Inspired by a tiny desk concert by Abdullah Ibrahim.

Piano Day 2022

Have You Ever Heard?

Alone In Snow

Trailer-style percussion-driven instrumental.

Battle Toll

March 28th, 2020, was Piano Day. Recording 88 piano tracks at 88 beats per minute sounded like this.

03/28/2020

Music For Many Pianos

Often found writing in the third person, it’s Smith’s humility that sets him apart from other more successful musicians. By his early twenties, Dave Smith (writing music under the moniker Our Fairest Mirror), had all but given up on music after an accomplished childhood playing piano and singing in choirs since the age of six, much to the dismay of his parents. He then heard Nick Drake’s ‘River Man’ on the radio and that chord change from C major to C minor sat him back at the piano. More listens encouraged him to pick up the guitar and later tracks including ‘Hazey Jane II’ made him pick up the trumpet. The ability of just a semitone to change an emotion reenvisioned the potential of music in his mind, and it is this ethos that drives his ambition to create big sounds with big emotions behind a quiet front.

Joining Scottish band Broken Records in 2006 took him all over Europe on a record deal with 4AD, supporting The National (on part of their High Violet tour), Editors, and Idlewild. In 2011, the band toured America from The Satellite Lounge in LA to The Mercury Lounge in New York, and New York then became home for Smith as he left the band to marry a girl he met at their gig. Typically coquettish.

Years on he’s still not been forgiven, but it’s hard to hold a grudge if you were to ever meet the girl. Never being allowed to sing in the band, mainly because he couldn’t, he made up for it in style by sometimes playing the piano and trumpet at the same time on stage. Despite this achievement, he’s never quite found the right joke about blowing his own trumpet until now. Until he finally plucks up the courage to release his music, he's currently renovating a 100 year old house, being a husband and Dad, and writing instrumental music for Taxi.com in the hope no one notices he's a Grade A procrastinator.

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