Music Reviews from the Staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House

 

December 5, 2025
Ten Records to Stave Off Darkness in 2025
The staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House take the opportunity to share their thoughts about ten amazing records released in 2025 that provided illumination as we wandered through a troubled year in America.

From January to December of 2025, a bounty of wonderful music made its way to the ears of the staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House. We welcomed the flood of music as a means of bouyancy in a tumultuous year filled with surging waves of bad news—incomprehensible policy, wanton cruelty, matter-of-fact war crimes and naked corruption of our elected leaders—on a national scale. It is no exaggeration to state that this music provided not just a refuge from the daily assault but also a means of reinforcing a spirit of determined resistance, a trait evident in so much of this defiantly creative music.

 

Balss un rezonanse - Eleonora Kampe
Label: Sāpes Skaņas
Catalog #: SSSS-034
Location: Riga, Latvia
Release Date: May 21, 2025
Media: digital download & cassette
bandcamp.com entry
discogs.com entry

Balss un rezonanse (Voice and Resonance) was our introduction to Eleonora Kampe and one of our favorite recordings of 2025. On this album, Kampe uses voice and the reverbation as a means to investigate the natural acoustics of the space in which the recording was made. Based on her choices of recording locations, she elicits not only acoustic responses but invokes the embedded predilections, conscious or subconscious, that a listener has with the notions of a church, chapel, fortress, museum and a former Soviet prison.

The full review of Balss un rezonanse was posted May 15, 2025.

Eleonora Kampe (voice) musician's social media

Utopirica - Tomomi Kubo & Björt Rùnars
Label: self-released
Catalog #: no catalog number
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Release Date: September 25, 2025
Media: digital download
bandcamp.com entry
discogs.com entry

Tomomi Kubo is a Japanese Ondes Martenot player, based in Spain, who works in both improvisation and composition. Björt Rùnars is an Icelandic cellist, who also has relocated to Barcelona, and who investigates a broad range of musical forms, including textured soundscapes. On Utopirica, the two musicians join forces for a debut release of creative music that far exceeds whatever improbable expectations a listener might have regarding the combination of Ondes Martenot and cello. This is another favorite that to date appears to be woefully under-appreciated.

The full review of Utopirica was posted October 6, 2025.

Tomomi Kubo (Ondes Martenot, Synthesizer) - musician's website
Björt Rùnars (Cello, Voice, Effects) - musician's website

Shamanism - Kim Jung Jae
Label: Relative Pitch Records
Catalog #: RPR1230
Location: United States
Release Date: June 20, 2025
Media: compact disc or digital download
bandcamp.com entry
discogs.com entry

Musical improvisation is an art form that has the potential to be simultaneously ancient and modern. On the album, Shamanism, Jung-Jae Kim leads a free quartet on a musical endeavor that embodies this principle and frames it within a uniquely Korean perspective.

The full review of Shamanism was posted July 6, 2025.

Jung Jae Kim (tenor saxophone) musician's social media
Sunjae Lee (soprano and alto saxophone) musician's social media
Junyoung Song (drums)
Sunki Kim (drums) musician's website

Chants - Pauline Hogstrand
Label: Solen
Catalog #: SOL1
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
Release Date: November 7, 2025
Media: compact disc or digital download
bandcamp.com entry
discogs.com entry

We really loved the album Aeriform when it was released by the Crush String Collective in early 2022 (PPPH review). Here five of the seven women on Aeriform reconvene to make some music in a different vein. Pauline Hogstrand composed the pieces and moved from viola to electronics. They are joined by two percussionists. The first result is a twenty minute polyphonic drone of electronics and strings, punctuated by dramatic interjections of the drummers. The next two tracks veer off into experiments in modern classical forms. All the music is understated in a pleasing sort of way.

From the prospective of instrumentation, this ensemble is composed of a string quartet complemented by two drummers and one musician on electronics. The PPPH staff have a stubborn bias against the string quartet, as it is an archetypal vehicle for a genre of music that is at odds with the wonders of non-idiomatic improvisation. On Chants, the music thwarts the classical tradition in such a way that we listened multiple times to the whole album absent any knee-jerk resistance. It was only after a more careful inspection of the personnel and their instruments that we realized there was a string quartet embedded within the ensemble. For us, that is a happy testament to the creativity in the composition and execution of the music.

