Losing the War Inside Our Heads is a terrifyingly brilliant, dense, and claustrophobic avant-prog masterwork by the legendary underground outfit The Flying Luttenbachers, released in 2024 on visionary multi-instrumentalist Weasel Walter’s independent imprint ugEXPLODE. Spanning 42 minutes across five massive, high-concept compositions, this high-fidelity archive finds the long-running project pushing its signature sonic violence into uncompromising new territories of psychological dread. Shifting away from pure acoustic free-jazz improvisation, this material brilliantly cross-pollinates the frantic, hyper-technical complexity of classic Zeuhl and math-rock with the raw, nihilistic dissonance of early New York No Wave. Driven by angular, jagged guitar figures, complex polyrhythmic drum assaults, and alienating electronic textures, the album plays out like a relentless cinematic descent into chaos. The tracklist is highlighted by the shifting, epic architectures of the 11-minute nightmare Excruciation and the deeply atmospheric, tension-building closer Crawling 1000 Meters Across a Cold Stone Floor Towards the Forbidden, while even unearthing an avant-garde interpretation of Olivier Messiaen's classic religious masterwork. Exceptionally preserved in pristine lossless quality, this challenging, hyper-sophisticated release stands as an absolute mandatory cornerstone for global purists of modern avant-garde rock, brutal prog, and extreme underground expression.

This fabulous five disc set is replete with some of those old Stokowski warhorses all recorded in absolutely mind boggling Phase 4 sound, overblown perhaps but astounding for its time. Decca's remastering is absolutely magnificent and the discs are jam packed with almost six hours of music. This is another fine memorial to a great conductor who remained astonishingly vital until the very end of his life.

Paavo Järvi inaugurates his new contract as conductor of the Tonhalle Orchestra in Zurich with a programme devoted to Messiaen. Alpha Classics will accompany this extremely promising combination: ‘I’ve always admired French music very much. (…) I think Messiaen is the most original voice, someone absolutely unique. You need only listen for three seconds to a work by Messiaen to be sure that it is by him. His style is so clear, so unmistakable. In his two early works Les Offrandes oubliées and Le Tombeau resplendissant, religion and mysticism play an important role. If you listen carefully, you will notice how a harmony is continually transformed, so that you can never predict what sound will come next. But Messiaen’s harmonic language is not experimental: it produces an inevitable meaning, and you get the feeling that the chord sequence can be that way and no other.Music is a language of its own; music begins where words leave off.’

With mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kozena and pianist Mitsuko Uchida, two world stars join hands on L'extase, a collection of songs by Claude Debussy and Olivier Messiaen. Debussy was Messiaen's life-long idol, and their songs are equally colourful, sumptuous, sensual, and occasionally exotic. The album derives its name from the sultry song 'C'est l'extase langoureuse' from Debussy's Ariettes oubliees, and this song cycle is combined with his Chansons de Bilitis and Cinq poemes des Baudelaires, while Messiaen is represented by the second book of his Poemes pour Mi, a declaration of love for his first wife Claire Delbos.

Balsom explains in her booklet note that EMI gave her considerable freedom in choosing her programme for the disc and thereby lays my only real reservation. The objective (a daunting one as Balsom readily admits) was to seek out new material although what we get is a slightly uncomfortable blend of one vast original composition in the Eben, that whilst well coupled with the shorter Tomasi work seems rather ill at ease with the likes of Shenandoah and George Thalben-Ball’s well-known organ Elegy. It may be that Balsom was conscious of not duplicating works with Håkan Hardenberger’s release of music for the same combination that appeared on BIS earlier this year (also reviewed by the writer) although in fact it is only the Tomasi that is common to both discs.

Along with Wit's Naxos recording, this is one of the best versions of Messiaen's phantasmagoric Turangalîla-Symphonie available, and it's very different: swifter, more obviously virtuosic in concept, perhaps a touch less warm in consequence, and engineered with greater “in your face” immediacy. The playing of the Concertgebouw, always a wonderful Messiaen orchestra, is stunning throughout. Chailly revels in the music's weirdness. The Ondes Martinot, for example, is particularly well captured. It's interesting how earlier performances tended to minimize its presence, perhaps for fear that is would sound silly, which of course it does, redeemed by the composer's utter seriousness and obliviousness to anything that smacks of humor. In any case, it's not all noise and bluster. The Garden of Love's Sleep is gorgeous, hypnotic, but happily still flowing, while the three Turangalîla rhythmic studies have remarkable clarity. Jean-Yves Thibaudet plays the solo piano part magnificently, really as well as anyone else ever has.

The idea behind the thematic programming of this disc is a journey from the earthly to the light, it is about the question of how life and death are connected.

Lars Vogt (1970-2022) early recordings collected here provide a document of an artist who always remained authentic, both to himself and to music. Lars Vogt never sought absolute truth, but truthfulness instead meant all the more to him. The man and the artist were always very close, never currying favour and never detached from the world. He was, instead, open and natural. / "It's incredibly gratifying when you notice that you can perhaps light a little spark, a little flame for music in people, and when music helps you to find the path to your own soul."

Released between 1991 and 2005, the selections in The Warner Recordings encapsulate the period when Pierre-Laurent Aimard was signed to Erato and Teldec, performing mostly 20th-century fare and some music from the 19th century. Aimard is famous for his contributions to the modernist catalog, and his performances of works by Pierre Boulez, Elliott Carter, György Ligeti, and Olivier Messiaen are regarded as scrupulously executed and authoritatively interpreted. Aimard also recorded early 20th century pieces by Charles Ives, Alban Berg, Maurice Ravel, and Claude Debussy, as well as Romantic masterpieces of Beethoven and Liszt. A pianist's pianist, Aimard is well-rounded in his repertoire and a true master of keyboard technique, yet he has received considerably less fanfare than many of his flashier colleagues. Yet connoisseurs of piano recordings know that Aimard is indispensible, especially for his special feeling for French music, and his recordings are important documents that serious students and newcomers should appreciate.

Alberto Rosado showcases some of the most significant modern composers in this well-considered programme. Inevitably he’s up against fierce competition, not least Pierre-Laurent Aimard’s recordings of both Ligeti’s Ricercata (included on the disc which received Gramophone’s Contemporary Award in 1997) and the complete Vingt Regards.

"You love us, sweet Jesus: that we had forgotten," wrote Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) in the preface to "Offrandes oublieés" of 1930. Much of religiOUS art, with its artificially circumscribed expression and stylised piety, has contributed to this tendency to forget, and it was something Messiaen also fought against in his organ suite "La Nativité du Seigneur" of 1935. While a prisonelcof-war in 1941, during the Second World Wal; Messiaen wrote his "Quatuor pour la fin du temps" at Stalag VIII in Silesia.

Håkan Austbø has excellent credentials in this repertoire. His is an individual view, with a wider range of tempi and dynamic than Loriod. His account of the opening Regard du père and the later Regard du fils sur le fils is paced much more slowly, but his playing has great concentration and evocative feeling so that he readily carries the slower tempo, and in Par lui tout a été fait articulation is bolder, giving the music a stronger profile, helped by the clearer, Naxos digital focus. This is undoubtedly a performance that grips the listener and can be strongly recommended as an alternative view.