Shades of Eternal Night
Field Recordings from Syros, Greece and Southern California in 2015 and 2017. Piano performed by Reinier van Houdt, recorded in The Wild Beast, CalArts, June 2015Inside image by Michael Pisaro / Thanks to Keith Rowe.The sounds come and go against a backdrop of silence and stillness; the silences aren’t long but there’s a definite sense of a canvas only partially filled. Frequently, sounds are allowed to reverberate and decay into nothingness. It’s perhaps this quality that most communicates a se…
Vitae Tennis Nest
Pekka Airaksinen’s Vitae Tennis Nest, released by One Point Life, is a striking journey through avant-garde piano and experimental electronics. Recorded in 1998 and remixed in 2015, the album’s first side features solo piano works that channel the improvisational freedom of Cecil Taylor and Lennie Tristano, the mechanical complexity of Conlon Nancarrow, the ritualistic pulse of Igor Stravinsky’s Les Noces, and the hypnotic repetition of Philip Glass. These compositions are marked by intricate, r…
Capsizing moments
A veritable tour de force of 'inside' prepared piano playing - preppiano extensif. The whole of a solo set performed at Les Instants Chavirés near Paris. Sophie Agnel's preparations, neither static nor fixed, evolve during the course of her playing as she adds, moves or removes an object, or replaces one artefact with another. These preparations include disposable water cups, nylon fishing-line, bouncing balls, aluminium ashtrays, aluminium foil, industrial nylon, inner-tube rubber and polished …
Before Driving To the Chapel We Took Coffee With Rick and Jennifer Reed
Awesome set with a sense of suspended time that marks out their musical world. Combined with the quality of attention and the virtuosic command that is evident in each stroke, it is almost hallucinatory in effect - Keith Rowe, John Tilbury, Eddie Prévost. Concert in Houston, Texas. 1996. "A stupendous continuation of the 90's AMM sound, ala previous documents such as Newfoundland, Live In Allentown and From A Strange Place. Shifting patterns consistently emerge; via Prévost's bowed percussion; v…