Follow the Fellow #11

Winter in Berlin is a bet many Berliners choose not to take. Understandable, although I have to admit: the second winter here feels less intimidating than the first. As soon as your body adjusts to low light intensity and the lukewarm apartments, you start learning to savor the simple joys of outdoor Glühwein dégustation and the occasional bliss of a cloudless day. And that’s what I wish you, my dear reader, wherever you are.      

With this year’s last entry, I have no heavy content for you, only entertainment. As everybody’s flexing their 2024 Wrapped, who am I to abstain? Here are a few recordings I discovered this year that stuck with me:

Various Artists — Drones for Drones, Volume 3
KYIVPASTRANS Records is a Ukrainian label founded in 2022 by Clemens Pool, an amazing artist I featured in FtF before. This is the third compilation Clemens released to support the Fallout Noise Volunteer Collective. The deal is simple: you buy drones (and some dark ambient and noise for good measure) to satisfy your inner demons, while your honest buck goes into purchasing a different kind of drones that help Ukrainians survive daily. Little bonus for INM people: Volume 3 features a track by the one and only Sagardía.

Milton Nascimento, Lô Borges — Clube da Esquina
I found this 1972 gem from Brazil thanks to The Album Years podcast and it has to be one of the most beautiful things I’ve heard in years. Pure delight through and through.

Carla Boregas — Pena ao Mar
Continuing with Brazilian music, here’s a debut album by this year’s Weltoffenes Berlin fellow Carla Boregas. »Pena ao Mar« is tactile, meditative, and everchanging. Once you get entangled in its textures, the only way out is when the album is over.    

Indirect — Ab Pharmacy
Indirect are Odesa Krautrock legends. What else is there to say? Only that this 2014 album as well as its incredible successor, 2016’s »Ode to the Sea,« were released by Muscut, another Ukrainian label you must follow from now on. Yes, that’s an order.

Georg Friedrich Haas — 11.000 Saiten
I gotta thank my KCMD fellows for introducing me to Haas. Initially curious about the sheer ambition of creating a piece for 50 microtonally attuned pianos and chamber orchestra, I was blown away by »11.000 Strings« from the first listen. Warning: the recording may trigger an irresistible urge to buy a ticket to the next Haas concert.

Chassol — Big Sun
Christophe Chassol traveled to Martinique, his family’s birthplace, and returned with a collection of bird songs, spoken word, whistling, rapping, and colorful ambient sounds that he harmonized and put to rhythm in a delightful jazzy assemblage that is »Big Sun.«

Ensemble Organum — Guillaume de Machaut: Messe de Notre-Dame
As soon as I heard it, I got simply bewitched (though a more Christian word would be appropriate) by this record and couldn’t get enough of it. We may never know how true this rendition is to the medieval score, but I appreciate the artistic audacity Marcel Pérès and Ensemble Organum had to approach this seminal work and the freshness they brought to it.

~

May the coming year bring us all more music and less air-raid sirens.

See you safe and sound in 2025!

»Follow the Fellow« is made possible as part of the Weltoffenes Berlin fellowship program of the Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt.