In This issue #1 we highlight 4 artists and some significant works

Arcade Fire

Arcade Fire is a seven-piece indie-rock band from Montreal that formed in 2004. Known for their captivating live shows, they use many musical instruments. Besides guitar, drums, and bass, they play piano, violin, viola, cello, double bass, xylophone, keyboard, French horn, accordion, and harp. The band often rotates instruments during performances, showcasing their musical variety. This wide range of instruments and influences has given them many resources for recording.

The album ‘Suburbs’ reflects on youth in corporate suburbs. The tracks critique trendy areas like Williamsburg in New York and Hoxton in London. where people try to show off their uniqueness by dressing similarly and listening to the same music.

 

 AARON DIEHL

Aaron diehl is an American Jazz Pianist and Composer. Since his debut release on Mack Avenue Records in 2013, pianist-composer Aaron Diehl has mystified listeners with his layered artistry. He reaches into expansion. At once temporal and ethereal — deliberate in touch and texture. His expression often reminiscent of admired predecessors Ahmad Jamal, Erroll Garner, Art Tatum and Jelly Roll Morton.

The Bespoke Man’s Narrative is a well-balanced album of fresh originals and stirring arrangements of standards . The Album fully displays Diehl’s musicality . He is Ably Supported by Gifted Musicians Vibraphonist Warren wolf, Drummer Rodney Green and David wong. .

ORBITAL

Since the 1990s, the electronic duo Orbital have served up intricate yet accessible electronic music. Alternating between terse techno and buoyant disco. 

Orbital (also known as the Brown Album) is the second studio album by English electronic music duo Orbital. The duo aimed to make more atmospheric music than the dance raves of their first album. They used more complex rhythms and denser arrangements on the appropriately named pieces entitled

 

 

ALAN HOVHANESS

He began to be a widely recorded and lauded American composer in the late 1950s. A prolific composer, Hovhaness was an outsider by temperament and choice. His Creative Period resistant to musical fashion. his Particular Style often more in sympathy with the East than the West.

There is much to enjoy in these works. lyricism, moments of great beauty and high drama (particularly in Symphony no 50, “Mount St Helens”).  “Mysterious Mountain”, is probably the composer’s best-known work and, in effect, put Hovhaness on the musical map. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Gerard Schwarz, do the music full justice.

 

 

Classical Album

alan hovhaness

Symphony No. 2, Op. 132 Mysterious Mountain- I. Andante con moto
Symphony No. 2, Op. 132 Mysterious Mountain- II. Double Fugue. Moderato maestoso
Symphony No. 2, Op. 132 Mysterious Mountain- III. Andante espressivo
Symphony No. 50, Op. 360 Mount St. Helens- I. Andante, grazioso
Symphony No. 50, Op. 360 Mount St. Helens- II. Spirit Lake. Allegro
Symphony No. 50, Op. 360 Mount St. Helens- III. Volcano. Adagio – Allegro – Adagio
Symphony No. 66, Op. 428 Hymn to Glacier Peak- I. Andante maestoso
Symphony No. 66, Op. 428 Hymn to Glacier Peak- II. Love Song to Hinako. Andante
Symphony No. 66, Op. 428 Hymn to Glacier Peak- III. Prelude and Fugue. Largo maestoso
Storm on Mount Wildcat, Op. 2 No. 2

Jazz Album

aaron diehl

Prologue
Generation Y
Blue Nude
Moonlight in Vermont
Single Petal of a Rose
The Cylinder
Stop and Go
Le Tombeau de Couperin (III. Forlane)
Bess You Is my Woman Now
Epilogue

 

Rock/Ambient Album

orbital

Time Becomes
Planet Of The Shapes
Lush 3-1
Lush 3-2
Impact (the Earth Is Burning)
Remind
Walk Now…
Monday
Halcyon + On + On
Input Out

 

Rock Album

arcade fire

The Suburbs
Ready to Start
Modern Man
Rococo
Empty Room
City with No Children
Half Light I
Half Light II
Suburban War
Month of May
wasted Hours
Deep Blue
We Used to Wait
Sprawl I (Flatland)
Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)
The Suburbs (Continued)
Culture War
Speaking in Tongues

 

To The Forum
Return to Blog

in further issues we will continue to Bring you the music of Popular genres to listen, review and evaluate. issue #2 (coming soon) features david Bowie, Dead Can Dance, joshua redman and edvard Grieg

NOTES

Sound quality is important and some streaming services will offer superior sound quality. We do encourage you to purchase albums from good online record stores. alternatively, stream the music of favoured artists from those better online streaming services.

