London-based record label Mercury KX celebrates genre-defying, multi-disciplinary artists. Home to acclaimed composers and innovative musicians such as Anoushka Shankar, Ólafur Arnalds, Keaton Henson, Luke Howard and Isobel Waller-Bridge, the label prides itself on carefully curated audio-visual adventures. Their diverse roster create unique sound-worlds that bridge electronic, modern-classical, cinematic, alternative and ambient genres. ZoneOut’s Cassandra […]

Chad Lawson’s curriculum vitae is so impressive that it would be futile to convey all the ins and outs here. From film scoring, jazz performance and now neo-classical, he’s covered it all. He could be forgiven for reflecting about the diversity of his compositions with a sense of ambiguity, but it became clear over the […]

Sophie Hutchings is guided by her instincts. As a young woman, immersed in a highly musical Sydney household, she bided her time, absorbing the music and art of her father and brothers, but herself refusing to play her own ruminative piano compositions beyond the safety of her bedroom. When her own innate talent finally got […]

It’s not often that a nation produces two great jazz exports with the same name. But there is no mistaking the signature sound of trumpeter and Big Vicious bandleader Avishai Cohen, whose creative flair and lyricism – evoking the spirit of Miles Davis – has been lauded by the likes of The New York Times […]

Ahead of the release of her album Scattered On The Wind, Australian pianist and composer Sophie Hutchings recommends her favourite listening, reading, viewing, eating, and places to visit. Music Ohhhhhh there’s too many to mention! So I’m going to go with the first neo-classical outfit I discovered: Rachel’s. Bordering on chamber-cross-orchestral with moments of indie-rock […]

“It’s a lovely day in the village, and you are a horrible goose.” The now-iconic video game Untitled Goose Game – in which players take control of a goose whose primary objective is to bother the inhabitants of a small village – became a sensation in late 2019. The game beat Nintendo’s own The Legend […]

Brothers Roger Eno & Brian Eno have been making music together since 1983. The brothers first joined forces, in collaboration with Daniel Lanois, to write and record For All Mankind, the soundtrack to Al Reinert’s epic documentary about the Apollo moon missions. Music from this soundtrack was released as the critically acclaimed and hugely popular […]

Neo-classical music takes the best bits of classical music, minimalism, electronica and experimental rock and mixes them up into a delicious sound-salad. The piano has played a central role in this musical movement, lending it’s wide expressive and tonal palette to a host of iconic albums. And so ZoneOut took on the difficult task of […]

Article courtesy of uDiscover Music Award-winning composer and pianist Max Richter’s landmark eight-hour minimalist lullaby Sleep (2015) feels as though it were composed with World Sleep Day in mind. After all, Richter has staged a string of night-time performances (complete with beds for the audiences), during which he has performed the work for piano, string quintet, […]