Has God Seen My Shadow?

Round one: I first heard Mark Lanegan in his capacity as frontman for The Screaming Trees though I didn't know his name at the time I took a liking to their song 'Nearly Lost You', which I misremembered for years as having been by The Afghan Whigs. Round two: I bought Songs for the Deaf by Queens of the Stone Age a year or two after it came out, but Lanegan's contributions were some of my less favourite parts of that album. Round three: via Spotify, I found my way to the album Broken by Soulsavers, which I loved primarily because of Lanegan's contributions. Round four: I heard the song 'One Hundred Days' on the radio ca. 2012, and realised I needed to listen to more of his solo recordings, but money was tight at that time.

I was still hard up in 2014, but somehow scraped together enough change to order the 3LP set Has God Seen My Shadow? from Piccadilly Records in Manchester. It was around then I'd been obliged to sell some things I wished I didn't have to part with: I think this box was a consolation prize of sorts paid for with some of the proceeds. I'm very glad I did buy it, as I love this set dearly. The first two discs contain highlights from Lanegan's solo albums up to 2004's Bubblegum in roughly reverse chronological order, with the third offers up an assortment of previously-unreleased tracks.

The emphasis is on the quiet & downtempo - there's no 'Hit The City' or 'Methamphetamine Blues', for example. Sides A-C in particular are outstandingly good, and the pressing & mastering, etc. all serve the music well. Many a time I have sipped at a whisky and immersed myself in these songs while reflecting on how things came to be as they are.

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Complete String Quartets

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Ein Schattenspiel, etc.

Georg Friedrich Haas is a contemporary Austrian composer of "art music". "Haas's style recalls that of György Ligeti in its use of micropolyphony, microintervals and the exploitation of the overtone series; he is often characterized as a leading exponent of spectral music" says wikipedia. Only a relative few of his many compositions have been issued on CD - many more of them can be found on YouTube. On this 2020 disc are three of his works in which standard classical instrumentation is augmented and altered by "live electronics". Two are string quartets and one is for solo piano. Is a string quartet still really a quartet if there are meanwhile some other people with laptops busily twizzling the sound? There is a live performance video of the 'String Quartet No. 7', the first work on the disc, where the JACK Quartet are supplemented by a trio of sound boffins to realise the composition. Whether it's properly a quartet or a septet is neithe...

Onslow

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