Arcade Fire – The Suburbs – Label‏ : ‎ Merge Records

Aaron Diehl – The Bespoke Man’s Narrative – Label : Mack Avenue Records

Orbital (also known as Orbital 2 or the Brown Album) – Label : FRRR Records

Alan Hovhaness – Mysterious Mountains – Label : Telarc – 80604

 

It is helpful to research the artist, using sources like Wikipedia , Music Magazine Reviews (Pitchfork, Rolling stone, NME etc.,) Artist Websites, etc…

A synopsis of the life and music of this Issue’s featured artists appears below.

This Week’s Artists

ARCADE FIRE

Arcade Fire is a Canadian indie rock band from Montreal, Quebec. Members include husband and wife Win Butler and Régine Chassagne. alongside Richard Reed Parry, Tim Kingsbury, and Jeremy Gara.  Notable touring members include violinists Sarah Neufeld and Owen Pallett.

The band came to prominence in 2004 with the release of their critically acclaimed debut album Funeral. Their second studio album, Neon Bible, won them the 2008 Meteor Music Award and the 2008 Juno Award. Their third studio album, The Suburbs, was released in 2010 to critical acclaim and commercial success. Arcade Fire has released seven studio albums, three extended plays and twenty-four singles. Arcade Fire are known for their enthralling live performances. They use a large number of musical instruments In addition to guitar, drums, and bass guitar. members play piano, violin, viola, cello, double bass, xylophone, keyboard, French horn, accordion and harp.

 

The promise showed by the band gained them a record contract with independent record label Merge Records. Their sixth studio album, ‘WE’, which was partly inspired by Yevgeny Zamyatin’s 1924 dystopian novel of the same name. marked the band’s last record with Will Butler (the younger brother of Arcade Fire frontman Win Butler). who parted ways with the group to follow a Solo Career.

Win Butler was accused of sexual misconduct by several people in 2022. In a statement to Pitchfork, a representative for Butler acknowledged he had sexual interactions with each of them, but said they were not initiated by him and were consensual. Chassagne supported his statements.

Arcade Fire returned in 2025 with their seventh album

ORBITAL

Orbital are brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll. Raised in Sevenoaks, Kent, they first worked together as bricklayers for their father’s business, but started recording music in 1987. Their first single, Chime, entered the Top 20 in 1990. One of the biggest British dance acts of the decade. their crossover fusion of underground and stadium electronic music found a vibrant cultural Scene.  Paul in a Guardian interview, recalls – “When we were bricklayers, I’d bring my tape recorder to work …….. On our lunchbreaks we’d dream about what it might be like to be in the Cocteau Twins. Eventually, Phil bought a drum machine, I played the guitar, and we began trying to make Cabaret Voltaire-type stuff.

Once my music started taking off, he wanted to join in, too, so we decided to make a band. When it comes to our creative relationship, he’s the hare and I’m the tortoise. I’m the writer and do all the hard graft, while he runs around the background, saying: “That’s excellent!” or, “That’s too complicated!” It’s useful to have a sounding board, but when you’ve got three kids, you start to think, why am I doing this and giving you half the money? There were times when I couldn’t make my peace with that. All of the splits in Orbital have been initiated by me.”Their first single, 1989’s “Chime”, became a huge rave hit. Not long afterwards, Orbital started gaining fans outside the dance scene. Due to the strength of their live shows and an emphasis on albums as cohesive units rather than a tracklist.

