This month’s top 10 albums really is of the highest quality and bodes well for what has already been a super productive 2010…

1. Anna Rose – Silver Lines

Silver Lines’, forthcoming on Schedios Records literally bathes in beauty as the young artist Anna Rose creates majestic piano structured compositions that have an atmospheric portrait attached to them unlike anything I have heard for some time. It’s almost like a fusion of Nils Frahm meets Peter Broderick! Quite a statement I know, but that’s just how good this work is. Full details here

2. Simon Scott- Nivalis

The whole time i was writing this piece the snow just never stopped falling so i had this amazing visual flow that inspired me to keep on throwing musical ideas into the track. I had no intention to venture outside so I just kept on recording for two days, mixing as i went along, until the snow stopped. I added recordings of me clearing snow and ice from my doorstep whilst my heater was working flat out to push the sub zero temperatures up a few degrees. I see NIVALIS as a tribute to the winter, the snow and the beauty of how the seasons change here in England. – Simon Scott. Full details here

3. Dustin O’halloran – Vorleben

It could be argued that Dustin O’Halloran epitomises the new generation of ‘classical’ and classically-inspired musician/composers of recent years. Favouring heart-wrenching melodies and floating structures over atonal experimentation and avant-garde deconstruction, O’Halloran’s music exists to blow the cobwebs from your seldom-touched heart-strings and pull on them with a gentle force that many contemporary composers have long forgotten. Full details here

4. Various: Music & Migration

The compilation album Music & Migration really is music for the birds – its 21 tracks inspired by both the miracle of the migratory impulse and the human-inspired peril of avian life today. A showcase for the finest in contemporary post-classical composition, idiosyncratic folksong and pastoral soundscaping, it’s an album with a charitable raison d’etre that just happens to offer 75 minutes of bewitching, immersive sounds and stands as an enticing survey of where left-of-centre music is at in 2010. To put it another way, the first great compilation album of the new decade has arrived. Full details here

5. Hessien – Skurjn

Hessien usually occurs somewhere between the UK and Australia, somewhere between the hours of 11pm and 6am (Southern Hemisphere) & 9am and 8pm (Northern Hemisphere) Hessien is made up of acoustic noise artist Charles Sage (Australia) and Tim Diagram (UK). They collided through a coincidence and were pleased to note that the collision has produced an EP – ‘Skurjn’, to be released 29th January. ‘Skurjn’ is the first EP from Hessien, is limited to 100 copies (worldwide) and housed in hand-stitched cork sleeves (from a sustainable source) Full details here

6. Kyle Bobby Dunn – A Young Person’s Guide To

Spread across two cds with a total running time of nearly two hours, ‘A Young Person’s Guide To…’ is a stunning collection of recordings from New York based minimalist composer and sound artist Kyle Bobby Dunn. Four tracks on the first disc originally appeared as the download only album ‘Fervency’, released by the Moodgadget label in 2009. Impressed by Dunn’s sensitive and world-wise compositions, it was felt that the music deserved to be released on a physical format and expanded upon with a second disc containing an additional 60 minutes of music gathered from the same period as the ‘Fervency’ recordings. Full details here

7. Laura Veirs – July Flame

We’re very excited about this – the return of Laura Veirs to Bella Union with an album so wonderful it may well be her finest to date. The album title is “July Flame” and it was record at her Portland home with the help of friends Tucker Martine, Karl Blau, Steve Moore Eyvind Kang, Stephen Barber and My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, who described their relationship like this: “Laura’s like the queen bee and my ear is her hive; she nests and makes honey in the hairs of my cochlea.” Full details here

8. Eric Chenaux – Warm Weather/Le Vieux Favori 4

It’s a tuff call to try and sum up this gorgeous little ep to be honest as we have two tracks that flow with so much beauty and yet at the same time are completely oposite in style. If you want to experience a quirky little folk type selection on one side and a Richard Skelton meets Nordic string arrangements on the other then I say grab this ep ‘quick time’! Highly recommended! Full details here

