Tomorrow, Friday night at 11:00 PST (and available to stream for a week), Music from Other Minds will feature two new releases from World Edition. I’ll tell you about one of them.

Gradients of Detail is the first CD dedicated to Chiyoko Szlavnics’ work. It is a stunningly beautiful sound world, with committed and spot on performances by Ensemble MusikFabrik, the Asasello Quartet, and Dirk Rothbrust.

(a)long lines: we’ll draw our own lines is music to immerse oneself in, strange and familiar, radical and inevitable all at once.

Her Teeth were White is a very different sort of piece, written for solo percussion. At the heart of it, at least to my ear, is the juxtaposition of very regular attacks with unpredictable, resonant decays.

Gradients of Detail is relentless and terrifying, and deeply compelling. It’s like being in the midst of rapidly changing atmospheric conditions. There is a break, and then a new set of weather conditions erupts. This is music that you feel, not just in your ears but in your whole body.

You’ll want to own this CD as an object. The booklet includes an insightful essay by Eugen Blume, and it is full of drawings (17 of them!) that are integral to Szlavnics’ compositional process. You can order the CD from World Edition, or directly from Szlavnics for €20 by clicking on the image of the CD cover below and paying through PayPal. And when it says shipping is included in the price, that’s for anywhere in the world. Anywhere.