Their output through the ’90s is commonly cited as among the best of the UK’s techno scene. Throughout their career, Orbital have incorporated political and environmental commentary into their music. Unfortunately, after 2000 they released two albums that were respectively divisive. On that disappointing note, Orbital called it quits in 2004. Orbital briefly reunited for a string of live shows. in 2011 they returned to the studio to work on a new album. The result, 2012’s Wonky, The album was well-received, both by the critics and the fans. In 2014, they disbanded again, but with the promise that neither of them intended to stop making music yet. In summer 2017, they reunited again. They went on to play more live shows and put out a new single. a new studio album was released the following year. the Orbital Discography consists of ten studio albums, three original score albums, three live/session albums, seven compilation albums, two DJ-mix albums, four extended plays, and eighteen singles

ALAN HOVHANESS

He was one of the most prolific 20th-century composers. his official catalogue comprised 67 numbered symphonies and 434 opus numbers. The true tally is well over 500 surviving works, since many opus numbers comprise two or more distinct works.

He was born Alan Vaness Chakmakjian to an Armenian father and an American Mother (of Scottish descent). When he was five, his family moved from Somerville to Arlington, Massachusetts. A Hovhaness family neighbour said his mother had insisted on moving from Somerville because of discrimination against Armenians. in 1931, the composer changed his surname to Hovaness. later adding an ‘h’ after the ‘v’ around 1942, and so becoming Hovhaness.

Hovhaness’s parents soon supported their son’s precocious composing. By age 14 he decided to devote himself to composition. He composed two operas during his teenage years. The composer Roger Sessions took an interest in his music during this time. He went on To Study with Leo Rich Lewis at Tufts. Later, under Frederick Converse at the New England Conservatory of Music . In 1932, he won the Conservatory’s Samuel Endicott prize for composition with his Sunset Symphony.

In July 1934, Hovhaness travelled with his first wife, Martha Mott Davis, to Finland. There he met Jean Sibelius, whose music he had greatly admired since childhood.

His early compositions were thoroughly Western. the influences of Eastern musical styles became more evident after he attended a master Class of Bohuslav Martinu. From 1959 through 1963 Hovhaness conducted a series of research trips to India, Hawaii, Japan, and South Korea. investigating the ancient traditional music of these nations, and eventually integrating elements of these into his own compositions. In the mid-1960s he spent several summers touring Europe, living and working much of the time in Switzerland. From the 1970s onwards his style became less overtly Eastern.He was A vocal critic of musical snobbishness. in reaction to criticism by Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein he destroyed some early work, which he later regretted.

Hovhaness’s best music reveals a unique and thoroughly convincing assimilation of highly disparate traditions. many 20th century composers flirted with such exotica. but in Hovhaness we find it was more than mere flirtation. Vocal music by Hovhaness includes accompanied and unaccompanied choral settings of predominantly religious texts. A review by David Hurwitz in Classics Today “For me anyway, there’s something disarming about his childlike joy in consonant harmony, in the fluidity of his fugal writing, and his utter unconsciousness of the fact that his melodies often tread dangerously close to kitsch. Say what you will, his music is unfailingly honest. It is what it is. There are also moments where it achieves an astonishing, passionate intensity.”

aARON DIEHL

Diehl was born in Columbus, Ohio. he grew up listening to his grandfather, pianist and trombonist Arthur Baskerville. Diehl began studying classically at age 7 and discovered his passion for jazz music when attending Interlochen Summer Camp. There, he met piano prodigy Eldar Djangirov, who impressed Diehl through his enthusiasm for Oscar Peterson and Art Tatum. His family nurtured Diehl’s undeniable musical talents from a young age. in 2002, a 16-year-old Diehl competed in Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Essentially Ellington competition, where he placed as a finalist. It was there that he attracted the attention of Wynton Marsalis, who invited Diehl to join his European tour. He Studied at Julliard under the direction of Kenny Barron. In 2011 Diehl was awarded the American Pianists Association’s Cole Porter Fellowship. Diehl has been a Steinway Artist since 2016.

Philadelphia Inquirer exclaimed that “there’s an entire world of jazz in Aaron Diehl’s playing…he makes the case that jazz is not one style or genre but many, gliding gorgeously among decades of artistic influences.”

“traditional jazz sound with a sophisticated contemporary spin” (The Guardian)

“Diehl has built his reputation on an elegant pianism outside the contemporary mainstream…upholds a traditional framework while crisply demolishing the usual notions of conservatism.”(New York Times)