A lovely track from the album Stadsbilder, to be released by Time Released Sound on August 6th, 2021.

Stadsbilder

Jakob Lindhagen & Dag Rosenqvist, "Stadsbilder"... Längs Husen

We are pleased to present the second in a series of piano-based releases in celebration of this year’s Piano Day. 

Our label joins forces with Leipzig-based pianist and composer Lorenz Weber to release two long-form compositions for solo piano under the name of ray of hope – a project that gives the listener space and time to lie down for a while, close their eyes, and perceive the individual tones and the silence in-between each note. summer and rain, winter and sun. At first glance, they may seem opposite. However, they are not mutually exclusive, but rather complementary forces. The rain in summer and the sun in winter let us know that everything will be alright.

ray of hope will be available digitally on the 1st of April, featuring artwork by Jordan Amy Lee.

Purchase

Lorenz Weber - summer and the rain

Don't let the cover art or the title of this track deceive you! Yes, there is a depiction of a samurai, and yes, Koi are the Japanese amur carp that swim in decorative outdoor ponds and water gardens, and yes, now that I'm thinking about it, there are elements of elegance and movement in the music that may transcend the title and the album art, but I promise you it's not a drill'n'bass track with some glitched out bass drops. The track I am premiering for you today is actually taken from Matt Emery's second instalment in the "Spotlight Series" for which, this time, he focuses on harp. For this series of EPs, Emery showcases the virtuosity, tonal range, and timbre-rich textures of each instrument. His previous entry for Injazero showcased the cello (see this track preview of "Anxiety Mist"), and featured a samurai, once again, preparing for the battle. And although the theme of a battle is still present on this EP, it is now enveloped with water. Hence the koi in the pond. Specifically composed by Emery for this stringed instrument, the piece is performed by the London-based Olivia Jageurs, who has recently won the Royal Philharmonic Trailblazer Award. Oh, and besides being a celebrated composer, Emery also produces an amazing Contemplative Podcast hosted in conjunction with Contemplative Classical and Headphone Commute!

Spotlight Series: Harp

Koi Swirls

TRACK PREMIERE : Matt Emery - Koi Swirls

Spanish duo Menhir joins piano and coffee records to release their new full-length album Geomantic Works.

This record is the summary of 2 years of work on the notion of speculative territory, places of power, and music and sound as a catalyst for different states of consciousness. Seven tracks that form a kind of sound menhirs, dedicated to several spaces or rocks. The album began to be composed in the summer of 2018 in the Salinas de Añana, and during the following 2 years it has been elaborated in a tour of the rest of the protagonist places of the album, as well as the Stockholm EMS studios, GrooveArt in Madrid and the Farrera Art and Nature Center in the Catalan Pyrenees.

Geomantic Works will be available digitally and on limited edition vinyl on the 22th of April, with artwork and design by Coco Moya and Celia Bayo.

Menhir - Uno al otro

Following the warmly-received Paces (1631 Recordings/Decca Publishing) and the collaborative Stadsbilder (Time Released Sound), Swedish composer and multi-instrumentalist Jakob Lindhagen presents his second solo full-length album Memory Constructions on piano and coffee records.

Recorded together with German brother-duo Sebastian and Daniel Selke (aka CEEYS, whose collaborations also include Ólafur Arnalds and Spitfire) and longtime artistic collaborator Sofia Nystrand (Vargkvint), the album merges elements of neoclassical and ambient music, with a foundation of intimate piano works paired with violoncello and vocal synth, expanded with musical saw, kantele, bowed glockenspiel and sound experiments, recorded to analogue equipment. 

”Memories are an equally complicated as fascinating aspect of the human mind. After realizing a couple of memories from my childhood surroundings simply didn’t add up - the timeline didn’t make sense so I couldn’t have been in that place at that time, or a block of houses not being placed where they actually were - I became slightly obsessed with memory research. Our memories play such a huge part of our identities, yet they are extremely unreliable, change and fade over time, and are easily influenced and manipulated. And yet I couldn’t help myself also finding beauty in the fact that I both completely trust and distrust my own memories, that make up who I am. So digging from these slightly contradicting feelings, and from where my own memories are either constructed, fading, forgotten, rewritten, made up or completely true, this album was concieved.” 

Memory Constructions has been supported by the Swedish Arts Council, and is coming out digitally and on limited edition vinyl on the 23rd of September, featuring artwork by Sofia Nystrand and desing/layout by Celia Bayo.

Jakob Lindhagen - Here, Before

Belgian composer and sound artist Adriaan Swerts announces the release of his debut full-length album One in collaboration with piano and coffee records – a collection of twelve deeply personal compositions that, originally, were not conceived with the idea of ever getting released but that, like shards of ice, slowly floated together and formed an island of music.

Both a life-threatening accident – which caused his disability –and the passing of his grandfather confronted Adriaan with the fragility of life. Thematically, this album deals with the eternal, life fading away, death, and the afterlife. At the same time, it attempts to celebrate the beauty of love, life, nature and all that lives on earth.

The characteristic sounds on this album are field recordings of natural landscapes Adriaan visited, which he transformed into instruments and used almost solely to compose. The piano and other acoustic instruments such as the harmonium and strings, as old but not forgotten classical friends, are the other elements that accompany these transformed natural sounds. Icelandic glaciers, geysers, Scottish lochs, waterfalls, oceans and more all found a home on this album. In addition, Swerts uses reel-to-reel tape processing to degrade the sound of the recordings and make them sound broken – a reflection of what his body feels like.