Pauline Hogstrand (electronics) musician's website
Julija Morgan (violin) musician's social media
Maria Martine Jagd (violin) musician's website
Tove Bagge (viola) musician's social media
Oda Dyrnes (cello) musician's website
Anders Vestergaard (percussion) musician's website
Victor Dybbroe (percussion)

Taking Place - Adia Vanheerentals
Label: Relative Pitch Records
Catalog #: RPRSS050
Location: United States
Release Date: November 21, 2025
Media: compact disc or digital download
bandcamp.com entry
discogs.com entry

The staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House try to keep their ears open and their antennae receptive to music from many different quarters. For the past six years, a release from Relative Pitch Records appeared in our end-of-the-year Top Ten Album list. The label is reasonably prolific and it was often a challenge to whittle our choice down to just one album. However, we told ourselves to limit the list to one RPR record because there is so much creative music in the world and we want to sample it broadly. This year, we abandoned the principle. We already high-lighted Shamanism above and now we add another entry from the same label.

Taking Place is a recent entry in the Relative Pitch Records Solo Series, which is our favorite on-going series of recordings. We have listened to all of these records, numbering about 48. Many of them introduce us to musicians new to our ears. They do so in a solo context, which is a very nice way to make the introduction, as it allows a view of the artist's unclouded vision. We found much to like in Taking Place by Adia Vanheerentals, whom we had never heard of before. There is a forthrightness in the saxophone solos that is refreshing. The track titles bear directly on the music. Silo has all the echoes of a saxophone played in a silo. Running has the saxophone accompanied by the musical wrinkling of a running stream. Henhouse has clucking chickens providing their voices beside the saxophone, to surprisingly satisfying effect!

Adia Vanheerentals (soprano saxophone) musician's website

Tides in the Mirror - Francesca Gemmo & Magda Mayas
Label: Hat Hut Records
Catalog #: ezz-thetics 119
Location: Basel, Switzerland
Release Date: August 14, 2025
Media: compact disc or digital download
bandcamp.com entry
discogs.com entry

The staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House have fallen under the spell of the musical collaborations of Magda Mayas. She appeared on more than half a dozen records released in 2025. A couple that especially stick in our memory are Love by Das B (thanatosis produktion/Corbett vs. Dempsey )and Oneiric by Jane in Ether (Confront). Those abstract soundscapes are perpetually interesting to our ears.

Still, we chose to include Tides in the Mirror as the entry with Mayas to include on this list because it sticks out among the recent releases for its choice of instrumentation (a piano duet), its stylistic tenor (more classical, less abstract jazz) and its warm sparsity. We just really enjoyed eavesdropping on the conversation between these two pianists. This was our first listening to the music of Francesca Gemmo and it proved to be a delightful discovery.

Francesca Gemmo (piano) musician's website
Magda Mayas (prepared piano) musician's website

What Happened There? - Keiji Haino & Natsuki Tamura
Label: Libra Records
Catalog #: 102-078
Location: Japan
Release Date: January 24, 2025
Media: compact disc
discogs.com: entry

As we repeatedly say in these reviews, one of the pleasures of following prolific improvising artists like Keiji Haino is that he serves as an introduction to other like-minded musicians. What Happened There? introduced us to the music of Natsuki Tamura. Like Haino, Tamura has a massive discography reaching back into the 1970's. However, the world is a big place and it just so happens that our ears had not yet found his trumpet playing. We are very happy to have this omission corrected. This album presents trumpet and guitar appropriate for the adventurous souls who have made it this far into the Top Ten list!

The full review of What Happened There? was posted January 29, 2025.

