There are composers who write music as if they were building monuments, and others who compose as if they were patiently weaving threads. Lithuanian composer Justina Repeckaite undoubtedly belongs to the latter category. Her debut portrait album, "Tapestries", gathers works spanning more than a decade, from 2012 to 2024, but this is far more than a retrospective. It feels like wandering through a carefully curated exhibition where each room reveals another facet of an artistic language shaped equally by architecture, medieval symbolism, acoustics, and an unusually tactile understanding of sound.

Now based in Paris after studies in Lithuania, France, and at the renowned IRCAM, Repeckaite has quietly become one of the Baltic region's most compelling contemporary voices. Her catalogue reveals an obsession with materiality: sounds are rarely treated as abstract entities but as textures that can be folded, embroidered, layered or carved, much like the textile metaphors that recur throughout her work. Architecture, illuminated manuscripts, stained glass and ancient craftsmanship are not decorative references but structural models that influence the music's internal logic.

The album opens with "Chartres", inspired by the famous cathedral's South Rose Window. One could easily fear an exercise in programmatic illustration, but Repeckaite avoids picturesque gestures altogether. Instead, overlapping orchestral layers gradually assemble into something resembling light passing through coloured glass. Rather than depicting the cathedral, she captures the experience of standing inside it, where geometry quietly transforms into emotion.

Throughout the programme, her fascination with the human voice emerges repeatedly, often in unexpected ways. "Incantare" asks the flautist to sing while playing, creating unstable timbral collisions between breath, melody and whispered incantations. Built entirely from recordings of the composer's own voice, the electronic layer never feels artificial. It breathes, rustles and hovers like an invisible chorus somewhere between folklore and psychoacoustics. One begins listening for melodies, only to discover that breathing itself has become the melody.

"Tapisserie", arguably her signature work, embodies her compositional philosophy most clearly. Individual instrumental attacks are interwoven until they lose their separate identities, becoming a single living fabric whose colours constantly shift without ever unraveling. The process resembles watching an artisan at work from so close that the final image disappears, replaced by the hypnotic rhythm of the weaving itself.

Repeckaite frequently draws inspiration from historical sources without becoming nostalgic. "La Cité des Dames", based on Christine de Pizan's fifteenth-century proto-feminist text, transforms six soprano lines into a luminous polyphonic architecture. Particularly remarkable is Kanae Mizobuchi's performance, patiently layering every vocal part herself until the composition becomes an intimate conversation between multiple versions of the same voice. It is simultaneously fragile and monumental, like discovering that a cathedral has been built entirely from whispers.

Elsewhere, "Sturnus vulgaris cohibitus" transforms lockdown observations of starlings into an unpredictable dialogue between piano and electronically animated birdsong. The concept could easily have collapsed into novelty, but instead becomes an elegant meditation on coexistence, where the pianist seems less interested in controlling nature than negotiating with it. The birds, predictably, refuse to behave according to the score. One suspects they never signed the recording contract.

The orchestral "Vellum" demonstrates Repeckaite's growing confidence with large forces, building its harmonic language from the resonant behaviour of percussion membranes while drawing poetic parallels between parchment and skin, manuscript and vibration. Even when the orchestra reaches moments of considerable intensity, the music never loses its extraordinary sense of precision. Every gesture feels inevitable rather than merely dramatic.

The album concludes with "La muë", perhaps the collection's most ambitious work, combining serpent, children's choir and electronics in a meditation on vocal transformation inspired by an eighteenth-century scientific treatise. Here Repeckaite once again demonstrates her remarkable ability to merge historical materials with cutting-edge technology without allowing either to dominate. Ancient instruments, spatial audio processing and human voices become parts of the same evolving organism.

What makes "Tapestries" particularly rewarding is its refusal to separate intellectual ambition from sensory pleasure. Contemporary composition sometimes risks becoming either academically opaque or emotionally simplistic. Repeckaite occupies a far more interesting middle ground. Her music is meticulously constructed, yet never feels imprisoned by its own concepts. Beneath the architectural proportions, mathematical relationships and elaborate timbral research lies an unmistakable curiosity about how humans actually listen.