The artwork of the album similarly reflects Adriaan's focus on the theme of the fragility of life and nature. The cracks in the ice symbolise how easily something can be broken into pieces – just like what happened to his body after his accident – but can still be a whole. In addition, Adriaan crafted a videoclip for each piece of the album through the process of cymatics – the study of visible sound vibration and the transformational nature of sound and matter. He filmed the sound vibrations caused by his music in water, unveiling beautiful and unique geometric patterns for each composition.

One comes out digitally and on limited edition CD on the 28th of October, featuring artwork and design by Celia Bayo.

Adriaan Swerts - Distant Overtones

From the album: Ludvig Cimbrelius - Love Letters From The Sky

Physical copies and digital downloads available here:
http://soundinsilencerecords.bandcamp.com

Sound In Silence is happy to announce the return of Ludvig Cimbrelius, presenting his new album Love Letters From The Sky.

This is his third release on the label after the two highly acclaimed albums, Still Light in 2018 and Imagined Distances in 2020, under his Eternell project.

Ludvig Cimbrelius is a Swedish musician who for over a decade has been producing his wonderful music, ranging from ambient and modern classical to deep electronic and minimal dub techno, under his own name and many different aliases such as Eternell, Purl, Illuvia and others. His music has been released on many labels, including Silent Season, Dewtone Recordings, Archives, A Strangely Isolated Place, Sound In Silence, Databloem, Stereoscenic Records and many others, as well as his own labels Eternell and LILA लीला.

Love Letters From The Sky consists of eight compositions of calm piano meditations resting on distant ambience, with a total duration of about 55 minutes. For all his piano focused releases Cimbrelius tends to use his own name instead of any other alias and the same applies here. The album is the result of some love letters he received and translated to melodies during the past 4 years, creating a smooth and immersive aural experience, based on piano recordings, made both in Sweden as well as on a very old piano up in the mountains of Georgia last autumn, airy synth textures and delicate guitar swells.
Love Letters From The Sky is an atmospheric piano album of ethereal ambient, exquisitely mastered by George Mastrokostas (aka Absent Without Leave), which matches perfectly the warm light of early autumn.

This is a limited edition of 200 handmade and hand-numbered collectible copies. It is packaged in a lovely hand-stamped 127mm x 127mm 250 gsm olive green recycled cardboard envelope with the front cover image printed on a polaroid style photo paper and an insert sheet containing tracklist and information printed on a 120 gsm off-white recycled cardboard. It also comes bundled with a download code coupon and a Sound In Silence card.

Ludvig Cimbrelius - stjärnhimmel

Vanessa Wagner first grabbed my attention when she collaborated with Murcof on Statea (InFiné, 2016). How can you not get mesmerized by her beautiful piano rendition of Aphex Twin's "Avril 14th" with Fernando Corona's electronic soundscape treatments? By the time this French pianist released her explorations of the minimalist repertoire with Study Of the Invisible (InFiné, 2022), I have already proclaimed her to be the Martha Argerich of the contemporary classical crossover genre. On the former, she performed music by Philip Glass, Suzanne Ciani, Harold Budd, and even Brian Eno & Roger Eno. Her new album, titled Mirrored and scheduled for release on November 25th, via InFiné once again, continues the solo piano studies of "graceful minimalism and rare finesse" with re-interpretations of works by Sylvain Chauveau, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Moondog, Philip Glass, and Nico Muhly - the latter of which I am premiering for you today. Low beautiful chords land on the keyboard of the piano with measured dynamics and balanced intent. Individual notes are given space to resonate and fade away. My favourite instrument is lovingly caressed, expressed, and captured, to truly become an extension of feelings within. Here, I must also give credit to the composition itself, which first appeared in Nico Muhly's Speaks Volumes (Bedroom Community, 2006). "The melody moves slowly, but when it moves, it spans octaves, rising like a giant architecture above the low, cycling chords in the background. Over the low, austere chorale, that melody has the heft of iron bells, tintinnabulant in a style that nods to Arvo Pärt." Wagner's rendition is closer, deeper, more intimate, and well-performed - something that lifts up this piece and makes it just a little bit better.

Mirrored

Quiet Music

TRACK PREMIERE : Vanessa Wagner - Quiet Music (Nico Muhly)

Higher - Piano Version

Music, instruments, voices, mixing, mastering, photo : Mekanik Mozz ' Art
BB, Osaka, august 2023

Recorded : October 2024

E297

From a series of (almost) daily ocean glimpses. The music is composed to a video of the sea (photons captured fresh every day). You can experience the full video version here: https://youtu.be/rae6__V233E

Glimpse 1111

Glimpse 1111 (Oct 14 2024)

A relevant spot for artists from all over the world who cross the borders between ambient, electronic, and contemporary classical music.

label@pianoandcoffee.com

Vargkvint / Sergio Díaz De Rojas / Klangriket / Plinki Plonki / Manos Milonakis / Cedric Vermue / Sjors Mans / Justina Jaruševičiūtė / Didacte / Adrien Casalis / Leon den Engelsen

Menhir - Uno al otro

piano and coffee records

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