Manafonistas

David Bowie’s ‚David Bowie‘ contains 14 Schneekugeln. I had high hopes for doing them all here, but no. It’s time to call time. Not because the remaining 7 aren’t any good: of course they are

It’s just that it’s a listening thing. David Bowie’s ‚David Bowie‘. Doing the first 7 you realise this shit is like William Blake’s ‚Songs of Innocence and Experience‘: the simple ain’t simple, time ain’t time, gravity ain’t gravity. Nothing to throw adjectives or musicological pseudo-theory at

Or: Auch Zwerge haben klein angefangen

 

 
 
 

Next Friday, on Feb. 12th, Warp will be released. Carefully handled sonics, field recordings, voices (placed the the middle-, back- and back-back-ground) extend the format of the pure solo album. Highly concentrated, strangely laid back at the same time. Accessible and experimental. Warp is an instruction-free manual for getting yourself lost in. And the world keeps knocking on the door.

How did the different strands of ideas come together to create one of 2016’s most captivating „piano & beyond“-albums? It took some time after having started with initial recordings in Oslo. „I will definitely perform Warp live, the first is in Copenhagen on the day of its release. Another one at the Oslo Jazz festival in August, I hope a lot more also. I control the sound layers myself, using very simple and intuitive tools.“

 

1

 

Michael Engelbrecht: What was the basic idea that triggered „Warp“ as a melange of solo piano composition and all the other things and sounds surrounding the Steinway?

 

Jon Balke: I think the starting point was an abstract idea about making an architecture of sound: walls, curved spaces, light and darkness, actually a question: can this be done? Can we experience sound as a physical environment? And then as I developed my piano playing in paralell. I wanted to try to place the piano inside these imaginary spaces. I am still not sure if I achieved what I wanted, but the process is very intriguing and interesting. And it continues. It has also led to my collaboration with Bjarte Eike and his ensemble, called “the image of melancholy” where I make sonic spaces around live performances of renaissance music.

 

Michael: What kind of sonic spaces?

 

Jon: I have used a mixture of actual instrument sounds from his ensemble, filtered and processed, plus layers of composed reverberations that are in accordance with the different pieces they play.

 

Michael: Has there been an inspiration by other recordings where pianists have surrounded their piano or keyboard music with electronic spheres, natural sounds @ samples?

 

Jon: Actually I have not been researching by listening to other composers or producers. I had this idea in my head and I have just gone for exploring that. Of course there are many projects with electroaccoustic combinations in music history, so in that sense Warp is in a tradition. But my starting point and inspiration has been an imagination.

 

Michael: There is one „groove track“ called „Shibboleth“. Sounds Jewish, the word. Is there, in the electronic keyboard figure a short reminder of Joe Zawinul, soundwise. He used some field recordings on his first solo album, and sometimes for „Weather Report“, too …

 

Jon: I think „Shibboleth“ is actually Hebrew, yes. But it means a slogan or something special that identifies something or someone. Could be special way of dressing up also. I guess it´s sort of iconic for me to dive into this kind of rhythmic textures. I know it is not „modern“, but … I cant help it :-) Hence the title. I was not concious of any Zawinul reference, but of course he is in my blood system so … .

 

Michael: „Warp“ ist surely a road not taken before in the way it sounds. There is the piano being strictly (most of the time) in the foreground, center stage, the crystalline sound, and then the music is surrounded by a second or third layer – something quiet or „far away“. What was the thrill?

 

Jon: It is fascinating to shape dimensions in sound. We are acually the first humans who have the possibility to warp and shape sound in this manner, by using technology previously not available, or seriously degraded by unwanted noise and problems. Also, I guess, as the project developed, it started to mean more than just the sound idea in itself. The title refers to the relation between the artist in his or her bubble of esthetic values and choices, as opposed to the external reality of the world of cars and rivers, birds and business. The artist has a warped image of the world and the world has a warped image of the artist. We are living in very turbulent times, and the musician isolated with his piano is starting to seem like an impossibility.

