Cassette
Label: Notice Recordings
Judith Berkson, a composer, singer, and pianist based in NYC, has been honing her Liederkreis project since 2016, which features electronically-augmented vocal interpretations of lieder by such composers as Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann, as well as purely electronic pieces engaging noise and feedback-oriented vignettes. This new release finds Judith continuing a more song-oriented approach, as previously explored on her 2010 ECM release Oylam. The pieces contained on Liederkreis II are deeply haunting, timbrally sensuous, and a notably divergent aesthetic for Notice Recordings. Judith is taking her electronically-processed vocals and conforming them to the slowly dripping, contorted melodies of Schubert and Schumann’s lieder, firmly within the lineage of such artists as Klaus Nomi and Kraftwerk. Liederkreis II exists as a commentary of a hypermodern relationship with classical music: both an admiration and a recontextualisation. This is music that is at once both personal and emotional, and formal and mechanical. It is both beautiful and anxious. It is within this contrast that the album retains such an alluring presence, and we are honored to facilitate its existence.