“I think I am the same as an artist and as a person. Music is my way of communication and I see the art, the music as a whole thing, with no borders, divisions, or even genres.”
Hania Raniis a pianist, composer and musician who splits her life between Warsaw, where she makes her home, and Berlin where she studied and often works. She has written for strings, piano, voice and electronics and has collaborated with the likes of Christian Löffler, Dobrawa Czocher and Hior Chronik, and released an album with her Polish group tęskno last year. She has performed at some of the most prestigious venues in Europe - from the National Philharmony in Warsaw, to Funkhaus in Berlin, to The Roundhouse in London (where she made her debut at the Gondwana 10thanniversary festival last October) and at festivals such as Open’er, Scope Festival and Eurosonic. Her compositions for solo piano were born out of a fascination with the piano as an instrument, and her desire to interpret its sound and harmonic possibilities in their entirety and in her own way.
Esja is her debut solo album and for Rani it is her first, real, personal statement as an artist. “No hiding behind the "collaborations" or "projects" anymore. For the very first time, finally - just me, as I am”.
Recorded at Rani’s apartment in Warsaw (the piano room has a beautiful reverb and the space has become part art studio and part sound laboratory for Rani) and at her friend Bergur Þórisson’sstudio in Reykjavik, Esja is a series of beautiful melodic vignettes. Sensual, sensitive, rhythmic, atmospheric, free but harmonious, beguiling and hypnotic, collectively they project a sense of unlimited space and time.
Originally, Rani hadn’t planned to release a solo piano album at all. “I would like to be considered first of all as a composer of music - so not being limited to any instrument or voice or whatever. The solo album came when I went to Reykjavik, where I wrote some new songs instantly while in the studio, so they were almost improvised compositions. It was then that I decided to release an unadorned solo piano album - telling a lot about my musical roots, which are definitely in this instrument. But it’s also just a small prelude of all the music that I want to share in the future”.
Rani grew up in Gdansk with her parents (a doctor and architect) and surrounded by music and films. Initially inspired to study classical music, she was introduced to jazz and electronics at music school, widening her interests and as she puts it, “mixing Chopin & Schostakovitch with Dave Brubeck and Moderat”.Other inspirations include composers such as Max Richter, Esbjorn Svensson, Miles Davis, Nils Frahm, Murcof, Portico Quartet, Radiohead and even The Beatles.“It’s what connects all these artists that inspires me, their special approach to music and sound. For me they have big hearts and huge minds.”
But Rani’s inspirations aren’t just musical, she has drawn inspiration from places she has lived and visited. “It’s about the feeling, the general atmosphere, sometimes about memories. Moving to Berlin (where you have the freedom to be yourself), exploring Iceland and the wild mountains in Bieszczady, South-East Poland, all changed me as a person, so I guess, also affected me as an artist.” And inspiration comes too from visual arts. Her father was an architect and the arts remain hugely important to Rani. “Ifind that what really inspires my music is not the music, but all the other things. I take inspiration for the form of my own pieces from architecture and design. Then I translate this "foreign" language, to my own music and the outcome is way more interesting for me than just getting it from the music.
Indeed, for Rani it is often an image or a colour that comes first, what she calls a sound image. “I can really feel the colours, the mood - just like with photography. If the image is strong enough, sounds come along very quickly, trying to build the right image stuck in my head. The music fills the space, the music brings the new worlds, new spaces. One such inspiration was the collage artist Anthony Zinonos whose artwork adorns the cover of Esja and whose work Hania first found when she was working on the music that would become this album.“I really like the mix of colours and minimalistic style which perfectly describe me as a person and as an artist. I am really in love with his sense of humour and rare ability to match pure shapes with energetic colours and mood”
Beautifully sculpted, Esja opens with the gorgeous Eden,which features a chorus full of warmth and grace. Sun is inspired by the sensation of the warmth of the sun, but also by the feeling of being small in the face of the universe. Hawaii Oslotakes its name from the film of the same name, but is inspired by the contrast of mood and location, always changing as you listen. Biesyis named for the Bieszczady Mountains and a memory of driving in Bieszczady'sforests and twisted roads with friends. The wistful, charming, Luka, is a love song written for someone who affected Rani’s music profoundly. The shimmering Glassis named for its fragility, but also for its many colours, like glass caught in the light. Today it Cameis the only song from the album recorded on a grand piano (belonging to Olafur Arnalds in his studio in Reykjavik). Inspired by the piano, Rani wrote a simple, beautiful tune, and when asked what the song was, she replied “it came today" and that became the title of a memorable piece. Finally, Esjais the named by the mountain in south-west Iceland (which can be seen from almost everywhere in Reykjavik) and because of constant changes to the weather there, it always looks different. It therefore became the perfect title for one of her favourite pieces, one that sounds different every time she performs it. And in turn it became the perfect title for her debut album. A powerful, entrancing statement that offers new delights and new insights on every listen and announces Hani Rani as a major new artist.