 

2

 

Michael: Let’s stay in the impossible for a while. As a listener you tend to try (at first) to identify the sources: the first „noise“ on the record – carefully repeated during the album – sounds like someone playing with the pages of a book, the sound of it. The „listening area“ is extended, an open field beyond the habit of just concentrating on the piano …

 

Jon: That is in fact what I wanted to achieve, to open up the space or reverb of the piano sound and stretch it out to the world and the sounds in it. You are right about the first sounds, they are recordings of paper shuffling that are warped in the stereo image. I like to think of the listener attaching their own associations to the sounds. It is not important what the sounds really are, I am more interested in the impression on the listener.

 

Michael: There is this track „This is the movie“. There is a distant electronic sound, you’re playing a soft melodic phrase, a reminder „film music“, more Claude Lelouch than one for Claude Chabrol …

 

Jon: That title is actually from a text by Sidsel Endresen. Many of the tracks are based on songs or tunes I have made, to text or just instrumental tunes. But I dont play these songs on Warp, I just use them as a reference buried deep down in the mix. This helps me to find structure in the material.

 

Michael: Did some movies or cinematic „moods“ spring to mind in the long process of giving „Warp“ its last shape?

 

Jon: Music is always visual for me. I can´t really pinpoint any clear references to movies or images in Warp, but I “see” the spaces and the piano sound as abstract shapes and colors.

 

Michael: A piano solo album normally takes the time it takes to record it. But on this one, recording the piano pieces had only been one step. You were in that house in the mountains with Audun Kleive adding sounds & atmosheres to the piano tracks. The mixing in Lugano with Manfred Eicher, the final sequencing. A long journey …

 

Jon: I had an initial stage of recording of soundscapes and voices (with the vocalists) with the clear intention of having all this sound very deep and far around the piano. In the first recording of piano in Rainbow studio, playing on top of the imported soundscapes, I actually had quite a struggle to feel free in this landscape, so I did another pass just playing solo piano and imagining the soundscapes. Then I went home and actually ended up mixing these two approaches. Next we sat down, Audun Kleive and me, and actually shaped (warped) the sounds around the piano sound, using different software tools like Ircams Spat and others, working with spatialisation and imaging.

 

3

 

Michael: Interesting, too, the way, you’re working with a fabric of voices. There is choir-like humming, purely instrumental; there is an unusual take on the „pop song“-format with the vocals in the background; there are the quite hidden „airport announcements“. Quite a „theatre of voices“!

 

Jon: We had actually recorded a lot more singing with Mattis and Wenche, but this felt too imposing in this context, so I kept the more abstract remnants of the recordings. I might release an album of songs later with the actual recordings. But, yes I like to work with voices as colors. If text and melodies become too present, they would shift the focus of this project very fast.

 

Michael: It would be very interesting to compare the „pure solo version“ against the final work. I think they both would be rewarding listening experiences, but with the adding of all the other elements „Warp“ becomes a different, surely not less „organic beast“…

 

Jon: I guess that this approaches the psychological phonomenon where you, if you sit near a waterfall, start to hear voices speaking and singing inside the water. If someone has listened to Warp for a while and then heard the piano track alone, they would still hear the soundscapes in the reverberation of the piano, maybe?

 

Michael: For example, some of the „sounds“ of „Warp“ adopt the role of „leitmotifs“. It’s like returning to a room that has meanwhile changed its colour. That would fit your intention of experiencing sound as a physical environment, wouldn’t it?

 

Jon: That is a nice way of putting it.

 

Michael: You are speaking of using the non-musical elements as „remnants“. Shadows of the real world, so to speak. You deliberately treat, for example, these „airport announcements“ making them nearly unrecognizable. The real world is not documented like neo-realism. It’s fragmented, dreamlike, loses its urgency.

 

Jon: I guess, since you mentioned the movie association earlier, that this might be a way of relating to the sounds of the world and the piano as an instrument in the direction that for instance Tarkovskij relates to the visual media. The world is strange and alien, but also miracolous and beautiful. And it is my role as an artist to go on exploring it, I believe.

Schöne Überraschung.

Längere Zeit schon hatte ich die npr-Musikseite nicht besucht, dann vor ein paar Tagen las ich folgende Zeilen:

 

„There’s an untouchable quality to the works of Elliott Smith, the singer-songwriter whose 2003 death haunts his already-haunting songs about pain, longing, love and survival. As with the similarly ill-fated Nick Drake, attempts to emulate or cover Smith’s music tend to capture the feathery beauty while missing the bruised quality that makes it burrow under the skin as deeply and indelibly as a tattoo. Elliott Smith’s work, particularly his best-known solo material, sits best as-is, unchanged and untouchable.