Perhaps that explains why the album succeeds so completely as a portrait. Like an intricately woven textile, its beauty is visible from afar, but its real fascination emerges only when leaning closer, discovering that every thread carries its own story while remaining inseparable from the whole. In an era obsessed with immediate impact, "Tapestries" quietly reminds us that some of the most enduring works reveal themselves stitch by stitch.

Few artists have mapped the emotional geography of stillness with the consistency of Will Long. Whether working alongside Danielle Baquet during Celer's formative years or continuing the project alone after 2009, Long has turned ambient music into an exercise in perception rather than decoration. His vast discography often feels like an endless diary written in drones and dissolving memories, where each release quietly expands the vocabulary of absence. "Poulaine", originally conceived between 2007 and 2009 as the sonic counterpart to an exhibition of fourteenth-century manuscripts, returns through Room40 not merely as a reissue but as a document from a particularly fertile period in Celer's evolution, restored and contextualized without sacrificing its youthful uncertainty.

The story behind the album is almost as compelling as the music itself. Long recalls long nights spent with Danielle Baquet surrounded by medieval imagery, improvised tape loops, notebooks filled with fragments of poetry, and a hybrid workflow balancing analogue experimentation with digital processing. Rather than treating the manuscripts as historical objects, they approached them like mirrors whose reflections became increasingly distorted with every layer of tape reversal, reverberation and manipulation. It is an approach that now feels surprisingly prophetic. At a time when algorithmic perfection dominates so much contemporary production, "Poulaine" proudly preserves every fingerprint left by experimentation.

The opening "Misinterpreted Renaissance" immediately announces that this is not an exercise in historical reconstruction. Medieval paintings become blurred memories rather than visual references, translated into slow-moving harmonic vapours that seem suspended between chapel acoustics and faulty cassette machines. Throughout the thirteen concise compositions, Long avoids the monumental scale often associated with ambient music. Instead, each miniature behaves like a small illuminated manuscript itself: modest in duration, yet packed with microscopic details that only reveal themselves through patient listening.

Track titles such as "Floating Cells", "Empty Buckets Over The Sky", "Fleshy Trumpets", or the wonderfully philosophical "Wonder If It Was Really Worth It To Wonder" suggest surrealist poetry more than compositional roadmaps. Thankfully, the music follows suit. One almost expects Salvador Dalí to wander through a monastery carrying a reel-to-reel recorder. Thankfully he never did. Conservators already have enough nightmares without surrealists introducing magnetic tape into the fourteenth century.

Despite its conceptual origins, "Poulaine" never feels academic. Long's gift has always been his ability to let technical processes disappear behind emotional resonance. The elaborate chain of reversals, stereo manipulations and looping techniques described in the accompanying notes ultimately serves a simple purpose: to create uncertainty. Sounds arrive before they seem to exist, reverberations anticipate events that never quite happen, while melodies emerge like partially remembered dreams whose details dissolve the moment one tries to grasp them.

There is also something quietly touching about hearing this album today, knowing the collaborative relationship between Long and Baquet belongs to another chapter of Celer's history. The record becomes not simply an exploration of medieval art but an accidental portrait of two creative trajectories briefly intersecting before continuing in different directions. Long himself hints at this transient communion, and the music carries that bittersweet awareness without lapsing into sentimentality. Nostalgia here is not polished into something comforting; it remains slightly blurred, as memories generally are once enough years have passed.

Lawrence English's new mastering allows these fragile constructions additional breathing space while respecting the original material's intimate character. Nothing has been artificially enlarged. Instead, the subtle grain of tape, the gentle imperfections and the delicate spatial relationships feel newly illuminated, making this version less a restoration than the careful cleaning of an old fresco whose colours had quietly survived beneath centuries of dust.

