnesotan artists for a recording that is a return to singing sans effects. While one misses Mimi’s voice being in the mix — probably always will — this successful new collaboration affords Alan the space to express a wide emotional range. One part of the mix of styles is the slowcore of Sparhawk and another is the alt-folk of TbT, which combines well. The music making is top notch too.

Joan Shelley — Real Warmth (No Quarter)

Squanderers — If a Body Meets a Body (Shimmy-Disc)

Teethe — Magic of the Sale (Winspear) Apparently, Denton, Texas has become a vital outpost for post-rock, as is evidenced by Teethe’s second album. The group’s members are members of several groups active in the scene, and The Magic of the Sale seems like a beginning of something, that there is a lot more music from Denton in the offing, which is a good thing.

Rafael Toral — Traveling Light (Drag City)

Tortoise — Touch (International Anthem/Nonesuch) A new Tortoise album so compelling that it makes their long hiatus seem like it was but just a brief absence. Welcome back to the greatest post-rock group.

Jeff Tweedy — Twilight Override (dBpm)

Gérard Grisey / Ukho Ensemble — VORTEX TEMPORUM (Kyiv Dispatch) I’m pretty sure that this is the first time I have received a recording from a war zone, but this made its way to me from Kyiv. It is an extraordinary document, a scintillating rendition of a late work by the spectral composer Gérard Grisey.

Interius/Exterius (2022) is a large-scale piece in which Lamb deals with the spatiality of sounds. As the title suggests, the juxtaposition of internal and external sounds is a primary guiding principle. Here these are defined as sounds working their way to the center of the ensemble grouping and outward to its periphery. Amid sustained winds and strings, the percussive attacks of harp and dulcimer provide signposts for ascertaining this deployment.

Lamb has cited Deep Listening (1986), awork by Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016) recorded in an empty cistern, as an influence. Deep Listening also refers to Oliveros’s practice that became an academic subdiscipline, complete with a program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Interius/Exterius was recorded at Bunker Studio in Brooklyn, not in a cistern, but its production by Matt Sargent and Joseph Branciforte affords the piece a spacious character. This abets the listener’s ascertainment of the movement throughout the ensemble of sonic material. Interius/Exterius would be a great piece to mix for surround sound. As is so often the case, a live hearing would be revelatory.

Lamb has spoken about her recent struggles with interiority and exteriority as a composer and as a person. While one hopes she can reconcile these elements, the ambiguity imparted by Interius/Exterius serves as a fascinating metaphor for the gradual growth that can be found in such lived experiences.