Name: Traveller Song/Thanksong
Brand: Cassandra Miller

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

BLACKTRUFFLE107

Colour

Black

Colour details

Discogs ID

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music GB

Limited edition

Release date

2023-09-15

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

Tax rate GB

Standard:20

UPC / Barcode

4250101453861

Total Cap

Black LP

Artist

Cassandra Miller

Genre GB

Modern Composition

Label GB

Black Truffle

Black Truffle Records is an Australian experimental/improv/noise/abstract/etc. music label, founded in 2009 by Oren Ambarchi. Launched with a couple of Ambarchi's long out-of-print vinyl reissues on CD, Black Truffle then released a remastered version of seminal 'Afternoon Tea' collaborative album with new artwork. The most well-known releases on the label are three albums exclusively produced for Black Truffle by Keiji Haino, Jim O'Rourke, and Oren Ambarchi trio. Other notable collaborations that Ambarchi recorded for his own label include 'The Mortimer Trap' with Thomas Brinkmann and 'Cat's Squirrel' with Masami Akita.

All releases on Black Truffle feature artworks designed by either Stephen O'Malley or Lasse Marhaug.

The French black truffle is considered the finest of the edible fungi and has a place in gastronomy alongside saffron, caviar, foie gras, and the finest wines. Widely regarded as the jewel of French cooking, it is prized for its unique flavor and intoxicating aroma. At Black Truffle Records, our resident chef has discovered that finding this "diamond of the kitchen" requires using a divining stick while facing into the sun.

Newest Listed Items

Black Truffle with its first release from celebrated London- based Canadian composer Cassandra Miller. Though her body of mature work stretches back almost twenty years, many listeners were introduced to Miller through the success of her astonishing 2015 Duet for Cello and Orchestra, which sets an imperturbable two-note cello part against a series of increasingly dense orchestrations of an Italian folk melody; in 2019, it was selected by The Guardian as one of the ‘best classical music works of the 21st&nbsp;century’. Traveller Song / Thanksong, the first release of her music on vinyl, presents a pair of compositions for voice and ensemble that exemplify Miller’s gently absurd, strikingly beautiful, and utterly unique work.

Like many of Miller’s compositions, these pieces originate in existing music. Traveller Song (2016/2018) begins from a 1950s song of an anonymous Sicilian cart driver recorded by Alan Lomax and Diego Carpitella, which Miller recorded herself singing along to, going on to then record herself singing to her own layered voices. Miller’s untutored voice is an unsteady, wavering wail that has, in her words, ‘more in common with a quasi-shamanistic keening than anything Sicilian’. Heard sometimes alone, sometimes layered, her pre- recorded voice is accompanied by a chamber sextet drawn from London’s Plus-Minus Ensemble. In the first section, Miller’s exposed warble is set to a spare piano accompaniment, somehow both faintly preposterous and magisterial. Following the voice note for note, the piano part often makes use of almost mechanical sequences of parallel chords, reminiscent both of Satie’s Rosicrucian period and the abrupt harmonic movements of a chord organ. The orchestration then opens up to guitar, clarinet, and sliding strings, a delicate environment for Miller’s voice, which, especially when it begins to be layered, generates a powerful sense of intimacy. In its concluding minutes, the folk roots of the original melody return in the form of a glorious full ensemble setting dominated by accordion, clarinet, and strummed guitar.

Thanksong begins from recordings of Miller singing along to the third movement of Beethoven’s late quartet in A minor (Op. 132), the ‘holy song of thanks’ the composer wrote to express his gratitude for (temporarily) recovering from illness. Recording herself singing along repeatedly to each of the individual parts of the quartet, Miller created an aural score where each member of the string quartet listens to their own part on headphones, playing by ear. Performed on this recording by Montreal's Quatuor Bozzini, with whom Miller has a decades-long relationship, they are joined by the British soprano Juliet Fraser, who sings material from the Beethoven quartet ‘as slowly and quietly as possible’. The atmosphere of the opening of Beethoven’s Dankgesang, of hushed reawakening and thoughtful reflection, is sustained throughout the fourteen minutes of Miller’s piece, building at points almost to sentimentality before the five individual parts again fall back into a gentle burble of unsynchronised melodic gestures. Like Traveller Song, here the use of the voice is a long way from the mannered performance of much contemporary music, reaching for a human and bodily presence more connected to the reality of the everyday, albeit suffused with wonder. Presented in a stylish sleeve adorned with photography by Lasse Marhaug and liner notes by Cassandra Miller, this is a key release from a major contemporary composer whose work challenges and dazzles in equal measure.

Traveller Song/Thanksong

Music GB

Discover Traveller Song/Thanksong by Cassandra Miller on vinyl. A key release from a major contemporary composer. LP format available. Label: Black Truffle.