Painting A Picture / Picture A Painting
“I did this piano/Rhodes recording, played live, without overdubs. I believe your approach to sound could match very well these tracks….” That’s how Giovanni Di Domenico’s collaboration with Rutger Zuydervelt started, though the first seeds were planted when the duo did a short live improv together in 2019, and Giovanni joining Hydra Ensemble on stage in 2022.
Painting a Picture / Picture a painting is -as the title suggest- an album of two long-form pieces, swapping the working method for each …
When the Distance is Blue
'When the Distance is Blue' is Macie Stewart’s International Anthem debut. The Chicago-based multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improviser describes the collection as “a love letter to the moments we spend in-between”—a letter realized via an intentional return to piano, her first instrument and the origin of her creative expression. Here Stewart creates a striking and cinematic work through collages of prepared piano, field recordings, and string quartet compositions, one that gives shape to …
Beyondddddd The Notessssss
Tip! *200 copies limited edition* In the depths of Geneva’s Fonderie Kugler red-lit-boudoir, stand four grand pianos surrounded by divinities. The two elder Erard brothers are tuned down a quarter tone lower than their neighbours, a twin pair of gleaming and valiant Yamaha’s. Charlemagne and Seppe both sit facing each other, managing the 428Hz tuning from the tip of their left hand, while the right hand controls the conventional 440Hz machine. This four-piano fantasy was born a few years ago, w…
Fire
In the space of a couple of years, Stephen Grew has recorded three absolutely sparkling solo piano releases for Discus Music. All three are spontaneous improvisations arising from years of practice and refinement. Grew is a massively undervalued artist - follow the story he tells across this release and its two predecessors and I'm sure you'll agree.
Stephen Grew writes: "Recorded in the Great Hall, Lancaster University, on the 22nd November 2024. This music was recorded on a Steinway D and what…
At My Mother's Piano
Japanese visual artist & musician Yoshino Shigihara returns with the vibrant, beautiful music of her main project Yama Warashi (translates as ‘small childlike mountain spirit’) on new EP ‘At My Mother's Piano’.
Enriched by the kaleidoscopic influence of Japanese folk dance, free jazz, African music and psychedelia, Shigihara illustrates the ever-evolving qualities of Yama Warashi on ‘At My Mother’s Piano’, crafting exquisite, improvisational solo piano works interlaced with vivid field recording…
The Solar Model of Ibn Al-Shatir
Pat Thomas returns to Otoroku for his fourth collection of solo piano improvisations, this time recorded in a studio setting at London’s Fish Factory.
Kuvioita
''The world is rearranging itself. The winds sweep away our misery. We need space for simplicity and calmness. The humming synchronizes with the hissing of my nervous system. I'm breathing. There is beauty.'' - Tanja Tiekso
Now we are Here
This second volume of solo piano from Grew comes hot on the heels of his 2023 Discus Music release “Chasm”, also for solo piano. For all the brilliance of that earlier work, Grew was keen to push himself even further and engage with a piano and a space with which he was already very familiar – at Lancaster Baptist Church, close to his home in the North West. Grew writes in the sleeve notes: “I have found this instrument a real challenge to play, its action is particularly unyielding, so my effor…
For Piano and Shō
"I've long been interested in exploring the elongation of the piano's decay. The shō's clean harmonics offered an enticing texture to incorporate into my experiments with slow-moving piano works." - Samuel Reinhard
Amor
*300 copies limited edition* "When asked about the title of her new record, “Amor”, Limpe bluntly responded, “because it’s everything”. Being a Beatles fan from the very beginning, she’s well aware that “all you need is love”, but there’s more to her sentiment than a corny pun. On the one hand, she’s more than half a decade into her musical career, and describes the relationship towards her instruments in terms of an ongoing and deepening love affair. “Be it my piano, my viola or my percussion i…
Ultra-Minimal
*300 copies limited release, handmade textile sleeve w/ printed inner* Sylvain Chauveau has been releasing quiet and minimal compositions on various labels for more than two decades. ultra-minimal marks his debut for Sonic Pieces and takes the minimal approach even further, centring on reduction and limitation.
The album was recorded live at Café Oto, London in March 2022 - one of Sylvain’s rare solo concerts and the first time he performed publicly with only acoustic instruments; no machines, n…
Alloa
Huge Tip! The composer, percussionist and instrument builder Limpe Fuchs has spent six decades exploring the outer limits of sound and its effects on the listener. Born in Munich in 1941, Fuchs is part of a generation of German artists who sought radical new approaches to art, music and social organisation in the period following the Second World War. Alloa, Bavarian for alone. Limpe likes to be alone, because she is never lonely. When she is not on concert tours, she cultivates the garden in fr…
Pianoon
"The Piano’s been one of the instruments Limpe Fuchs received an academic education for when attending the Music Academy in Munich during the early 1960’s. In the early 1970’s Friedrich Gulda, the world-famous classical pianist, who was eager to leave behind the orthodoxies, limitations and restrictions of the classical music world, got to know Limpe and was inspired by her fearless approach towards music. They started improvising and performing together and their musical dialogue lasted until t…
Superlike
Edition of 300 copies. Giovanni Di Domenico has now achieved a personal and unmistakable style within contemporary minimalism. His music always expresses a state of concentration, of recollection and contemplation toward a focal node. Repetition is experienced as alchemical state, as truth contained in the small nuances of change, in a crescendo that never reaches a climax. The atmosphere is intuition and is made up of a few compositional touches. To compose is to make synthesis, to unearth puri…