So there’s something deeply refreshing about Heaven Adores You, a companion soundtrack to the new Smith documentary of the same name.“

(npr.org, January 2016)

 
 
 

 
 
 

Morgen, am 5.2. erscheint sie, die neue CD von Elliott Smith: Heaven Adores You, die Musik zu dem gleichnamigen Film über Elliott Smith. Ich bin gespannt auf den Film, der Einblicke bieten soll in das Leben und Werk dieses Ausnahmemusikers. Zunächst müssen wir uns mit der Musik zufrieden geben und die verspricht schon einiges. Die CD beginnt mit einem frühen Stück des Meisters, 84 Sekunden: „Untitled Guitar Finger Picking“, gefolgt von „Untitled Melancholy Song“. Zu hören ist im weiteren Demomaterial, Ungeschliffenes, durchaus auch Raues, bekannte Lieder, Instrumentalstücke und einmal mehr eine Version „Say Yes“ aus dem Film Good Will Hunting, ebenso findet sich auf der Platte „Miss Misery“ aus eben diesem Film. Die CD schließt mit einem bisher unveröffentlichtem Stück „I Love My Room“.

Neben dieser neuen Platte sei hier noch an ein paar unvergessliche Lieder von Elliott Smith erinnert:

 

„Son Of Sam“

„Between The Bars“

„Looking Over My Shoulder“

„Angeles2

„Waltz 2“

„Angel In Snow“

„Somebody That I Used To Know“

„Pretty Mary K“

 

 
 
 

Danach halte ich insgeheim Ausschau, nach Romanen, die mit, ähem, es mag kitschig klingen, aber der Ausdruck lag mir nun mal als erster auf der Zunge, ich sag es besser in englischer Sprache, nach Romanen also, die „with a wounded heart“ daherkommen – aber auch, parallel und gerne gleichzeitig, mit scharfem Witz, so als sei dieser Humor ein „power tool“, ein Therapeutikum (Balsam), um mit dem Anderen, der Dunklen Seite, zurechtzukommen.

„The two key players in this superb regional mystery suffer from separate but equally crushing cases of survivor guilt … The writer tells both their stories with supreme sensitivity, exploring the ‘landscape of memory’ that keeps shifting beneath our feet.“

(New York Times Book Review).

„The Long and Faraway Gone is that rare literary gem – a dark, quintessentially cool noir novel that is both deeply poignant, and very funny … as hip, hilarious, and entertaining as it is wrenching, beautiful, and ultimately redemptive.“

(Huffington Post).

Der Titel dieses wunderbaren Buches ist fast so paradox wie Handkes „Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter“. Letzteres ist, aus meiner, natürlich beschränkten Sicht, ein furchtbar langweiliges Beispiel für „moderne deutsche Literatur“ aus der alten BRD. Das Buch verdankt seine Verkaufszahlen gewiss diesem witzigen Titel, und dem Hype des Avantgardistischen. Anders als bei PH, bin ich Ror Wolf bis heute als treuer Leser gefolgt, und  habe ungefähr ein Dutzend Bücher von ihm, und dieser jüngste Gedichtband ist eine fantastische Lektüre für Kurzreisen, lange Zugfahrten, Badewannen in 3-Sterne-Hotels, kurzfristige Idyllen in Niemandsländern und Weltmetropolen. Ror Wolf ist ein Meister der Entropie, und gern erzählt er in makabraben, gereimten, ungereimten, surrealen, chaplinesken Versen und Zeilen vom Verschwinden der Welt, der Menschen, jedes Einzelnen, der Tiere, der Wolken, all der Dinge, die schon ewig da sind und sich dauernd in Luft auflösen. Wäre hier, wie einst beim Klassiker „Punkt ist Punkt“ der Fussball im Mittelpunkt, Ror Wolf würde auch vom Verschwinden von Hannover 96 aus der Bundesliga berichten. Das Schöne bei Ror Wolf ist, dass diese schon immer postmoderne Literatur, bei aller Rabenschwärze des Weltbildes, genauso wie einst Heinrich Spoerl, zur Heiteren Literatur zu rechnen ist. Ror Wolf kann sogar den einen und anderen Kalauer in unangestrengte Kunst verwandeln. Famos, absolut famos.