"Poulaine" may not possess the overwhelming expansiveness of some later Celer releases, but that restraint is precisely its strength. It captures a fascinating moment when analogue process, personal history, visual art and emotional intuition briefly aligned without trying to explain themselves. Like the medieval manuscripts that inspired it, the work resists complete interpretation. Some margins remain undeciphered, some symbols never surrender their meaning.

Perhaps that is the album's greatest lesson. Not every archive exists to provide answers. Sometimes it simply reminds us that beauty often survives precisely because we never entirely understand it.

There is a peculiar moment that every composer secretly hopes for and simultaneously fears: the instant when a carefully cultivated musical language outgrows its original frame. Some projects become diluted when expanded, like adding too much water to good coffee. Others reveal dimensions that were always hiding beneath the surface. "Dafnie EXTENDED: Live at Moldejazz" belongs emphatically to the latter category.

Danish-born, Oslo-based saxophonist and composer Amalie Dahl has rapidly become one of the most compelling figures in the flourishing Scandinavian jazz scene. After studying at NTNU in Trondheim, she steadily built a reputation through projects such as "Breaking/Building Habits", collaborations with Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and several adventurous ensembles, while her quintet Dafnie established itself as a vehicle where rigorous composition and fearless improvisation coexist without either one bullying the other. Rather than treating free jazz as an excuse for chaos or composition as an exercise in control, Dahl has consistently sought the unstable territory where both impulses strengthen one another.

This live recording documents the world premiere of the expanded twelve-piece version of Dafnie at Moldejazz in 2025, and the enlargement feels entirely organic. The original quintet has not simply recruited reinforcements; it has evolved into something resembling a living ecosystem. The additional brass, electronics, accordion, piano, second double bass and second drummer create an ensemble capable of changing its density almost instantaneously, moving from whispering chamber music to orchestral turbulence with astonishing agility.

The opening "Intro" serves less as a traditional introduction than as the slow lifting of a curtain. Textures emerge cautiously, as if each musician is testing the acoustics of the room before committing to the collective narrative. Dahl's writing often begins with deceptively modest melodic fragments, allowing repetition and subtle variation to generate momentum rather than relying on obvious thematic statements. It is an approach that recalls aspects of minimalist thinking without ever becoming mechanically repetitive.

As the performance unfolds through "Floating" and "Drifting_Turning", the ensemble demonstrates remarkable discipline. Large jazz orchestras often resemble committees attempting spontaneous conversation, admirable in theory, occasionally exhausting in practice. Here, however, every voice retains its individuality while contributing to an unmistakably unified sound. Oscar Andreas Haug's trumpet, Henriette Eilertsen's flute and electronics, Sofia Salvo's baritone saxophone, Lisa Ullén's piano and Anna Ueland's synthesizer continuously reshape the harmonic landscape without cluttering it.

Perhaps the most striking achievement lies in the rhythm section. Having two double bassists, Nicolas Leirtrø and Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, alongside two drummers, Trym Karlsen and Veslemøy Narvesen, could easily produce excessive density. Instead, the quartet functions almost architecturally, constructing shifting foundations that allow the horns extraordinary freedom. Rather than merely keeping time, they generate landscapes upon which the music continually rebuilds itself.

"Parallels" beautifully illustrates Dahl's compositional philosophy. Melodic cells circulate among the musicians like shared thoughts, gradually accumulating emotional weight without ever settling into predictable resolutions. Solos emerge naturally from the ensemble rather than interrupting it, reinforcing the impression that individuality here exists only through dialogue. It is collective improvisation understood not as simultaneous freedom but as mutual responsibility.

The emotional center of the album may arrive with "Slow Motion". Its spacious pacing allows silence to become almost as expressive as sound. Every sustained note seems to carry the memory of the previous phrase while anticipating the next. There is remarkable confidence in allowing music to breathe. In an era where many recordings appear terrified of empty space, Dahl demonstrates that restraint often carries greater dramatic force than perpetual activity.