Produced and mixed by Richard Luke at Highpony studio.
Mastered by Taylor Deupree at 12K Mastering.
All tracks written by Richard Luke and Amira Bedrush-McDonald apart from track 8 by Richard Luke. Violin by Amira Bedrush-M. Double bass by Kirsty Matheson (tracks 4, 7, 10). Piano, drums, field recordings, synthesisers and programming by Richard Luke. Recorded in Glasgow, Scotland at St Brides Church (tracks 1, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10), Woodlands Drive (tracks 2, 6, 8, 11, 12) and Highpony studio (track 3). All tracks recorded and engineered by Richard Luke. Additional recordings and mixing at Highpony studio.

The third release from (sic) is interesting sound tracks for Ryokan (a Japanese style hotel).
The maintheme is "what's modern Japanese style?".
You will see various sounds of quiet, calm and majestic.
This is a journey into modern Japanese style.
And, we're sorry, but the booklet has some mistakes.
1.
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2. info.symbolicinteration.net -> info@symbolicinteraction.net
Please correct this mistakes. Thanks a lot.

Comes in a jewel case with a 24 page booklet. Together they are housed in a slipcase.
Recorded October 2010 and February 2012. Mendelssohn Hall, Gewandhaus, Leipzig.
Piano: Steinway and Sons Model D.

Víkingur Ólafsson (born 14 February 1984) is an Icelandic pianist.

Víkingur Ólafsson (born 14 February 1984) is an Icelandic pianist.

Prolific and critically acclaimed composer Jóhann Jóhannsson releases his DG debut album.
ORPHÉE is his highly anticipated new studio album the first in 6 years!
Jóhannssons genre-blending score represents all facets of his previous works from intimate string quartet pieces, to large string orchestra works, featuring electronics, drones, organ, piano, choir, as well as enigmatic shortwave broadcasts to create an evocative & immersive sound.
I started writing this album in 2009, using a number of simple contrapuntal themes. I began to reshape and transfigure these ideas, writing many different variations. These renderings slowly mutated over time in a process of deconstruction and re-assembly, to the extent that the original versions began to fade into the darker corners of my hard disk. Unlike many of my previous albums, this one didnt start out with a conceptual or narrative theme binding the music together. Rather, the music seemed to be waiting for its form, for its momentum. Jóhann Jóhannsson
ORPHÉE is a melancholic, yet optimistic musical journey inspired by the Orpheus myth Orpheus rising from the underworld, trying to escape darkness into the light.
Orphée was for me about moving to a new city, breaking up old relationships and beginning new ones, leaving behind an old life in Copenhagen and building a new one in Berlin. I think thats why I gravitated to Ovids version of the Orpheus myth, which tells of death, rebirth and an artist s search for truth. This album is an oblique reflection on personal chang

Ólafur Arnalds teams up with Mercury Classics to bring you a unique and evolving audio-visual portrait of his home country of Iceland.
Over the course of seven weeks in the Summer 2016, Ólafur will be traveling to seven very different locations in Iceland - one per week - to record a series of new compositions. In each location
Ólafur will be collaborating with artists local to the town to create and perform a new song.
Visit
to follow the journey!

