Daily Drops · Vol.155每日唱片 · Vol.155

an organ and a saxophone that never land. 為了一棵神木，這支室內樂團第一次把低音單簧管寫進編制

Friday, September 04, 2026 2026年9月04日星期五

01 Pick of the Day 今日精選

Arab Strap — Half-Told Tales

Genre類型: Post-Punk
Label廠牌: Rock Action Records
Format介質: Vinyl · CD · Streaming
Released發行: 2026-09-04

The Fox sisters, in 1848, convinced a good part of upstate New York that the rapping in their bedroom wall belonged to a murdered peddler they called Mr. Splitfoot. Arab Strap have given the name to a track in the middle of their ninth album, which is a fair place to put a swindle about where sound comes from. Otherwise Half-Told Tales is a record about arrangements: what gets left, who gets told, how the whole business is to be wound up. Fourteen songs, Paul Savage producing as usual, and a closer titled "Beats Per Minute." Aidan Moffat's jokes still land, though what stands behind them has moved considerably closer. The first Arab Strap single appeared in September 1996 and concerned the opening of a weekend. Thirty years on, almost to the month, the subject is the closing of everything else. 1996 年九月，Arab Strap 發了〈The First Big Weekend〉，唱的是週末怎麼開始。三十年後的同一個月份，第九張專輯十四首，講的多半是收場怎麼安排：變老、遺物、身後那些沒人想先開口的安排。中段那首〈Mr. Splitfoot〉借了十九世紀 Fox 姊妹通靈傳說裡那個敲桌子的鬼名，一個關於「聲音從哪裡來」的老騙局，被放在一張談死亡的唱片正中間，位置選得剛好。製作人還是 Paul Savage，聲底沒變，Moffat 的黑色幽默也沒變，只是這回笑話後面站著的東西更近。收尾曲叫〈Beats Per Minute〉。實體做了四種，其中一款是簽名黃膠。

Stavanger Symphony Orchestra & Andris Poga — Shostakovich: Symphony No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 65

Genre類型: Classical · Symphony
Label廠牌: LAWO Classics
Format介質: CD · Streaming
Released發行: 2026-09-04

The proportions are the story here. Shostakovich's Eighth runs a shade under sixty-five minutes, and the opening Adagio–Allegro non troppo takes twenty-five and a half of them, leaving four movements to share what remains. Nothing about the shape is reassuring, and the ending declines to resolve anything at all. Poga, a Latvian, conducts an orchestra of eighty-five players drawn from twenty-two countries, which puts a certain distance between the players and the 1943 catastrophe the music was written inside. The distance suits it. The third-movement toccata, with the violas grinding away at their figure without a breath, sounds less like national grief than like machinery that cannot be switched off. 蕭士塔高維契第八號寫於 1943 年，五個樂章、六十四分鐘，結尾不給任何勝利式的收束。這個錄音有意思的地方在人：斯塔萬格交響現有八十五名團員來自二十二個國家，指揮 Andris Poga 是拉脫維亞人。一部關於蘇聯戰時創傷的作品，交給一支國籍拼盤的挪威樂團——距離帶來的不是隔閡，是不那麼便宜的悲憫。結構上最反常的是重量分佈：第一樂章 Adagio–Allegro non troppo 就吃掉二十五分半，接近全曲四成，剩下四個樂章擠在後半。第三樂章那段機械託卡塔，中提琴群的固定音型不換氣地往前推，是全曲最不留情的段落。

Windy & Carl with Optigan Conservatory — Windy & Carl Meet Optigan Conservatory

Genre類型: Ambient Drone
Label廠牌: kranky
Format介質: Vinyl · Streaming
Released發行: 2026-09-04

The two duos had known each other for the better part of thirty years before spending a few days of late 2024 in a room together, with no discussion beforehand. Six pieces came out of it. The titles work as coordinates rather than descriptions: "Coast Starlight" is the Amtrak train that runs the length of the American west coast, "Alvin Loving" a painter from Detroit. Optigan Conservatory's electric piano and synthesizers sit under the guitar drift and pull it downward, and the result is colder than anything either pair has issued alone. The liner notes admit that once the mix was finished, nobody could account for certain sounds and vocal textures on the tape. They left them in and said so. 四個人認識將近三十年，直到 2024 年最後幾天才第一次一起錄音，而且沒開過任何事前會議，架好器材就開始。真正值得記一筆的是後話：混音完成之後，四個人發現成品裡有一些沒人記得彈過的聲音和人聲質地，他們沒有刪掉，也沒有裝作沒發生，直接把這件事寫進了唱片說明。六首曲子，〈Coast Starlight〉是一班橫貫美國西岸的長途列車，〈Alvin Loving〉是底特律出身的畫家。Optigan Conservatory 的電鋼與合成器把 Windy & Carl 原本那種吉他漂移的聲場往更暗處壓，比雙方各自的舊作都要冷。封面是 Aaron Mertes 拍的一間被植被吃掉的廢棄店面。

Soft Science — Sand

Genre類型: Dream Pop · Darkwave
Label廠牌: Shelflife Records
Format介質: Vinyl · Streaming
Released發行: 2026-09-04