When "In Flux" finally erupts into dense, energetic passages, the release feels entirely earned. Free jazz energy is abundant here, but never gratuitous. The ensemble doesn't explode because improvisers are contractually obliged to reach maximum volume at some point. It expands because the internal logic of the composition demands it. That distinction makes all the difference.

The concluding "Longing" offers an appropriately reflective ending. Rather than delivering a triumphant finale, Dahl allows the music to gradually dissolve into openness, suggesting that the performance represents one moment within a much longer ongoing conversation. It is an ending that resists closure, inviting repeated listening instead of providing definitive answers.

The live recording itself deserves special mention. Capturing a twelve-piece ensemble without sacrificing clarity is no small accomplishment, and the production preserves both the physical impact of the larger passages and the intimacy of quieter interactions. One can almost visualize musicians listening as intensely as they play, a quality that separates genuine ensemble music from carefully organized simultaneity.

What makes "Dafnie EXTENDED" particularly rewarding is that it refuses to treat scale as spectacle. Bigger does not mean louder, busier or more virtuosic for its own sake. Instead, Dahl uses the expanded instrumentation to deepen her exploration of texture, movement and collective expression. The orchestra becomes less a monument than a breathing organism, constantly adapting while preserving its identity.
There is also something quietly optimistic about this music. At a time when so much contemporary culture celebrates individual brilliance, Dahl places her faith in collaboration. Every musician contributes a distinct personality, yet none dominates the narrative. The result suggests that complexity need not produce confusion and that freedom can flourish precisely because structure exists.

"Dafnie EXTENDED: Live at Moldejazz" confirms Amalie Dahl as one of Europe's most imaginative composers working at the intersection of contemporary jazz and large ensemble improvisation. More importantly, it demonstrates that ambitious musical ideas do not require grandiosity to make their impact. Sometimes twelve musicians can sound less like an orchestra than like a single mind dreaming collectively, discovering, note by note, that expansion is not about occupying more space, but about listening more deeply to the space already there.

Another new artist signed to the favorite Canadian institution when it comes to service the listener with "stellar old school EBM and authentic complex, multi-layered dark electro" music - EAR (Electro Aggression Records) - presents us this time a German tank. Well, they pretend that there's actually a more in-depth hidden agenda behind this pseudonym ("Taktischer Angriff (auf’s) Nervenkostüm") but actually I like the more simplistic, evident meaning of this T.A.N.K.. And why beating a dead horse on this? It fits perfectly with the music expression of this solo effort established by Reinhard Hüber back in 2001.

Although Reinhard has made some first steps into music in the 90s with a Punk-Rock-project called Faust, he found his musically idendity under his T.A.N.K.-pseudonym and the close appearance to the slowly upcoming so-called Neo-Old-School EBM wave around Dessau and the later established Electric Tremor label (the so-called Anhalt-EBM-style), which can be seen as a counter-wave against the leading, repetitive Terrorbanana / Hellectro-formula produced by the ridiculous snap-light Cyber-kids. Actually, if you look on the historical content, it can be said that Reinhard was one of the first activists of this special neo-old-school EBM style. Luckily this all hasn't too much impact on Reinhard's music.

Back in 2003 he could release his debut album "Musica Denaturale" on the small label Ars Electrique, while in 2017 Reinhard made a first comeback after a longer break with his album "Return" released on the Electric Tremor label from Dessau. Ever since that he has ongoing produced music, played several live gigs and could gain attention by the EAR label.

T.A.N.K. isn't at all just another NEP-clone sounding project, because Reinhard always digs deeper to sqeeze out a more layered sound expression out of his mostly hardware-synthesizer-based arsenal in his studio. Especially his synthesizer pad- and lead-sounds and the attempt to add a much more dense song progression well-placed into his still biting and pummeling bassline-sequencing work deserves respect and separates him successfully from repititive-sounding colleagues. So if it comes to find acts which can be in some way compared with Reinhard's work I would call rather lesser known names like Image Transmission or IC434 as references.