he name of the review copy was Nils Frahm ... Plays Piano, celeste, and reed organ. I thought, “oh no.” This sounded like a vanity project or low-budget new age disk, the kind that sells next to Sounds of the Humpback Whale at the Rite-Aid checkout counter. I was determined not to like it … but then I listened to it. Again and again. I began to realize that I really liked this disk, despite the title. Then I learned that the real title was Wintermusik. (A rose by any other name …) And that Peter Broderick, another artist whose music I admire, was also a fan; and that his reaction to Nils Frahm had been the same as mine. Here’s what Broderick had to say: “I laid back and pressed play, thinking I would fall asleep to the sound of some nice piano music. But the sound I heard was more than just nice. It was absolutely breathtaking, and it kept me awake staring at the ceiling until the CD was finished. Then I pressed play again.” Broderick and Frahm are now touring together, and the songs that Broderick had listened to were re-recorded under Broderick’s supervision and will soon be released on Kning Disk.
Wintermusik might have languished in obscurity as well, if not for Monique at Sonic Pieces, who happened upon the disk, fell in love with it and signed the artist for this limited release of 333. The handmade book binding is stark gray, but elegant, and suits the project well; Wintermusik was initially recorded as a Christmas present for family and friends. This puts the disk in the company of Sufjan Stevens' Songs for Christmas, recorded as a series of personal gifts over the years and finally packaged a few years later as a boxed set for fans. There’s certainly a light-hearted, holiday feeling to the music, especially when the bells join the proceedings; one thinks of happy carolers, wandering from house to starlit house as flurries dust their woolen caps. But this is not to say that one should avoid the disk simply because Christmas is half a year away; nor should one feel that the sounds herein represent any specific religion or creed. This is simply a disk of engaging, well-played music, suffused with a positive vibe.
Richard Allen

I first met Nils after playing a concert in Berlin in early September, 2008. We had exchanged a few emails prior, in which we had agreed to swap some records in the mail. He came up to me after the show with a beaten brown package, which he had tried to post to me two times, but both times it was returned to him because I was out on tour when the postman tried to deliver it. At any rate, that night he handed me the package containing his first lp Streichelfisch and four cd-r’s of unreleased material.
Later when I was getting in bed at the hotel, I pulled out my discman and popped in a disc of his that was labeled »Tonalagia: Piano Improvisations«. I laid back and pressed play, thinking I would fall asleep to the sound of some nice piano music. But the sound I heard was more than just nice. It was absolutely breathtaking, and it kept me awake staring at the ceiling until the cd was finished. Then I pressed play again. I had to hear it again. I think I managed to drift off at some point in the middle of the second listen, but I remember thinking to myself as I lay there stunned, that I could spend ten years trying to write an amazing piece of piano music, and still it would never be half as good as these improvisations! The next day I wrote to Nils and told him that very thought, and proposed the idea of him contributing to the solo piano series on Kning Disk.
A couple months later, in mid November, I flew to Berlin to meet up with Nils and to witness the recordings of what was to become The Bells. We rented a beautiful old church in the heart of Berlin for two nights, with a wonderful old grand piano and the most amazing natural reverb I’ve ever heard. We set up (actually Nils did most of the work while I ran around the church trying out the huge pipe organ and harpsichord) two microphones on the piano, and three more out in the room to capture the sound of the church. And then Nils just played. I laid down on a pew in the middle of the big room and listened to his playing in the same position I had heard it for the first time, on my back, staring at the ceiling.
Occasionally I arose and asked Nils to amuse my ears by making him improvise with different rules I spouted out off the top of my head, such as »Make a song using only the notes c, e, and g« (this one will be available as a bonus download track), or »Make a song that you could imagine me rapping over the top of« (track no. b3). At one point I was even inside the piano, laying on the strings, asking him to make a song called »Peter is dead in the piano«.
Those two amazing nights in the church left us with five and a half hours of recorded material, and together Nils and I have compiled what we think are the best pieces into this 40 minute collection. The role I played in putting this album together was a very small one, and yet somehow I feel more proud of this music than anything I have ever created on my own. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I have.
Peter Broderick
February 9, 2009

