from Grains,
released January 31, 2011
Composer: Jim Perkins
Arranged: Jim Perkins
Piano: Ed Cohen
Production and engineering: Jim Perkins & Stephen Harrington
Mastered by Stephen Harrington at RCM Studios
The pieces on this EP were written specifically for pianist Ben Dawson, who performs them here. However, that's not the entire story. There's a twist, of course, as could have been expected from Leah Kardos. Instead of tailoring the music exactly to the performing musician, she deliberately pushes him to the limits of his technical capabilities, in order to yield an unpredictable ingredient. The final result is an astonishing and highly unusual piano solo pleasure. Sven B. Schreiber (sbs)
This album exploits some possibilities of using a grand piano in various funny ways it's not intended for - like recording usually unwanted side noises from the pedals or the pianist's fingernails on the keys, or manually triggering the strings while a couple of keys are locked down. As usual with Leah Kardos, the concept sounds most weird, but works surprisingly well in practice. Sven B. Schreiber (sbs)
Each album by Leah Kardos revolves around some special topic and production technique. In her own words, this one "is a song cycle based on themes of technology, loneliness and the human condition". The lyrics are of an unusual kind, using snippets from spam emails, fed through a Cut-Up Machine, as used by writer William S. Burroughs. As an example, the sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" might yield "The brown quick lazy over the jumps dog fox". A weird idea - but it works! Sven B. Schreiber (sbs)
The Chinese-British composer's new album finds him continuing the traditions of minimalist giants like Philip Glass. Bandcamp Album of the Day May 26, 2020