So T.A.N.K. can be seen as a tradionalist with a sound design obviously inspired by the so-called second wave of EBM in the mid-90s and for this, Reinhard has a lot of sharp-sounding weapons to offer. Reinhard's mostly adament and angry-sounding voice roars mighty over his mostly danceable-produced tracks and leads often the scenario. He also often integrates counter-snare drums between the linear kick drums which adds the impression that some of the songs are faster and more compact for the listener. Dancefloor-movement is strictly allowed and notable here on most of his tracks.

"Broken Mirror" offers 13 original tracks plus you'll get 4 quality remix contributions by Reinhard's EAR-label colleagues of Pyrroline, Sleepwalk, Serpents, and Synaptic Defect. The album starts with the opener "Freedom" and the epic-sounding string- and pad-sounds invite the curious listener until the beats and Reinhard's shouts kick in to lead this track. "At War" picks this style up, pushes even harder forward with some pounding synth-basslines, and celebrates the above mentioned counter-snare works into a moving pogo inferno. No one said that classic old-school EBM isn't the field Reinhard plays in.

To pick out the highlights out of the 13 original tracks seems to be a bit challenging because it has to be said that all of them are sounding relative cohesive and united. There isn't a track which falls under the radar regarding the level of quality. It's moreover a matter of personal preferences I guess. Everyone would maybe call the nailing "Reject" with its classic EBM-basslines and the well-accented timbre of Reinhard's vocals as being a trademark track on "Broken Mirror", but personally I am quite fine with the almost catchy starting "Bloodsucker" with its nice pad layers - they finally shimmering through the whole track. And if an artist pretty much fascinated to explore all depths of the classic old-school EBM-field likes to present the listener a pure instrumental tune with "Far Away", which sounds even layered and thrilling enough for this attempt, then I have to applaude.

"Broken Mirror" is undoubtly Reinhard's most matured album so far and backed up by the label EAR was surely the right decision to keep the ball rolling for T.A.N.K.. This is a quite nice produced EBM-album which unites traditional elements of the mid-90s with a surprisingly layered sound-design. Not completely unique for sure and no stuff, which hasn't been discovered or heard anywhere else before - but Reinhard has found his very own and authentic sounding niche which he services well.

For a project carrying such an imperative name, Nicolas Leirtrø's Action Now! displays surprising patience beneath its explosive surface. The title may suggest urgency, but the music reveals something more nuanced: the slow construction of trust between musicians who understand that genuine freedom is impossible without structure, and that chaos only becomes meaningful when everyone agrees where the edges of the cliff are.

Norwegian double bassist and composer Nicolas Leirtrø has quietly become one of the most compelling figures of the Scandinavian creative music scene over the past decade. Whether through the hypnotic grooves of I LIKE TO SLEEP, collaborations with Amalie Dahl, Veslemøy Narvesen, Mats Gustafsson, Ståle Storløkken, or numerous other adventurous projects, he has consistently demonstrated an ability to balance compositional rigor with fearless improvisation. Less interested in virtuosity than in collective momentum, Leirtrø seems drawn toward situations where musical identities remain fluid rather than fixed.

"Entrance" feels like the natural culmination of that philosophy.

The quartet itself almost resembles a conversation between generations of European improvised music. Mats Gustafsson brings decades of uncompromising experience, Kit Downes contributes his uniquely lyrical yet adventurous harmonic language, Veslemøy Narvesen represents one of Norway's most exciting younger voices behind the drum kit, while Leirtrø acts less as leader than gravitational centre. Four musicians with remarkably different histories somehow arrive speaking the same language before anyone has formally introduced them.

That language is built on tension.

The press material references spiritual jazz and Gnawa traditions, and traces of both certainly emerge throughout the album. Yet "Entrance" never attempts stylistic reconstruction. Instead, it borrows deeper principles: repetition as transformation, groove as collective ritual, improvisation as communal discovery rather than individual display.

