Composer and performer Joep Beving, one of the most listened-to living pianists in the world, is joining Deutsche Grammophon to release his new album ‘Prehension’ on 7th April.
Dutch musician Joep (pronounced ‘Yoop’) is a towering figure in the streaming world – and in real life too, thanks to his two-metre frame (nearly 6’10), wild hair and flowing beard. He has become a one-man success story – writing, recording and releasing his debut album ‘Solipsism’ (now available digitally on DG) which has been streamed nearly 60 million times.
Joep’s delicate melodies instantly struck a chord with listeners when tracks from the album first appeared on streaming music playlists alongside the likes of Max Richter, Ólafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm.
“I call it ‘simple music for complex emotions’,” says Joep, summing up its universal appeal. “The world is a hectic place right now and I feel a deep urge to reconnect on a basic human level with people in general. Music as our universal language has the power to unite.”
Each track on ‘Solipsism’ was recorded at dead of night in the kitchen of his home in Amsterdam, while his partner and two young daughters slept, played on the German piano he had been left by his late grandmother.
Finally the music reached the ears of DG when a friend of Joep’s played the album in her local bar in Berlin – where one of the label’s executives happened to be – and ended up in a signing with the world’s foremost classical label.
The first fruits of the new partnership are ‘Prehension’. A natural successor to ‘Solipsism,’ it carries forward the musical and philosophical themes Joep identifies in his music. Understated, haunting and melancholic, its delicate melodies will help soothe the soul.

Ryuichi Sakamoto’s ravishing and rare solo piano suite ‘BTTB’ is finally issued on vinyl - expanded, reshuffled, and newly replete with liner notes by none other than Haruki Murakami. Trust it’s swoon-worthy stuff.
Originally released in 1998 and hard to get hold of outside of Japan, ‘BTTB’, or ‘Back To The Basics’ is now reissued on 2LP to mark its 20th anniversary. It’s effectively a definitive edition of ‘BTTB’, reshuffled from the original 2LP pressing to also include ‘Energy Flow’ from the BTTB’ maxi-single, (which peaked at No.4 in the Japanese singles charts), as well as the slippery elegance of ‘Reversing’, both on the vinyl album for the first time.
Tech specs aside, this new edition is a sumptuous testament to Sakamoto’s effortlessly natural, poetic evocations of emotion, by then channelling some 30 years work as an arranger of classic synthpop (YMO, collabs with David Sylvian), and seminal soundtracks (Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence; The Last Emperor) into some of his most stripped down yet affective music, hovering on the line between precise, mindful composition and intuitively fluid improvisation.
While the majority of the material here features Sakamoto playing conventionally beautiful solo piano with magnificent highlights on the likes of ‘Opus’, he also extends into experimental, prepared piano on a handful of pieces, both serene and frantic, such as ‘Prelude’, ‘Sonata’ and ‘Uetax’, cannily resonating with Aphex Twin’s prepared piano pieces on ‘Drukqs’, which were released just two years later.

The Preservation label presents "Becalmed", the debut album from Sydney pianist Sophie Hutchings. Having begun playing piano young growing up in a musical family, Sophie started writing properly in her teens – indeed, the opening piece "Seventeen" is named for her age at the time it was originally composed, though all on "Becalmed" have been developed and improvised on since their original form. Sophie’s compositions move from disarmingly spare and elegant beginnings to curl out with a tingling edge, propelling its austerity into urgent and epic realms. Violin, cello, drums, percussion and organ heighten the flight these pieces can take as well as dip and swell within the more dimly lit moods of gentler nuance, casting a particular spell across the range of feeling captured in Sophie’s playing. Both unfussed and exquisite though constantly evolving, the inspired measure of "Becalmed" is found in the space it inhabits between the meditative and evocative. "Becalmed" was produced in two settings, with engineer Tim Whitten – noted for his continuing work with The Necks – in Sydney and Tony Dupe , otherwise known as fellow Preservation artist Saddleback, in the tranquil surrounds of his former home studio in the Kangaroo Valley on the South Coast of New South Wales. Among other performers on the album is Sophie’s brother Jamie Hutchings, leader of longstanding Sydney outfit Bluebottle Kiss, and cellist Sophie Glasson, who has also recorded with Sarah Blasko and The Church. Seemingly from out of nowhere though essentially poured out from deep within, "Becalmed" is a shimmering, absorbing debut.