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

Taken from the upcoming album 'Gaze Into The Sun', forthcoming on Fluid Audio...

Gaze Into The Sun

Szymon Kaliski - To Linger

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

“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

Tracklist

01. Anthéne -  Balance (featuring Fields We Found)
02. Glåsbird - Kata
03. Old Amica - Signal
04. Tomotsugu Nakamura - Heliotrope
05. Will Samson - Beatrijs' Theremin
06. Far away Nebraska - Lei
07. Jason Calhoun -  Small Circle
08. 't Geruis - In Purple
09. Arovane - Endett
10. Sonmi451 -  Hyperbole
11. Shuttle358 - Meteor heart

349. Sleepy Sunday Podcast (Elm Records)

A311

Unfound - Entry 04

Farsleeper is about a dream that continues without you.
A place you once visited in sleep, now drifting farther away each night - still real, still unfolding, but no longer reachable.

Built from slow drifting pads, distant harmonic echoes, and a softened pulse that never fully resolves, this piece lives in the quiet space between rest and forgetting.

Lore - The Dream That Kept Going:
You woke up, but the dream did not.
Somewhere beyond your reach, it continued -
streets you almost recognized,
rooms you never entered,
and a version of you that stayed behind.

Good for:
• dreaming and late-night listening
• deep focus and writing
• emotional drift
• sleep-adjacent calm
• liminal introspection

Part of the Unfound Series - soundtracks for the lives and moments that feel almost real.

Full Wartonno Sound catalog on Spotify → https://linktr.ee/wartonnosound


Buy on Bandcamp

Farsleeper

Thomas William Hill - Laniakea

My 'Minimal Sunday' at #daybyday project! It's the last one for now.
I'll go back to privat with this project...
Now I should prepare for the shows this week:
15.11 Köln / Kulturkirche / http://bit.ly/2sP20yd 
16.11 Wuppertal / Börse / http://bit.ly/2ucQ8tp 
17.11 Bielefeld / Bunker Ulmenwall http://bit.ly/2vbzOXj 
18.11 Paris (FR) / Les Trois Baudets / http://bit.ly/2tM4W1N
22.11 Berlin / Funkhaus / http://bit.ly/2rVzm0M
23.11 Yverdon (CH) / Theat Benno Besson/http://bit.ly/2rVntYs
24.11 Amsterdam (NL) / Vondelkerk / http://bit.ly/2swRHPt
30.11 London (UK) / St.Pancr Old Chr / (Sold Out)
01.12. Athen (GR) / Plisskën Festival / http://bit.ly/1tJvEy1
22.12 Lübeck / Kulturwerft Gollan / http://bit.ly/2xZ8gpz
23.12 Hamburg / Elbphil / (Sold Out)

Lambert - Less (Day By Day Project / Minimal Sunday)

Michiru Aoyama is a Japanese ambient producer from Kyoto who also enjoys making music in the quiet seaside city of Kamakura, just south of Tokyo. Michiru studied electronic music production in Berlin after his work was hand-chosen by Ryuichi Sakamoto for a radio audition in 2006. Since then, Michiru has released projects on prominent ambient labels such as Organic Industries, taâlem, and Somehow Recordings.

Michiru Aoyama’s Brilliant Days LP comprises two tracks of untitled songs that weave in and out of each other. Michiru’s signature guitar harmonics are treated with serene electronic filters met with youthful under-layers of electronic experimentations and glitchy backdrops.

Production - @michiru-aoyama
Mastering - James Plotkin 
Artwork - Patti Bai 

180g vinyl pressed at GGR, Cleveland, Ohio. Comes with insert and download code. Limited to 200 copies. 

Available for ordering at Juno, Boomkat, Bleep, Deejay.de, etc. 
Bandcamp: https://miraearts.bandcamp.com/album/brilliant-days
More updates on our website and social pages: https://miraearts.com/

Michiru Aoyama - Brilliant Days LP [Audio Sample]

Taken from 'Shimmer Raga' (HH102), the official label debut from Melbourne-based musician and sound designer Zoltan Fecso.

Digital + Cassette Tape release date: August 17th, 2018.

Digital + tape on Bandcamp: goo.gl/DL86Da
Apple Music / iTunes: smarturl.it/ShimmerRagaApple
Spotify: smarturl.it/ShimmerRagaSpotify

Zoltan Fecso / Soundcloud - @zoltanfecso

Lambert - Less (Day By Day Project / Minimal Sunday)

Lambert X