2022

German sound pioneer Hans-Joachim Roedelius and American composer Tim Story ring in the New Year with a sizzling prepared piano piece, fittingly named Crisscrossing.

Weaving together forty years of friendship, the eleven pieces on their forthcoming Erased Tapes debut 4 Hands, out February 25, convey restraint and empathy, and a way of communicating beyond words.

"Together we shaped the basic compositions, sometimes carefully preparing the piano with various materials (including my own hands), and Achim’s performances were committed to tape. I continued to compose and refine my parts in the following months. Because it was all recorded on the same piano, the result has a very appealing consistency of sound, and hopefully blurs our individual contributions into a single integrated voice” — Tim Story

“For me, these pieces express a different kind of beauty, they evoke more than the sum of their parts, they are a wordless dialogue, a bridge across the great water that separates our cultures from one another. ‘Allons enfants des deux patrie, haha!’” — Hans-Joachim Roedelius

4 Hands

Crisscrossing

Roedelius & Story - Crisscrossing

Herr F.

träumen

Today I'd like to introduce you to Laurel-based (Mississippi, US) neo-classical composer, pianist, and synth (and breakfast food) enthusiast, Jameson Nathan Jones. Perhaps "an introduction" is the wrong term here since Jones appeared on these pages back in 2021 with his beautiful piece, "Places We Could Have Gone", which I have featured on this Piano Day Special. He's got a handful of releases on his Bandcamp page, with the 5-track Carried EP appearing on Bigo & Twigetti imprint in May 2019. He's now off to release a full-length on an independent label, Fractured Capstan, scheduled for December 2nd, and I am excited to premiere a track titled "Kept" from the upcoming album, Somewhat the Same. The result is a very humble "collection of sonic experiments created with no cameras, no recording engineers, and no intended end-game or subsequent expectations," and it is moving in its honesty, sincerity, and warmth. Here, gently guided modular synth arpeggios are accompanied by soft piano keys, a touch of distorted lead swarms, and driving percussion to create a melodic journey through voltages and space. It's a beautiful marriage of organic and synthetic, and I think that when you hear this piece, you will appreciate my choice for today's track premiere. 

"Kept" was among the first tracks written in an empty church during the first lockdown. It started with some simple piano ideas, which I layered using the same felt upright featured in my 2018 release, "Sanctuary Sessions." The piano sits in the church's large, reverberant sanctuary, and I've always found that some kind of magic happens when recording such an intimate sound in such a large space. As was a common theme for this album, those initial recordings were fleshed out back at my studio, where I created a bed of tape loops from samples I had made of the church's magnificent pipe organ. While the organ features much more prominently on other tracks, I find the instrument's string celeste stops to be so stunning I tried to work them in almost like a reverb-drenched synth pad at various points throughout the record. Several layers of synths and eurorack percussion continue to build through the climax before it fades back to its humble beginnings."

Somewhat the Same

Kept

TRACK PREMIERE : Jameson Nathan Jones - Kept

jeju

Taken from the upcoming album 'opening opening'...

All music written and recorded by offthesky
Mastering by Jason Corder
Print layout by Craig Tattersall
Design by Daniel Crossley

www.fluidaudio.co.uk

opening opening

Offthesky - Ripples Into Empathy

“I could hear everything, together with the hum of my hotel neon. I never felt sadder in my life.” - Jack Kerouac, “On the Road” (1957)

In chapter 13 of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” we find Sal in a Los Angeles hotel room with his new girlfriend, Terry, soon after they’ve decided to hitchhike back to New York with the $10 they share between them. Staring out the window in a sleepless fit, Sal observes a domestic dispute across the street: the humming neon sign of the hotel is an audible element amidst the police’s questioning, family’s sobbing, and city’s howling sirens, all of them blending together in an oddly poignant moment. 

This idea of sound adding context and emotion to human experiences is the foundation of Hotel Neon. The project formed in 2012 under far less desperate conditions than Sal’s, but it has always been anchored in the practice of recording musical responses to the current moment. The chord progression of “A Lament,” for instance, was recorded in the hours following the breaking news out of Sandy Hook on December 14, 2012. Ever since then, we have continued to create soundtracks for specific settings and situations in our lives.

