Serein

Four panel CD Digipak with clear tray, sleeve printed on the reverse for natural matt finish. Performing as The Greatest Hoax, Washington, D.C.-based composer Taylor Jordan debuts a new conceptual album of contemporary classical music. Produced by Rafael Anton Irisarri, Expiration Compositions, his sophomore album presents a brooding yet hopeful take on a soundtrack to a peaceful death. Jordan displays an innately human fear of death through nine sequential tracks grounded in somber piano and ambient textures. Each composition adds nuanced layers of emotional complexity with the addition of a string quartet led by cellist Mark Bridges of Kranky Records. Expiration Compositions melds a fascination with how life ends with brave imaginations of that very process. The result is an album that disconnects the listener from daily life while guiding them gently through that which most frightens them.

CD edition of He She Them Us. Housed in a 4 page Digipak with clear tray and sleeve printed on reverse for a tactile matt finish. He She Them Us is an album of precise, purposeful electronica that recalls and expands upon the output of labels like Mille Plateaux, April Records, raster-noton and City Centre Offices in the early 2000s. The music is not purely electronic though, atop the bursts of static and staccato beats are many layers of field recordings and live instrumentation. The field recordings represent an important anchor point for Andrejs whose work on He She Them Us began at a very turbulent time in his life. Finding solace in the stillness and beauty of the countryside around his home city of Riga, he would record the sounds of these places and return with them to his home studio: "Each time I went to visit a secluded corner of nature outside my hometown, I usually felt a strong desire to produce music. Especially when hearing the sounds again at home”. The music could be seen as a further distillation of these moments of reflection spent outside, an attempt to recreate some fleeting moment. The live instrumentation throughout brings another dimension to the work. Andrejs himself plays grand piano and electric piano, we also hear double bass, bowed strings, saxophone and guitar. These elements bring a warm, humane quality to the music and each instrument is played with absolute finesse. One feels that great care has been taken to allow breathing space for every new moment that unfolds. No matter if it’s a piano note or a field recording, each is savoured and treated with the same respect. Every sound has a purpose without ever seeming contrived. Obviously, Andrejs is a composer and producer to whom the finer details matter a great deal.