Adrian Klumpes — Be Still
The album opener Cornered begins with an ominous wall of distorted metallic drone, like the scraping of the piano strings before waves of piano rolls penetrate through the subsiding drone. Glitchy cut-up phrases and slices of half heard notes fill the room and hold a myriad of melody and unique fragments of piano derived sound. There is a lot to take in at first listen. There are many more minimal tracks on the album, second track Weave in and out plays upon a few frozen fragments of notes while overdubbed improvisations augment the stuttering piano. Klumpes is looking for a far wider spectrum of sound from the piano than would normally be achieved. He is looking for concrete sound, soundscape and incidental sounds, as well as sounds generated by playing in the more conventional way.
Ala John Cage he uses piano preparation to add to the pianos range of timbre and texture. On Alone the processed prepared piano forms a wide panorama of sound under which a melody that fans of Harold Budd will lap up plays against a short four note loop. Ominous drones that come from the heart of the instruments rise and fall with choppy glitches that move like insects across the mix.
The longest track on the album is Unrest at just under ten minutes. It starts with Klumpes bringing out the harmonics from his processed and unprocessed piano, the organic and electronic in long processions of notes that are delayed and layered into a thousand note marathon. Why, the albums shortest track at only two minutes is a filmic mass of distorted sounds that collage together into a cybernetic piano hell that does anything but sooth. Klumpes has succeeded in generating not only a vast variety of sound but also compositional brilliance, from musique concrete to laid back Jazz on tracks like Exhale that hark back to his parent group Triosk. There is a light exhale of static that the piano rests upon. Vibrating piano wires are heard in the background but this is a far more relaxed piece than most of this material.
The tracks falls in on it’s self over the last four minutes with the piano sounding like it is literally falling to pieces.
The last track Passing Pain also uses thick sounding piano rolls which to me always give the listener the impression of movement, of running. The melody is slow in progressing as strange drawn out wiry sounds wind there way across Klumpes piano rolling fields and into the distance. It’s an epic end to a remarkable album. Leaf have released some fantastic music this year and Be Still might just be the best of the lot.