The opening title track wastes no time announcing the quartet's intentions. Dense bass figures, spectral organ sonorities and Gustafsson's unmistakable reeds immediately establish an atmosphere of restless anticipation. Downes' organ deserves particular attention throughout the record. Rather than functioning as harmonic support, it often behaves like shifting weather, surrounding the ensemble with clouds of resonance that continually reshape the music's emotional temperature.

It is remarkable how frequently the organ sounds haunted without ever becoming gothic.

As though an old cathedral had quietly decided it would rather host free jazz than Sunday mass.

Much of the album's success lies in its relationship with riffs.

Improvised music often distances itself from repetition, fearing predictability. Leirtrø embraces recurring figures instead, treating them as launch pads rather than destinations. The hypnotic bass motifs anchoring pieces such as "Darkness" gradually accumulate weight until Gustafsson's saxophone finds countless ways of circling, resisting and ultimately exploding beyond them. What initially appears stable becomes increasingly unstable, generating enormous dramatic tension without relying on conventional harmonic development.

Gustafsson, unsurprisingly, remains one of contemporary improvised music's most compelling voices.

His playing retains the astonishing physicality that has defined his career, capable of moving effortlessly between lyrical restraint and volcanic eruptions. Yet what impresses most here is not his intensity but his listening. Even during the record's loudest passages, every intervention feels conversational rather than confrontational.

Narvesen proves equally remarkable.

Her drumming avoids both traditional timekeeping and abstract texture for their own sake. Instead, she continually reshapes the ensemble's internal momentum, sometimes driving relentlessly forward, elsewhere introducing subtle hesitations that make the music breathe in unexpected ways. There is tremendous confidence in her refusal to fill every available space.

One of the album's most fascinating aspects involves Leirtrø's visual practice.

His lino-cut graphic scores serve not merely as artwork but as compositional foundations, blurring distinctions between image and sound. While listeners cannot directly observe these visual structures during playback, one senses their influence in the music's architectural clarity. Improvisation here never feels directionless. Invisible frameworks remain present, allowing spontaneity to unfold inside carefully imagined spaces.

The brief solo piece "Shapes of Noise for Double Bass" offers an illuminating glimpse into Leirtrø's personal vocabulary. Rather than showcasing technical prowess, he explores texture, resonance and physical gesture, reminding listeners that the double bass is as much an object of sound production as a melodic instrument.

Then comes "Action Now", perhaps the album's emotional and conceptual centrepiece.

Here everything converges: muscular riffing, ecstatic improvisation, slowly evolving harmonic landscapes and rhythmic propulsion that feels simultaneously grounded and airborne. The performance captures something increasingly rare in contemporary improvised music: genuine collective exhilaration. Nobody appears interested in demonstrating superiority. The excitement comes from watching four highly individual musicians repeatedly discover common purpose.

The closing "End Dance" feels exactly like its title suggests.

Not a triumphant finale, nor a gradual fading away, but a ritual completed. The energy remains present until the final moments, yet acquires unexpected tenderness, as though the quartet has travelled far enough together to no longer require constant intensity.

Throughout "Entrance", Leirtrø quietly challenges one persistent misconception surrounding free improvisation.

To casual listeners, such music often appears entirely spontaneous, almost accidental. In reality, records like this reveal extraordinary discipline. Every explosion depends upon careful preparation. Every moment of apparent disorder emerges from profound mutual trust. Freedom, paradoxically, proves to be the most carefully constructed element of all.

There are countless contemporary jazz records filled with excellent musicians.

Far fewer capture the exhilarating sensation of hearing a band becoming something larger than the sum of its already formidable parts.
"Entrance" is less about crossing a threshold than discovering that the doorway itself was always the most interesting place to stand. It is where certainty ends, possibility begins, and where Nicolas Leirtrø and his remarkable companions seem happiest making noise together.