i am sitting in front of a sheet of paper. my right hand is bending over my left thumb. the first day i got out of my cast i could bend it by 15°. now i am already at 50° and that makes me happy. things are going uphill…
as you can imagine, it is really bad news for a pianist when he gets diagnosed with a broken thumb. that day i was sitting in the emergency room, feeling rather dizzy while thinking of a zillion shows coming up and all the people involved around it. i realised in that moment how busy things have become. it is hard to turn down interesting projects and opportunities, since i surely love my work. it actually never felt like work. playing piano and playing it for wonderful people is the greatest joy i can imagine.
for a couple of days i felt like this all could be over. how pathetic. but hey – also feeling sorry for yourself has its place somewhere. all of a sudden i had so much time, an unexpected holiday. i cancelled most of my schedule and found myself being a little bored. even though my doctor told me not to touch a piano for a while, i just couldn’t resist. i started playing a silent song with 4 fingers on my left and the remaining 5 on my right hand. i set up one microphone and recorded another tune every other night before falling asleep.
the day i got rid of my cast i had recorded 9 little tunes. they have helped me feel less annoyed about my accident and reminded me that any good is something i can only achieve, when i am making the most out of what i’ve got.
thank you all for listening!
with lots of love,
nils …
_________________________
September 20th marks the 30th birthday of Berlin pianist Nils Frahm, but also the day he has chosen to give his fans a special gift in the form of 9 songs he recorded with 9 fingers, entitled ‘Screws’.
Nils experienced an unfortunate accident which saw him fall from his bunk bed located directly above his studio, which resulted in a broken thumb. But through inspiration from his fans and after a gentle walk and talk through the park with a close friend, he decided to deal with the situation in the only way he knew – playing his piano.
With four screws surgically placed inside his thumb, he started recording with his remaining 9 fingers, what later resulted in 9 intimate piano recordings.

Since 2012 Erased Tapes peers Ólafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm have spent many hours together in their studios across Berlin and Reykjavik, freely improvising and occasionally capturing the music for their fans. The duo's sound is an astoundingly rich, tonally pure example of synth-driven experimentation, conceived and performed by two prolific collaborators.
During a session at Nils's Durton Studio in Berlin last summer the two specially invited photographer Alexander Schneider to capture one of their unique improvised sessions. Lasting long into the night, the pair gradually and organically formed several individual songs – each contributing to the narrative of a larger, transformative piece of music. Recorded in eight hours with no overdubs or edits, 'Trance Frendz' is a captivating journey through grand soundscapes and droning crescendos which crash and recede back, making way for delicate piano notes and swirling synthesizers.

This is a quite unique collaboration, an unexpected one between the italian composer Teho Teardo and Blixa Bargeld, leader of Einstürzende Neubauten and former Bad Seeds. They first met during the realization of Ingiuria, a theatre pièce and right after that they collaborated on a song for a soundtrack, “A Quite Life”. That song started the whole process of writing and producing an album together where songs and more experimental pieces could find a common ground.
The original use of strings: cello, violin, guitars, a full string quartet diverts the traditional perception of those classic instruments when they deal with electronics and the result is emotionally moving.
The album has been written and recorded between Berlin and Rome, it took nearly two years to be made, Teho and Blixa worked next to each other choosing carefully every sound, every word and silence.
There are 12 songs on Still Smiling, including a new version of A Quiet Life and a cover of Alone With The Moon by The Tiger Lilies.
Amongst collaborators there are The Balanescu Quartet and cellist Martina Bertoni.
Lyrics are visionary and are sung in english, german and italian, Blixa reveals a really personal and intimate side to the listener this time.
Still Smiling is an album whose special vision covers all the sky between Rome and Berlin, daytime and nocturnal.

Followers of the Sonic Pieces catalogue will already be familiar with the individuals of F.S.Blumm and Nils Frahm as well as their acclaimed work as a duo. But even though they’re making use of familiar instruments their new album Tag Eins Tag Zwei manages to add a new tone to their already unique language. By trading their post-processed sound sculptures that made up the two preceding albums in for intimate pieces of improvisation, this collaboration merges into the most soothing and life affirming recording the two have produced so far.
Guitars and toys are flowing next to piano and harmonium like an organic combination, shaping nine suits that abnegate any common categorization. Involving classical, jazz and folk influences it’s the genuine use of tricks and delays that lift these improvisations above the ordinary and makes them both incredibly relaxing and exciting at the same time. It is almost ironic that by capturing accidental moments of free playing, Frank and Nils are succeeding at an even more impressive scale than their already highly satisfying previous output.
The result delivers a perfect example of how immediacy can be the most powerful approach to creating music. Based on a remarkable understanding of each other’s phrasing the pair of sessions that comprises this album shows two vivid artists at the peak of their game: Unconditional spontaneity.