1. [00:14] Retracing Your Lines (Unreleased)
2. [06:05] Contact Mic
3. [10:40] DFACE/Bird Rib
4. [19:10] Rosamund Chime

I was so pleased that The Shortlist Magazine included by latest track Little Phase in their Shortlisten list/playlist. I'm number 360, sandwiched between Ronika and Love Thy Brother. What an honour! The track has also received some love/airtime on the excellent Utility Fog show, FBi 94.5 FM in Sydney.

"Who? Leah Kardos

What’s the story? Making interesting and arresting ambient music is not an easy thing to do, but we wrote earlier this year about a fantastic track from The Daydream Club, who'd managed it with aplomb. Now along comes another beautiful five minutes of 'ambient plus' music from Australian-born composer Leah Kardos, which gently builds, beginning with pulsing piano chords, adding in delicately textural strings, before seeming to collapse in on itself until beats are brought in to restore order and take things to a conclusion. It could nestle in perfectly on The Album Leaf's 2004 classic In A Safe Place, which gets it the big thumbs up from us. The track features on a compilation of experimental music called Summer - you can check out the other songs and buy it here.

For fans of: Brian Eno, The Album Leaf, Jónsi & Alex

In three words: Captivating, blissful music"

"Reading the various reviews of the Maria Abramović/Igor Levit’s Goldberg production at the Park Avenue Armory, the most consistent idea expressed is that listening to great music requires some sort of separation from the regular world. That’s a matter of personal values, not objective truth. The experience of great music can be powerfully enhanced by—or music can be made great in no small part due to—the experience of the real world. Pianist R. Andrew Lee’s program of Schubert and new music by Michael Vincent Waller, Leah Kardos, Adrian Knight, and Galen H. Brown was already as strong and luminous as polished steel. But his simple acknowledgement of the June 17 massacre at the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, meant that the beauty of Knight’s Abide With Me and the visceral, frightening brilliance of Brown’s God is a Killer, bore witness to real world experience. And so excellent music became great art."

"… It’s not feel-good music, but by making honest order out of nothingness, it presents clarity and logic as opposed to chaos and the incomprehensible. And that is what Lee achieved. The music, the conception and Lee’s playing all built transparent, multidimensional structures. It was a beautiful design, full of satisfaction and hope."

photo by Naresh Kaushal

Click the photo above (or the link below) to read a conversation I had with James Black about music and sound and what it might all mean...

http://www.chaostheorymusic.co.uk/blog/leah-kardos-interview/

What makes Machines instantly unique and captivating, is the soprano of Laura Wolk-Lewanowicz, an Australian opera singer. The angelic voice, teamed with the theme of the album, create a very touching commentary on the current human condition.

The concert opened with a new work, Kick, by Leah Kardos. This is Ruthless Jabiru’s first commission, and it was a great opener. Kardos uses a small palette of string textures, including long vibrato-less pedals, tremolos and portamento slides, and integrates them into a tightly structured and impressively focussed work.

The skill and professionalism of this orchestra, and its founder and principal conductor Kelly Lovelady, was clearly evident throughout the performance, not least in their handling of the first piece – a commissioned work from UK-based Australian composer Leah Kardos, Kick. This fantastic piece evoked visions of a sunrise over an outback property, the building melodies of a single viola and violin sounding out like the Australian bush slowly waking and coming to life.

"...Feather Hammer is an album that I wish I made. And that’s pretty much the highest praise I can give to any album. Period."

"If I had to pick only one word to describe this self-released debut album, it would have to be ‘captivating’. When I signed up for reviewing it, I was warned it’s going to be ‘a bit weird and tricky’. It turned out to be my own musical Rescue Remedy... "

"And yet for all its post processing and carefully crafted grooves and textures there emerges this amazingly heavy lightness to the whole recording. The craft and the ideas in this music run deep without overwhelming the sound. It's a startling quality and it's one that invites multiple listening to an expression that explores new directions in studio composition."

"It's obvious that the piano is the center instrument on this album, but it's the use of recording techniques and special recording effects that really make the difference."... "If it sounds fragile or unstable, that only underlines the solid quality of these compositions. I guess that's what makes this album such a pleasant surprise to listen to."

"Engagingly listenable and attention-worthy, the cuts also work as ambient sound that tickle the brain when you don't even know the sound is there. Hardly invisible, each track is intricate and dynamic, reminiscent of David Bowie's "Low" album."

"The album is very much like a classical suite (sometimes sounding as if it could have been collaboratively recorded by Massive Attack and Arvo Part) on her first love, the piano, and its mini-movements read like pages of a diary that go from a good day filled with visions of hope to days less inspired and more stressful as a student" ... "the varied sounds of the piano (straight piano vs. the flatter prepared-piano) give sort of an artistic timeline between a classical and an experimental sensibility, as if to say that the constructed has now been deconstructed."

"Feather Hammer is a quality release by Kardos, exploring a wide range of emotions through her instrument of choice, and complementing it very well with the addition of acoustics, percussion and sampling. But most of all, Kardos makes a wonderful job of bringing displaced thoughts back to life through her music - whether delicate or challenging, she does not shy away, but confronts, thus ensuring her music communicates with the listener on an emotive level. 81%"

"A new album of gorgeous manipulated piano tracks – by turns minimalist, ambient and crunchy"

"This is ambient coming at it not from the dub and dance sources of The Orb but the more austere, aescetic end of classical chinstrokers John Cage and John Tavener. There’s also something about the scale of this music. Like some of Tavener’s Orthodox chant pieces and especially The Protecting Veil they either need to be heard very small and personal or at an enormous and public scale like the Albert Hall. But there’s less the sense of being small in the face of a Deity, rather small in a pained and personal suffering way."

"This blissful yet daunting at times piece of art will take you on a journey"

"Feather Hammer is truly DIY at its finest - full of warm tones and beautiful piano. It's one of those EPs that makes you want to put your headphones on and stand in the middle of a four way intersection at 3 am, watching the brief solitude of a once busy street, observing the traffic lights change for nobody but you."

"Classical music is so much more than dead white composers. Leah Kardos is living proof of what it not only can be, it moves toward what it may be in the years ahead... The music is a mixture of styles and influences from Debussy to Tavener, Shostakovich to Bryars with pop elements from Bowie, Brian Eno and The Flaming Lips. From this rich tapestry we are given a sonic-scape that transports us into a distant world of colors, shapes and sounds like nothing I've heard before. At times the music is opaque and difficult to see clearly all that's happening, while at other times there is a clear lyric glide to the musical lines that float over the listener with utter beauty."