Two twelve-strings, layered, are where nearly all of this record's density comes from; the synthesizer only holds the floor. Three years after Lines, the Sacramento six-piece — a pair of brothers, a married rhythm section, Katie Haley out front — have pushed toward post-punk and darkwave and picked up the tempo. Ten songs, and the sweetness is thinner than before. 沙加緬度的六人團，距上一張《Lines》三年。編制裡有一對兄弟（Matt 與 Ross Levine）和一對伴侶（Tony 與 Becky Cale），Katie Haley 主唱兼打擊，Hans Munz 負責氛圍電子。聲音的密度幾乎全來自兩把十二絃吉他的疊加，合成器只在底下墊著。這次往 post-punk 和暗潮推得更深，節奏也更急，夢幻流行那層糖衣薄了一點。十首，〈Spinning〉〈Fade〉〈Understand〉已先行釋出。

Hannah Roberts — Celtic Legends: The Piano Music of Helen Hopekirk

Genre類型: Romantic Piano · Solo
Label廠牌: Navona Records
Format介質: Streaming
Released發行: 2026-09-04

Hopekirk was born in Edinburgh, trained in Vienna, and spent the back half of her life teaching in Boston and collecting Gaelic song. Almost none of her piano music has been recorded; Roberts gives it twenty-four tracks. The sequencing of the Five Scottish Folk-Songs is the detail I keep returning to — three minutes and forty-two seconds for "Turn Ye to Me," then shorter, then shorter again, ending at forty-nine seconds with "Eilidh Bhan." Celtic material usually gets handed to pipes and fiddle, where the tunes have somewhere to hide. A piano gives them nowhere, and they turn out to be perfectly comfortable in the open. Helen Hopekirk 生於愛丁堡，在維也納受古典訓練，後半生在波士頓教書並採集蓋爾語民謠。她的鋼琴曲幾乎沒人錄過，這張補了二十四軌。核心是四樂章組曲《Iona Memories》，第一首〈Wandering〉六分零九秒，是全碟最長的一首。最有意思的是《Five Scottish Folk-Songs》的排法：從三分四十二秒的〈Turn Ye to Me〉一路縮短，收在四十九秒的〈Eilidh Bhan〉，像一句話越說越輕。凱爾特素材通常被丟給風笛和提琴，換成一臺鋼琴之後，敘事性反而更清楚。

Cicada — 神木之島原聲帶

Genre類型: Chamber Post-Classical · Soundtrack
Label廠牌: WINDIE Music
Format介質: Streaming
Released發行: 2026-08-25

Nineteen pieces, most under three minutes, which gives the whole thing the rhythm of a trail walked in stages. Chiang Chih-Chieh (江致潔) wrote all but three; Tsai Hsun-Yang took those. The new element in the ensemble is a bass clarinet, and it goes where the roots go. 十九首，多數不到三分鐘。江致潔作曲，蔡巽洋接手其中三軌。這次編制多了一支低音單簧管（高承胤），低頻往下扎，寫的正好是樹根。錄於臺北享亮音樂，鋼琴另在 ff Studio 收，孫紹庭母帶。是紀錄片配樂，但獨立聽完全成立。

液藍 BlueLiquid — BLUELIQUID

Genre類型: Post-Punk · Noise Rock
Label廠牌: Maybe Mars
Format介質: Streaming
Released發行: 2026-08-25

A Beijing quartet's first full-length, on Maybe Mars, and it opens with a song called "One-Dimensional Man." Borrowing Marcuse for a debut is a lot of nerve, and mostly the record earns it: noise comes up in waves, a flat declarative line of Mandarin surfaces through it now and then, and "魚" is the one place they let the whole thing go soft. Ten songs assembled from four years of material, recorded in Beijing last October. The closer, "輕軌," asks where to go and then stops, which reads as a departure rather than a summary. 北京四人團的首張全長，兵馬司出品。十首，第一首叫〈One-Dimensional Man〉，最後一首叫〈輕軌〉。曲名中英混雜，聽感也是：噪音浪推上來，中間偶爾浮出一句斷言式的中文，像礁石。〈魚〉是全碟最軟的地方，上浮又下沉。〈一種鳥類〉找了何凡客席。2025 年十月在北京錄的，四個人 2022 到 2025 之間的東西全塞在這十首裡。最後那句「去哪」問完就散場，擺明是出發不是總結。

David Maranha / Rodrigo Amado — Desolation Row

Genre類型: Free Jazz · Drone
Label廠牌: Comets Coming Recordings
Format介質: Vinyl · CD · Streaming
Released發行: 2026-08-07

One track, forty-two minutes. Maranha's electric organ builds a wall that refuses to settle on a pitch, Amado's tenor flies along it, and neither of them touches ground until the very end, where the record stops on something close to a rest. It was taped live at ADAO in Barreiro on 3 October 2025, at the twenty-second OUT.FEST, and you would barely know there was an audience. Their 2024 Wrecks was already severe; this is longer and considerably quieter. Stuart Broomer's liner essay reaches for Messiaen's organ improvisations, which is not the comparison I would have made, but it is not wrong either. 一軌，四十二分鐘。Maranha 的電風琴鋪一堵不肯穩定下來的牆，Amado 的次中音薩克斯貼著這堵牆飛，中途一次也沒落地。2025 年 10 月 3 日錄於葡萄牙 Barreiro 的 ADAO，第二十二屆 OUT.FEST 現場，觀眾聲幾乎聽不見。兩人 2024 年的《Wrecks》已經夠狠，這張更長、也更安靜，最後收在一個近乎休息的音上。內頁文由加拿大樂評人 Stuart Broomer 執筆。買任何版本都可以寫信索取 24bit/96k 母版。