9. Clem Leek – Through the Annular

The four tracks on this project comprise of gentle piano melodies that draw the listener in through the artists exquisite compositions demonstrating a calming, almost healing type effect that leave you feeling in a place of safety from memories long past. Just close your eyes whilst listening to ‘51°03.773? and experience the emotionally wrought piano and half-glimpsed sonic sturctures and you will know exactly what I mean. Using 78rpm vinyl crackle as a primary theme for each track, Clem manages to capture a timeless arrangement of compositions that generate a gentle atmosphere reminiscent of flickering black-and-white films. Full details here

10. Konntinent – Opal Island

The Konntinent sound is very much based on micro-elements I guess, at least this time around. Unlike his earlier drone-based work, ‘Opal Island’ has much more of Antony’s guitar playing to the fore, as it does the gorgeous vocals of Lisa Madisson on ‘Dry eyed’, as well as Antony’s own beautifully subtle singing. It has odd rhythms coming in and out, piano, weird glitchy sounds and tones I can’t quite place. Its all in the craftsmanship you see. Its very rare to come across an artist who actually makes ‘songs’ which can also be defined as ‘pieces’ – and as such his work is so hard to place. Full details here

Hold on to your hats as we announce what has to be one of the best various artist projects we have seen for some time thanks to the superb looking Second Language label…

The compilation album Music & Migration really is music for the birds – its 21 tracks inspired by both the miracle of the migratory impulse and the human-inspired peril of avian life today. A showcase for the finest in contemporary post-classical composition, idiosyncratic folksong and pastoral soundscaping, it’s an album with a charitable raison d’etre that just happens to offer 75 minutes of bewitching, immersive sounds and stands as an enticing survey of where left-of-centre music is at in 2010. To put it another way, the first great compilation album of the new decade has arrived.

Perhaps it’s an innate empathy with birdsong, or the fact that internationally touring artists enjoy a natural kinship with the notion of ‘migration’, but musicians do seem to have a particular affinity with our feathered friends (just ask The Byrds, Doves, Guillemots, Pigeon Detectives, Black Crowes, etc . . .) So when the nature conservation organisation BirdLife International (through their Born To Travel campaign) wanted to increase awareness about the burgeoning threat to the breeding grounds and ‘air lanes’ of migratory birds across the globe, it seemed logical to ask musicians to be the mediators of the message.

Co-ordinating the project was Copenhagen-based Martin Holm, who just happens to be one of the founders of a new, boutique subscription record label called Second Language (London-based musician Glen Johnson, of Piano Magic, and musician, writer and Brian Eno biographer David Sheppard, are his colleagues). Martin was eager to merge his two passions; bird conservation and music and, thus, what started as an online awareness promotion via MySpace quickly evolved into a physical album, populated by the musicians he and his colleagues love. Music & Migration is the delightful result.

The sophomore release on Second Language (the first, by Glen Johnson’s Textile Ranch project, has already sold out), Music & Migration, like all the label’s releases, contains only new and exclusive tracks and is released in a super-limited edition, with much attention given to its luxurious, hand-tooled, recycled packaging.

1. Hauschka Lipstick Race
2. David John Sheppard Small Town Raptor
3. Vashti Bunyan Here (Demo)
4. Danny Norbury The Lovers
5. Xela Autumn Prayer
6. Heather Woods Broderick Suture
7. Enderby’s Room Tiptoe
8. The Declining Winter Red Kite
9. Ghostwriter Even Solemnity In The Instruments (Farina’s Automatic Translation Machine)
10. Darren Hayman Summer Visitors
11. Gareth S. Brown Over Biscay
12. Peter Broderick Untitled For Violins
13. Lene Charlotte Holm Tracing Echoes
14. ANT Magpies (Demo)
15. brave timbers Let’s Never Go Back
16. Carousell Black Swallow
17. Seasons (pre-din) A Night Alone Pt. 2
18. Winter Cabin Swifts And Swallows
19. Fieldhead Open Show
20. Library Tapes Another Field
21. Leyland Kirby Whiffling

Grab it here and be super quick!

www.secondlanguagemusic.com