November saw the release of my newest ep of music, the second volume of my 88 Short Stories series of piano improvisations. Volume One first saw the light of day in January 2019, the fruits of one particularly musically fruitful winter’s day - this one explored different textures and sounds and moods loosely bound together by the theme of ‘night’.
Volume Two had a more challenging gestation and birth… I had already decided that I wanted to intentionally produce some inherently more simple music: something about the current state of the world, its politics, its unpredictability and its darkness inspires me to try to (if only internally) offset and answer that with simplicity, beauty and light. Added to this, over the summer I had to cope with the very sudden onset of a condition in my hands that made movement painful - a pretty devastating blow for someone who fills their life with piano and drum playing. But the two could align! Simple music that involved little hand movement! Verditer, the final track on the ep, was born - a simple, hymn-like ode to uncomplicated beauty.
Over the summer, I battled on with other ideas but for whatever reason, inspiration was in fairly short supply (see previous blog post for all the grim, challenging details…). A procrastinating hard drive reorganisation led to the surprise rediscovery of some recordings I had made with my genius engineer friend Grant back in 2001 - an evening spent improvising on a beautiful Steinway Model C grand with mics setup and tape rolling. Hours of trawling through hours of raw recordings later, with several days spent listening, comparing takes, editing out a profuse amount of wrong notes, I emerged from the studio triumphantly clutching three more finished piano tracks… improvisations that fitted the brief, worked together to make a coherent whole, that I was pleased with and constantly surprised by and that had emerged from my brain or fingers or wherever a mere 18 years earlier.
And so here it is. Please do listen and enjoy. I’m pleased with how it all turned out, mainly for the reason that I love the twists and turns music-making can take, how things rarely turn out how they’re originally conceived or intended, and the joy of the serendipitous discovery of just the right long-forgotten music at just the right time.
Josh
