Wagner Transformed cover

Wagner Transformed

Composer
Released

“Transformed” is right – with this intriguing album, producer J. Peter Schwalm and an all-star group of collaborators including Brian Eno and Eivind Aarset turn the master of Teutonic bombast into a purveyor of mildly glitchy electronic ambient music. Working with recordings originally made by the Liepaja Symphony Orchesta, Schwalm and his colleagues take snippets and longer passages from Richard Wagner’s operas Tannhäuser, Tristan und Isolde, Parsifal, and (especially) Siegfrieds Tot, and turn them into quiet meditations that ease in and out of analog and digital environments; “Siegfried: Initium 4” is dominated by layers of acoustic piano, while on “Parsifal: Initium 4” the line between orchestral chords and synthesizer is nearly undetectable. All of it is quite beautiful and sure to befuddle genuine Wagner fans.

Rick Anderson

Suggestions
Dub Chamber 1: Book of Entrance cover

Dub Chamber 1: Book of Entrance

Bill Laswell, Sacred System
Long As In Short, Walk As In Run cover

Long As In Short, Walk As In Run

Annie Lewandowski, Fred Frith
Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians cover

Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians

Ensemble Signal, Bradley Lubman, Steve Reich
Séances cover

Séances

Trevor Dunn’s Trio-Convulsant avec Folie à Quatre
Feel Free cover

Feel Free

Duane Pitre
Tehillim cover

Tehillim

Steve Reich
Touch of Time cover

Touch of Time

Arve Henriksen, Harmen Fraanje
Invisible Threads cover

Invisible Threads

Nelson Ayres, John Surman, Rob Waring
Figures cover

Figures

Aksak Maboul