Recent improv: How to Breathe, for harmonium and voice

ERRATA EP (2020)

errata - “mistakes, mistaken things”

The tracks that make up this EP are from a larger collection of piano, harp, and accordion improvisations recorded between 2012-2016. The common theme running through the pieces is that they were recorded without any intention of sharing them. They fill up multiple folders on my hard drive; part of an ongoing system of careless file management. They are very much diary and memory pieces, taking me back to a specific mood, a compositional idea that never worked out, or an idle moment where I sat down to follow blind intuition.

SPELLS FROM THE ICE AGE (2014)

released on Fort Evil Fruit

The pieces on Spells from the Ice Age were never recorded with the intention of releasing them. They started from my own guilt at neglecting my home piano, and the piano in general. I've lived away from home for over a decade now, and every time I've returned, I've peeped around the sitting room door to remorsefully look at the corner-block of spruce and ivory.  Its sad upright posture looking in the middle distance, smelling of musk, weighed down by books and other crap from our house that accumulated on top of it. And then I think of the hours I spent with it. The energy I put into firing my schoolbag across the room, knocking things over in its flight to the corner, so I could rush to my piano seat. I'd stay there until I was told to stop and eat or do homework.

And of course the guilt encompasses the whole experience with the instrument. The neglected repertoire, technique, and practice habits that you no longer remember. A resentment sets in on yourself when you sit down to play - muscle memory refuses to cooperate. Large parts of Schubert, and other favourites, that were once played with a joyous, hyper-fluidity under your fingers, are now angular and disjointed - a computer glitch with important information missing.

I call the improvisations 'spells' because that's how I thought of them when I played. I pressed record on the field recorder and imagined I was cast under a spell of playing in a performance setting. There is an audience in front of me; the performance must carry on regardless of 'wrong notes' or lack of clarity and direction.  I wanted the spells to conjure up my old playing technique – tapping at my muscle memory until it yawned and stretched and sat up.

Also, what grew out of the spells was the nervous excitement of composing from nothing - the forward momentum of composing against the minute hand on the wall, trying to sculpt a complete form through repetition and variation, and also creating space and silence to panic about where to go next! The recordings are raw and flawed, and I'm ok with that.