The piano is doomed, in my opinion, said the younger.
The piano-tuner also, said the elder.
The pianist also, said the younger.
Samuel Beckett in Watt
"Right from the beginning a sensitivity is brought to bear on the sound-sources. Tapping. Rooting around for sounds. Prospecting for sounds. Testing the ground. Sound-diviners. We are experiencing the birth pangs of melody. I no longer share Beckett's gloomy prognosis. In the hands of Sebastian Lexer, with his piano and his computer, good music is being created. Is there any other criterion?" John Tilbury, May 2009.
"While reed instruments are all about air and pressure, the piano is essentially about sustain. The silky elegance one usually associates with the instrument is a result of careful engineering, so that one string sounds seamlessly after the previous one. On "Dazwischen", the whole mechanism is opened up to the forces of chance and chaos, picking up all kind of ethereal vibrations - a true ghost box." - Derek Warmsly, The Wire
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Sebastian Lexer / piano +, Max/MSP
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Recorded at the Electronic Music Studios, Goldsmiths, London, on 16th November 2008. Max/MSP programming, recording and mastering by Sebastian Lexer.
Available as 320k MP3 or 16bit FLAC
Tracklisting:
1. Time - 9:40
2. Defining Edges - 7:17
3. Rapprochement - 7:22
4. Tone - 5:29
5. Abscissa And Ordinate - 14:02
6. Opposition - 11:59
Sebastian Lexer rewires the ultimate nineteenth-century drawing room mechanism with twenty-first-century technology to create a music that hovers inbetween times, exploiting the tension between the automatic and the intentional, making any firm sense of space thrillingly uncertain.