brettworks

thinking through music

concert reviews

  • Notes On An Autechre Concert, 2025

    If you’ve been following Autechre for years, on recordings and in performance, you may have realized that they’re evolving in ways you are not. You assume the comforts of steady beats, hummable melodies, verses leading to choruses, predictable instrumentation, and genre conventions while they’ve left music’s crowdsourced paths, wandering the wilds of their software, exploring. Continue reading

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  • On Jon Hopkins At Brooklyn Steel

    I recently went to hear Jon Hopkins perform at Brooklyn Steel, a shoebox-shaped warehouse located on the lonely north edge of Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I only caught the end of the performance, but what I saw was stellar. Hopkins played music from his latest release, Singularity, an album which aims to recreate, in a sort of Continue reading

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  • Notes On A Nils Frahm Concert

    In mid-March I went to hear Nils Frahm perform at The Knockdown Center, an open barn-like space in the middle of nowhere in an industrial neighborhood of Maspeth, Queens. There were about three thousand of us, drawn by curiosity about how Frahm might perform his part-neo-classical, part-electronic, part-almost-pop yet always experimental instrumental music. I walked Continue reading

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  • Time Flying By: Notes On Dawn of Midi At The Park Avenue Armory

    “Up close one may see only dots, but stand back and the undulating image is revealed.” – Dawn of Midi Last week I went to (finally) see Dawn of Midi perform at the Park Avenue Armory. The group is nominally a piano-bass-drums jazz trio, but the music they make on their debut album Dysnomia, is Continue reading

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  • Notes On James Blake At Radio City Music Hall

      About three-quarters of the way through his set at Radio City Music Hall the English singer, keyboardist, and producer James spoke to the crowd about what an honor it was to be playing at the famous venue and that it had taken many years for his trio (with Benjamin Assiter on drums and Rob Continue reading

  • Notes On A Tim Hecker Concert

    “A lot of good things come from isolation and hard work and being truthful to some object. The first work of artists often comes from that angle, the liberation of expectation from what that work will be.” – Tim Hecker (interviewed here). Recently I went to see the Canadian electronic musician Tim Hecker perform at Continue reading

  • Notes On An Autechre Concert In New York City

    We’ll never make music that’s compatible with the dance floor, because we don’t really like things that are compatible with anything. – Sean Booth, Autechre (interviewed by Geeta Dayal) Last week I went to see Autechre perform at the Masonic Temple in Brooklyn. “See” isn’t quite the right word though, as I never got anything Continue reading

  • Notes On An R&B Concert

    We arrived somewhat late into D’Angelo’s set at the Forest Hills Tennis club on a warm early evening in June, but we could hear the bass frequencies from several blocks away. Emerging from the stairwell into section six of what used to be a tennis court felt like entering a party with everyone facing a Continue reading

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