Composed and produced and performed by David Shea in collaboration with:
Mindy Meng Wang: Guzheng and Voice
Speak Percussion:
Eugene Ughetti – Percussion
Matthias Schack-Arnott – Percussion
David Shea – Electronics, Piano, Singing Bowls, Vocal Overtone and Multiphonic singing, sample collage, and field recordings
Guest Musicians –
Tamara Kohler – Alto Flute/ Flute
(from samples of Rituals)
Oren Arambachi – Elec.Guitar
Joe Talia – Drums
Girish Makwana – Tablas
Ictus Ensemble - (excerpts from Chamber Symphony #1)
Recorded by the Australian Broadcast Corporation at the Melbourne Recital Centre by Chris Lawson and Duncan Yardley March 2017
Additional material recorded by Pat Telfer and David Shea
Mixed by Pat Telfer and David Shea
Overdub/Mix/Editing Engineer - Pat Telfer
Special Thanks: Mindy Meng Wang, Jill Morgan, Monica Lim, Pat Telfer, Paul Ransom, Native Instruments, Diane Shea, Peter Fraser,
DoanTran Nguyen, Eugene Ughetti, Matthias Schack-Arnott, Northwest University for Nationalities, Dunhuang Dance all those I still have so much to learn from and the thousands of artists, monks and workers who made, created and allow the continuing life of the Mo Gau Caves to continue its story.

Simply stunning 46 minute album. It floats and melts and is beautiful and mesmerizing. Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra joining together for an album for the ears, heart and soul.

Street lamps glimmering to a flicker of static. Brass and woodwind bursting through the interstices of dank and smoky bars. A thousand shades of grey, interminably looping. Bring me a half-gramme, a flight far north!
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I began writing this piece of music as a Berliner, physically and mentally entrenched in the noise and bustle of the city. Once I became a traveller again, the music took quite a different turn, a mellower and less frantic one. And later on, I came to discover an awe-inspiring and preternatural landscape surrounding me; the final transition takes me to adventure and the excitement of discovery. From a caged pencil-pusher, to a colonialist explorer with a moustache and golden monocle, leaping from rock to rock on a lunar-like landscape.
This temporary liberation, or change in mental state, elicited the phrase Half-Gramme Holiday. It refers to the Soma drug in Huxley's Brave New World, which is frequently used by each citizen to induce a transient and seemingly delicious holiday of the mind.

Written and recorded by Daigo Hanada
Mastered by Emil Thomsen (ET Mastering)
Artwork by Kevin Townsend / Layout by Nicolas Hyatt

The 15th anniversary reissue of Max Richter’s highly cherished sophomore album expanded with a bonus disc including an orchestral version of ‘On The Nature of Daylight’ and a previously unreleased 2018 take on ‘Vladimir’s Blues’, plus an elegantly rude remix of the same track by Jlin, and a swooning, technoid Konx-Om-Pax rework of ‘Iconography’
"The Blue Notebooks was originally composed in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Richter has described it as "a protest album about Iraq, a mediation on violence – both the violence that I had personally experienced around me as a child and the violence of war, at the utter futility of so much armed conflict." The album was recorded about a week after mass protests against the war. It features readings from Franz Kafka's The Blue Octavo Notebooks and Czesław Miłosz's Hymn of the Pearl and Unattainable Earth. Both readings are by the British actress Tilda Swinton."
Here’s our original review from 2004:
"Max Richter's 'The Blue Notebooks' is the 4th release on FatCat's 130701 imprint, an outlet for more orchestrated, instrumental material. 'The Blue Notebooks' is Max Richter's second solo album, a distinctive and adventurous work that is beautifully recorded and cinematic in scope. Opening with a text from Franz Kafka over a sparse piano melody, the album moves through gorgeous, heart-wrenching string swells of 'On The Nature Of Daylight' through to sparse but lyrical piano pieces; hazy, swirling atmospherics, avalanche pulse-beats and partially occluded melodies that recall Aphex Twin's SAWII; and to reverberant organ / choir recordings.
Utilising piano, cello, violin and viola, alongside electronic beats (made using a variety of antique electronics and Reaktor), spoken word passages and the occasional field recording, other sounds were generated via old guitar pedals and vocoders. Life affirming music."

Great new album from Olafur Arnalds - a long time favourite of Rough Trade. The highly anticipated record features Ólafur’s ground-breaking new software, Stratus, which transforms the humble piano into a unique new instrument. He is currently performing his new material on a huge worldwide tour. The Stratus Pianos are two self-playing, semi-generative player pianos which are triggered by a central piano played by Ólafur, and are the centrepiece of his new works. The custom-built software is born out of two years of work by the composer and audio developer, Halldór Eldjárn. The algorithms generated from Stratus were also used to create the innovative album artwork. On the album Ólafur uses these methods reinvigorate the compositional experience, feeding back into the creative process in a completely new way. As Ólafur plays a note on the piano, two different notes are generated by Stratus, creating unexpected harmonies and surprising melodic sequences.

Víkingur Ólafsson (born 14 February 1984) is an Icelandic pianist.

The brand new album from Max Richter DGs best-selling artist/composer with music crafted from 2015s outstanding ballet production Woolf Works, a critically-acclaimed ballet triptych by choreographer Wayne McGregor, inspired by the life and works of English novelist Virginia Woolf.
Featuring powerful, compelling, emotional music, encompassing electronic textures and soundscapes, as well as orchestral episodes.
Following the success of SLEEP, this album showcases different sides of Max Richters vast palette of sounds, including upbeat, Arpeggiator pieces
Three Worlds: Music from Woolf Works shows Maxs passion for both lavish string and piano melodies, but also his virtuoso electronic side.
The first track on the album features spoken words by Virginia Woolf herself, reading the essay Craftsmanship from a BBC recording of 1937.
The original ballet was met with outstanding critical acclaim on its premiere in 2015, winning the Critics Circle Award for Best Classical Choreography and the Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production.
The Observer described it as a compellingly moving experience; for The Independent it glows with ambition... a brave, thoughtful work; The Guardian called it a haunting meditation on memory, madness and time and lavishly atmospheric score.
Each of the three acts springs from one of Woolfs landmark novels: Mrs Dalloway, Orlando and The Waves enmeshed with elements from her letters, essays and diaries.
What a brilliant creative human being Virginia Woolf was. Its been extraordinary to have the chance to be submerged in the matters that troubled her, the questions she wrestled with and the visionary quality of the answers she discovered Max Richter