 
 
 

 

And iiii am at Plac Zamkowy and it’s raining

My friends, goodbye. I left you there on the street. I had an idea for a time machine

| Влади́мир Ильи́ч Улья́нов | dohánybolt| vážně | грязный | & twoim otoczeniu | & there was no curfew

But I am not at Plac Zamkowy, it’s not raining

And when I live my dream I’ll forget the things you told me And the empty man you left behind It’s a broken heart that dreams, it’s a broken heart you left me Only love can live in my dream I’ll wish, and the thunder clouds will vanish

And I am in a coffee shop in Łódź, on the corner of Nawrot and Sienkiewicza. I am sitting down with my coffee when this group of absolute nutters invades the place. One has on a Guy Fawkes mask, one has a guitar, one has a tinsel wig, and one appears to be carrying a tray with the nativity scene on it. One of them is doing a morris dance. I just ignore it but it’s pretty funny.

I can’t hear the song they play anyway, as I have my red and white urBeats in-ear phones on, and My Truth by Cocteau Twins is playing at full volume into my head (from my Android phone) which alongside the weird side effects of the decongestants I’m taking has the effect of partial environmental block-out. Valuably subtracting any element of sincerity from this exercise in psychogeography. What’s meaning, and what’s meant? And today, Łódź is Las Vegas and everything is repairable: everything is broken

But I am not in a coffee shop in Łódź on the corner of Nawrot and Sienkiewicza. I am in beautiful Bucharest, huddled in a doorway on the Strada Maria Rosetti, which with decongestant side-effects and half-closed eyes, could almost be Palermo. And my urBeats are playing Damage

And when I live my dream, please be there to meet me

When you think of the cultural baggage of the grand piano and other neo-classical, neo-ambient efforts, new conceptions are hard to find, new styles hard to imagine. On the side of unforgiving boredom of Botox Bullshit Cosmetics for the Society of Great Taste Inc., Max Richter explores sleep on „Sleep“, with a music that reminds you of wanting to sleep right now! He’s the guy who reimagined Vivaldi’s Four Seasons without the tiniest amount of imagination. Crap for the Night of the Proms. „Schöngeisterei“ is the true enemy of adventure’s rotten playground! Playing nice can really turn into exhaustion. There is only one Harold Budd. The world is full of virtuosi who only do well what they are trained to do well. Nevertheless there are still new and fascinating piano solo albums. The first one is by Ketil Bjornstad, it’s even a double solo album („Shimmering/Images“), and I don’t exactly know why I do like it quite a lot. On the surface, it’s too „romantic“, but, matter of fact, though it doesn’t transport me to the edge of the seat, it sends me deep into my sofa with all the antennas out. There is something dark in the beauty, hidden, not quoted. Then there is, recorded with about 24 microphones, a piano solo album by Greek composer Stavros Gasparatos („Extended Piano“): if you don’t follow the blinking red code exit signs by light speed, you’ll be swallowed by the sheer energy of the performance – wild world of ivory (and this is a gentle warning!). I don’t fully understand the magic of this music either, it comes along with big gestures, heavy studio wizardry, FULL LIGHT SHOW (metaphorically speaking), and an attitude of intensity that rivals the extrem mood changes of Tschaikowsky’s piano concertos. Well, well, well. And then there is „Warp“ by Jon Balke (see photo, from a concert in Sardinia), and that is a fantastic album. I immediately fell in love with the music of it, with all its spheres, ghosts, voices, noises, melodies, harmonies, grooves, brakes, shuffling, remnants, and instruction-free getting-lost-phenomena. Something’s happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear. I collected my questions like flowers on a lawn. We did the interview. One of these days. Gregor looking for one of his favourite Paul Bley albums, „Alone Again“ (unavailable, buried treasure), Rosato holding in his hands the extended version of Erroll Garner’s „Concert by the Sea“. And Clint Eastwood is playing „Misty“, too.

 
 
 

 

 
mimimi

jojo

mamala

iiii

ha greg

jaja

uwuwolf