Keiji Haino (guitar, voice) musician's website: official & unofficial
Natsuki Tamura (trumpet, voice, toys) musician's website

Jeux d'Eau - Copenhagen Clarinet Choir & Anders Lauge Meldgaard
Label: År Og Dag / conatala
Catalog #: AD17 / 009
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark / Tokyo, Japan
Release Date: November 12, 2025
Media: vinyl or digital download
bandcamp.com: entry
discogs.com: entry

Another album that we really loved from 2022 was Organism by the Copenhagen Clarinet Choir (PPPH review). Their second album, Jeux d'Eau, features six clarinets interpreting the compositions of Anders Lauge Meldgaard in a very playful spirit, while accompanied by the composer on the New Ondomo—a Japanese instrument modeled on the pioneering French electronic instrument, the Ondes Martenot. (Yes, there are two references to the Ondes Martenot in this year's Top Ten. There is no predicting life.) There are multiple ways to describe how we feel about this album. We like everything about it. Or, alternatively, there's nothing not to like about it. It's different than Organism in a way that distinguishes this album as a worthwhile new effort, while maintaining the core appeal that made us so fond of the Copenhagen Clarinet Choir in the first place. We found the album title, Games of Water, to be an apropos description of the music.

On a tangential note, we also reviewed another fine album that appeared in 2025 including Maria Dybbroe, this time on alto saxophone as well as clarinet.

Anders Banke (clarinet) musician's website
Francesco Bigoni (clarinet) musician's social media
Maria Dybbroe (clarinet) musician's social media
Jonas Engel (clarinet) musician's social media
Carolyn Goodwin (clarinet) musician's website
Henriette Groth (clarinet) musician's social media
Anders Lauge Meldgaard (electronics, score) musician's social media

Plank 9 - Berlinde Deman
Label: Relative Pitch Records
Catalog #: RPRSS049
Location: United States
Release Date: October 24, 2025
Media: compact disc or digital download
bandcamp.com entry
discogs.com entry

We know that this is the third entry on the list from Relative Pitch Records and the second from the RPR Solo Series. What can we say except the label released an abundance of excellent music this year? Again, we were totally unfamiliar with the music of Berlinde Deman. It turns out that she plays a instrument called the serpent, of which we were also totally ignorant. Moreover, her musical esthetics are refined in a subtle ways that naturally drew us in with its somber and stately soundscapes. To find this combination of traits, we could say is as rare as the planets aligning except that we have almost come to expect a constellation of luminous stars in this end-of-the-year Top Ten list. The world continues to be full of imaginative musicians making irresistibly interesting music, many of whom we have never heard of. We are sure that there are hundreds of other artists that slipped past our notice unheard. The trick for the listener is to put oneself in the right place to hear the music, because it will not be broadcast on the evening news nor any other mainstream channel. This trick is one that the staff of the Poison Pie Publishing House has not yet mastered. Sure, we were lucky enough to hear all the great music on this list, but it seems like serendipitous strokes of good luck. We can only hope that we are no less fortunate next year in colliding with a tremendous variety of musical wonders.

Berlinde Deman (serpent, voice, effects pedals) musician's social media

Album # 10 - To Be Determined

It is always hard to choose the last record on the list because it results in leaving off so many excellent records. As a way of providing evidence of the plethora of amazing records that were released in 2025, we note that there was a duet with Joëlle Léandre and Evan Parker, a second solo record by Amina Claudine Myers released forty-five years after her first solo album, a double cd of a live performance by Michel Doneda & Frédéric Blondy that waited fourteen years to be released, a solo cello cd by Theresa Wong and a saxophone/piano duo by Alexandra Grimal and Giovanni Di Domenico, to name but a few. The octagenarian trumpeter, Wadada Leo Smith, released albums with accompaniment by pianists, Sylvie Courvoisier, Vijay Iyer and Marilyn Crispell. Tyshawn Sorey had a double cd with Ivo Perelman and a vinyl record as part of Fieldwork. Sorey also had a interesting-looking release with Linda May Han Oh, which we never got because, apparently, the label only sells the paper sleeve without the cd inside, as a statement against plastic. Let us make a request to avoid unintended ageism and to take pity on old ears that listen to their music on physical media and put a cd in the sleeve! We would like to listen to this album. In 2025, we also got around to reading the Henry Threadgill memoir, which, believe it or not is equal parts Apocalypse Now and The Godfather. We left that book amazed at how he proceeded to make the most of his life after making so many ostensibly poor choices! It seems likely that those choices were inextricably bound to the path he took. In any case, it deepened our appreciation for his new record in 2025.

So we have a hard choice to make in filling the last slot. As of the time of writing, we still have more than three weeks left in the calendar year to make it, so stay tuned.

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