This year, piano and coffee turns five, and to celebrate, we are releasing our first compilation: Realismo Mágico — a conceptual project featuring unconventional works by new and old friends we have made along the way.

Inspired by magical realism, an artistic genre in which realistic narrative and naturalistic technique are combined with surreal elements of dream or fantasy, this special release presents unheard material by twelve exceptional musicians — from experimental sound artist Martyna Basta to award-winning film composer Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres, and from poly-instrumental duo Brueder Selke to prolific pianist and producer John Hayes.

Each artist has contributed with a new track that invites the listeners to submerge into their very own musical universes, which, at the same time, have been re-shaped by their interpretation of magical realism. We start off on our journey with the delicate nostalgia of Tim Linghaus, passing through Jakob Lindhagen and Vargkvint’s modern take on the story of a Norse mythological creature, followed by the harmonic ambiguity in Simeon Walker’s pleasingly strong dialogue between felted piano and drums. Later on, John Hayes shares with us a chaotic composition born out of samples from an old clock in his parents’ garage and saturated voices, which precedes Lucy Claire’s processed hydrophone recordings of seaweeds and starfishes in Australian waters. Ondes Martenot, pump organ, zither, analogue synthesizers, vocal processing, musical saw, and bowed gongs are some of the unusual elements to be found on this eclectic yet coherently unified record.

Realismo Mágico has been conceptually crafted and musically curated by Peruvian composer Sergio Díaz De Rojas, and beautifully depicted by illustrator Jordan Amy Lee and graphic designer Celia Fernández González.

Lucy Claire - Kelp

One of the tracks from the upcoming Zvuku LP on Heat Death.

This record needs funding! Head to the indiegogo page to find out how you can help make this a reality.

FUND!

Zvuku - Coldsong

Following an exclusive video premiere of Sylvain Texier‘s project as Ô Lake back in 2018, I have praised his debut release, titled Refuge, highlighting it in my Best of the Year lists a year later. This summer, Texier is back with a new release, Gerry, subtitled Music inspired by the motion picture from the eponymous film of director Gus Van Sant, following a story of two men (both named Gerry) who are tested in the California desert on their friendship and a will to survive. Originally commissioned by Travelling film festival, this work was designed to be performed as a cine-concert. “Singular, poetic and contemplative, the film offers immense musical possibilities, due to the length of its shots and its near absence of dialogues,” says Texier of the project. Although not an official soundtrack, the music follows the film and its aesthetics closely every step of the way. Just as the director experiments with the artistic approach on the duration of each visual shot, Texier focuses on the space between the notes, the atmosphere and silence. On the surface, “Death Valley” is a simple, lovely piece, but listen deeper, with the aid of closely placed microphones, follow the melody walk upwards into the light, bathe in the soft resonance produced by the natural reverberation of the piano board, and you will surely unveil all its beauty. I love everything about this project, especially the idea of writing music for an inspiring visual piece. Perhaps I shall try my hand at it also…

"From the very beginning of the creative process, I wanted my music and the film to be one and the same, for this new soundtrack to be as close as possible to the director's intentions and to be considered the real soundtrack."

Gerry

Death Valley

TRACK PREMIERE : Ô Lake - Death Valley

I'm Not Into Girls Like That

Demo for my next album, The Gramophone Suite, which will be released late 2018. The track will also feature on the Soundcolours compilation "Chilltronica No6"

Film One

This is my solo piano piece composed for Piano Day 2018: http://www.pianoday.org/

It is the coming together of two ideas I had been playing with for a file, both inspired by the movement of snow and how it seems to float as well as fall. Recorded one night with 1 mic on my miniature Wagner upright piano using the felt pedal. (sorry for the poor recording) 

You can download the full piece here: https://benstanbridge.bandcamp.com/track/floating-falling

Free Download

Floating, Falling [Piano Day 2018]

Continuum introduces the anthology with a strong sense of anticipation and foreboding, using textured layers of modular synths, ambient drones, clusters of whispering voices and ethereal choral vocals. In the words of composer/producer Jameson Nathan Jones.

"Continuum was inspired by the concept of continuous expansion. My initial idea was to use only the vocals to construct the piece, which ended up being the case with the exception of the bass line that appears later in the track. All of the textures were derived from some lovely soprano parts from Olivia Dunn, including the percussive elements which were created by running her vocals through my eurorack system. The end result seemed a fitting representation of the continuous organic and synthetic expansion of our world."

Scale

Continuum

Jameson Nathan Jones - Continuum

To shed some light about how the piece was created, Will has shared some insight into how he went about approaching the concept of Scale.

'Throughout my career I've almost exclusively relied upon my ability to perform and record all the elements of my arrangements through multi-tracking as the means for realizing my compositions.

Because of this I am all too familiar with having to wrangle with proximity effect (how close an instrument or sound source is to the diaphragm of the microphone) and how can either aid or negatively impact a compositions sense of space and convincing ensemble qualities.

When Jim Perkins approached me about contributing to this compilation and mentioned the overarching theme was "scale" I immediately thought of how I might use proximity effect as a guiding identity for a composition.

For this project I decided to disassemble a few music boxes and experiment with using some of my larger instruments (my harp, Concert bass and kettle drum) as resonators for the boxes and mic'ing them at a good distance away from the attack of the tines giving these tiny little instruments a sound far more resonant than they would've had in there original cases. I pitted these ideas against the sound of the highest register of several larger instruments (Harp, Contrabass, cristal bichet and piano) playing the very highest register they could muster, mic'd them extremely close with small diaphragm mics to emphasize the attack and smallest minutiae of performative gestures. I continued to build on this inversion of physical size and pitch relationship for all the subsequent overdubs and arrangement (bass clarinet playing super high multi-phonics, the viola being tuned down a whole fifth and playing two octaves below the basses artificial harmonics etc etc)

It was a joyful little exercise and the tonality and spirit of the peace represents that enjoyment, I think!

William Ryan Fritch - Disproportionate Joys

Taken from the Green and Grey (expanded)(released 29th November 2019):
https://recordstoreday.com/SpecialRelease/11874

@theleaflabel

Green and Grey (Expanded)

Salt Point

In The Half Light

Always Here

Liam J Hennessy - Always Here

The 2nd song from my new album Peace Amid the Storm, Available March 15, 2021.  

Happy #PianoDay2021

Horizon - #PianoDay2021

Latest releases & playlists: https://bigoandtwigetti.co.uk/links
Licensing enquiries/send a demo: info@bigoandtwigetti.co.uk

Jameson Nathan Jones - Continuum

bigo & twigetti

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