WATARU SATO — FADING SPACES

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Taking cues from Nils Frahm and Ólafur Arnalds — and studying under Lubomyr Melnyk — ‘Fading Spaces’ by pianist Wataru Sato is inextricably gentle. It begins with meandering touches of the keys, the spaces between poised like unformed thoughts, before a voidsome chasm opens up into the heroic ostinato at the heart of ‘Fading Spaces’.

This spiralling melody is the form to the track’s introductory formlessness, and is marvellous in its ambivalence — it reaches to optimism, but remains a hair’s breadth from it, almost descends to despair, but lifts off before it falters. There are options here, different pathways as if nothing is finite.

With an exploratory volta in the middle that sees bright variations tumble out from Sato’s fingers, a fervent flash of possibility, the piece purposefully, heavily returns to where it began, a vista of decisions ahead.

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• 🔔 ‘Fading Spaces’ is taken from Sato’s Spaces EP, out now on fledging label 1magine (part of the Disk Union family). You may purchase and/or stream it from a variety of places.

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🐣 ANOMALIE — CANAL

From literally the first few seconds of 'Canal' we're dropped into an ultrachill atmosphere, one that begins smooth and viscous, hefty on the sub-bass and the lounge-flavoured piano that meanders throughout—and which turns cinematic, with flashes of freewheeling strings that zing on beds of wide warm synth; this morphs into a tract of hard-boiled electronica, with wibbly synths and brash columns of synth-bass buzzing beneath. Canadian musicmaker Anomalie sets us floating down this chilled flow, actual water noises and waves washing on sand interspersed throughout.

And besides the obvious chill of this track there's the dynamism of it all – very much helped by the rattle and thump of the prodigious drums ; the way it sways between different atmospheres and different textures, being neon bubbling contemporary synth jam one moment before reverting to peals of kinetic piano the next: the corollary being this contemporary nocturne, a highly polished, ornately sculptured piece of noir that remains light instead of weighed down by the world. The six seconds between 2:24 and 2:30, with the piano's motif at the end before those synth chords again, sums up the playful virtuoso and expansive subdued nature of 'Canal', sitting somewhere at the juncture between gorgeous inactivity and exciting hyperactivity.

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• 🔔 This wonderful slice of classy piano is taken from Anomalie's upcoming second EP, Métropole Part II (out 13th April), the follow-up to last year's Métropole EP, which featured tracks like the well balanced jazz of 'New Space' and the elastic 'No Way'.
• 🔔 You can download and stream 'Canal' variously here.
• 🔔 The artwork was created by fellow Montreal resident Ali Hassanein.

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🐣 OLIVIA BELLI — IN THESE SILENCES YOU SEE

The piano comes alive in Italian pianist and composer Olivia Belli’s shuffling ambient piece, ‘In These Silences You See’. The pace and pattern of this music is meandering, organic and evershifting, with harmonious tracts like wide peaceful stretches of river juxtaposed with atonal divergences, rivulets that jar jaggedly in the soft vessel of this track. Belli charts this course to summon an atmosphere of blankness, of window-watching, the glacial pace of grey skies, ending with an expression of clarity, as if a decision has been reached after mindful musing that swirled almost drone-like between steadiness and spontaneity, the coda steadfast and melancholy: but legible.

All along it is not just what Olivia Belli is playing in this slice of contemporary classical, but the tone of it, the recording, the fragments of ambience that fuzz and resonate together in organic overdrive, the sounds of the physical body of the piano itself, the dust and wooden flavours imbued in this track, even the gentle wheezing percussion of the hammer striking the strings themselves, sometimes a chime, but mostly a dull clatter, as if a droplet of rain were falling with each key pressed; even down to the creak of the pedals, ‘In These Silences You See’ is more than its musicality—it is wholly the bristlingly detailed environment in which it exists, and to which it contributes.

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• 🔔 This lovely thoughtful piece of piano music is taken from Olivia Belli’s Other Lines EP, a collection of four piano pieces from the composer. You can listen to and purchase it on Bandcamp if you like.

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☟ Olivia Belli Internet Presence ☟
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