Unseen Worlds Vinyl & CDs

Review: Southern California-based composer and improviser David Rosenboom is a figure who can't quite be aligned to one particular school, his work slipping intriguingly through the cracks. A collaboration with vocalist Jacqueline Humbert, Daytime Viewing is an extraordinary narrative poem set over a song cycle consisting of six pieces. Quietly released privately in 1983, Unseen Worlds has brought this seminal work back into view along with a full remastering. Exploring ideas of absurdist theatricality, TV soap operas, commercialism, and family, Humbert's voice and Rosenboom's production merge to create a landscape that is at once lush yet also dystopian. An entirely unique release that invites endless study.

Review: How far can a single artist take a time-honoured musical trope: the piano solo? Josiah Steinbrick attempts to answer the question not in words, but in ivories, with his newest album For Anyone That Knows You, a bewitching hybrid compositional project that puts the chordophonal instrument centre-stage. Allegedly, the album was recorded not for smoothness or posterity but to emphasise the piano as an object, as well as the person playing it and the moment in which it resounds. On top of that, its ten original compositions - cathartic and ecstatic - are backed up by covers of songs from Peruvian, Creole, and Malian traditions, as well as the much-sought saxophone backings of one Sam Gendel.