Tag Archives: xenharmonic

EXCLUSIVE SONG PREMIERE:
The Mercury Tree & Cryptic Ruse –
“The Cold Flame Burns”

by Dæv Tremblay

The Music

The Words

Ever since their inception, The Mercury Tree has moved from an alternative metal band towards more and more obscure progressive rock and genre fusion. This progression has reached a new apex, thanks to the collaboration with xenharmonic prog solo band Cryptic Ruse on their upcoming EP, Cryptic Tree. For a few albums already, The Mercury Tree has experimented with multiple different tonal systems at once on their few latest albums, but this EP aims at pushing that experimentation to its limit.

By joining forces with a … Read more

Taylor Brook – Virtutes occultae

by Dæv Tremblay

Just in time to close 2017 with a microtonal bang!, composer Taylor Brook released Virtutes occultae: an exploratory double album for piano. Somewhere between procedural, improvised, and strictly composed, the eighteen parts of this magnum opus take you into the world of overtonality. In a nutshell, this album is played by six virtual pianos, each tuned to a different 11-limit just intonation tuning. The details on how Brook’s approach extends Partch’s are scarce and blurry, but, in any case, the result is utterly mesmerizing. The fact that the music is played only by pianos, virtual ones at that, … Read more

EXCLUSIVE PREMIERE: Ilevens – “Transmitter”

by Dæv Tremblay


Ilevens is the latest brainchild of microtonal musician Brendan Byrnes, of whom we’ve already praised the projects here on this website, and Transmitter is their debut EP. The concept of Ilevens, formerly known as 11ins, was to form a full microtonal pop/rock band, and the chosen system was 22 equal divisions of the octave. After many demos, under both the 11ins and Ilevens monikers, Transmitter is ready, with two brand new compositions – “Solavai” and “Transmitter” – and re-worked versions of their earlier songs. While the uncommon pitches will surprise more than one person, the psychedelic, progressive, pop-rock style in … Read more

Gershlauer, Fiuczynski, DeJohnette, Garrison, and Mikadze – Mikrojazz! Neue expressionistische Musik

by Dæv Tremblay



They’ve done it! Again, perhaps, but Mikrojazz!, with the subtitle Neue expressionistische Musik (New Expressionist Music), is the latest, and arguably one of the first, completely microtonal jazz records to come out. With the combined talents of Philipp Gerschlauer on saxophone, David Fiuczynski on fretless guitar, Jack DeJohnette on drums, Matt Garrison on fretless bass, and Giorgi Mikadze on keyboards, Mikrojazz! has all the fuel it needs to develop xenharmonic compositions for jazz. Does it deliver? Yes, it does, but not without a few criticisms of mine. The players take up the challenge of writing and playing jazz in … Read more

Sevish – Harmony Hacker

by Dæv Tremblay

You know that I’m a sucker for microtonal music. I still am quite critical of it, but I always applaud the effort put into it. So, it’s no surprise that I’m enjoying the new Sevish very much! The artist has proven themself time and time again with various successful releases, including my personal favourite, Rhythm & Xen. With Harmony Hacker, Sevish takes back where their 2015 full-length left, and offers us some high-quality electronic dance music, with drum and bass and IDM undertones, that’s surprisingly easy to approach considering its microtonal nature. Speaking of which, the songs vary … Read more