Description
This album expands the ideas explored in Music to Ignore and Foghorn Lullabies, with an extra infusion of energy and chaos. Developing the solo piano and adding double bass and a frankly unnecessary amount of harmoniums and other mechanical instruments, I use this as a starting point to explore memory and reflection, as well as dance, joyfulness and silliness.
Folk but not folk. Sometimes it sounds like jazz, but it’s definitely not jazz. Technically classical but doesn’t work like a classical release. Dances throughout but mostly undanceable.
Many of the tracks on this album are drawn from my experiences as a child going to see the Morris Dancers on May Day, and to Barn Dances on the local farm. In my youth I was mostly baffled by the costumes or focussed on climbing the haybales, as an adult it is the music, dancing and energy that has stayed with me. The tracks on this album draw on my memory of these times: not recreations but remembrances.
Some tracks are improvised and captured on the fly, others are meticulously assembled, in the tradition of the music written for player pianos by Percy Grainger and Conlon Nancarrow. In making this album I’ve enjoyed playing around with mechanical instruments, and many of the digital recreations here are playing with that centuries old tradition of player pianos, calliope, orchestrion and music box in how the music is written and performed.
Track Listing
- Folkcoder – 4m 13s
- Last Rains – 3m 38s
- Jumping the Groove – 7m49s
- Side Hustle – 4m41s
- Amid the roar – 3m49s
- Wildish Dreams – 3m9s
- One-legged Waltz – 1m47s
- Untethered – 2m41s