“Hotel Neon 10: Reworks” is a reflection on the 10th anniversary of our debut self-titled album, which was released on July 30, 2013 in a batch of 100 cassettes. Initially a loose collection of minimal drone experiments with no intention for follow-up after the tapes ran out, Hotel Neon has morphed into the central musical identity for each of us, leading to friendships, experiences, and purpose that we could never have imagined at the time.

This is not simply a remaster or remix; HN10 has been entirely reworked from the ground up. You will notice that some of the essential elements and structures from the original songs come through, but we made a concerted effort to build on those early ideas and present a new album with our current tools, techniques, and experience.

We deeply appreciate your support, and thank you for listening.

Music: Hotel Neon (Andrew Tasselmyer, Michael Tasselmyer, Steven Kemner)
Mastered: Rafael Anton Irisarri
Design Daniel Crossley

Hotel Neon 10: Reworks

Hotel Neon - Dust And Drag

DR-88 : ARIA ROSTAMI - 'Siren' CD / DL
releases August 4, 2023 

Over the last few years, Rostami has been playing with new ideas using field recordings, improvised piano, and tape processing. Already having made a few records experimenting with these ideas, "Siren" sets itself apart as a concentrated approach to illustrate abstract environments and landscapes through sound. On songs like "Cold Stream" and "The Recent Past" you will hear literal field recordings of nature mixed with composed musical emulations of environments, whether it be a representation of running water or the quiet nostalgia of suburban life. Songs like "Landscape" and "Today and Tomorrow" take field recordings of field recording records played in Rostami's studio space along with multiple recordings of the same piano performance. The piano is recorded with a field recorder, as midi and as a D/I recording and woven together, in and out, blending the soundscapes of field recordings and studio recordings into an undefined grey area.

Music written and recorded by Aria Rostami
Cover image by Dylan Tushar
Mastered by Ian Hawgood
Thank you Pepper, Afshin, Abbas, Nasrin, Dylan Tushar, Daniel Blomquist, Ashkan, Evan Scott, David August, and Sean Raji
license

Buy  CD / DL

The Recent Past

Stillness isn't absence, it's memory frozen in motion, a spiral suspended in velvety air. Echoes return with form and warmth, transforming silence into presence. Dreams leave residue in reverse, and names become breath, refracted. Somewhere between static and radiance, emotion is reproduced not to be understood, but to be felt again, ever softer.

Neon Weeps Softly

“inside” is an ambient track by Chad Nathan

inside

siyi performance

Composed, Played & Recorded By Madeleine Cocolas + Monolyth & Cobalt.                                                                                                                Mixed by Monolyth & Cobalt in October 2015.

Madeleine Cocolas : piano                                                                                                                                                                                     Monolyth & Cobalt : strings, breathes on tapes, electronic devices,  effects processors, loop pedal, amplified objects.

Month Seven Project (Madeleine Cocolas + Monolyth & Cobalt)

Due out on limited CD on July 24th

DR-69 : PORYA HATAMI - Kani + Remixes (incl. Darren McClure, Purl, Arovane, Tomotsugu Nakamura, Sven Laux)

Originally released in 2013 on the Inner Ocean label, Porya Hatami’s “Kani” was a four track EP showcasing his intimate take on modern ambient music. The Iranian artist has issued a large number of albums that imbue pastoral ambient with subtle field recordings and melodies. The melodic aspect of Hatami’s work took centre stage in this release, and shone bright across the four pieces.

So now, seven years later, “Kani” is being given the reissue that it deserves, and will delight those listeners new to it, and those who are rediscovering it again. Besides the original four tracks, there are an additional five remixes by artists working in a similar orbit to Hatami, and some who have collaborated directly with him in the past.

These reworks cover plenty of ground, reimagining the source material into new shapes. Some remixes extend the foggy soundscapes and conjure delicate melodic plucks. Others add mellow pulses that infer rhythm under the washes of sound, while others take these rhythmic ideas much further.

Original tracks mastered by Jason Corder aka offthesky
Remixes mastered by Porya Hatami
Artwork by Hawar Amini

Buy CD / DL

Porya Hatami - Restless (Sven Laux Interpretation)

Hi,
my name is Joachim Heinrich and I compose my own music.
I'm constantly searching and finding my own note and it's always a great pleasure to share this process with you through my music.

Thanks a lot for listening!

All the best,
Joachim Heinrich

jeju

Joachim Heinrich

Recent comments

caaverrn

Related tracks