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Celia Hollander: 2nd Draft review | John Lewis's contemporary album of the month | Musique Non Stop

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Friday, November 17, 2023

Celia Hollander: 2nd Draft review | John Lewis's contemporary album of the month

(Leaving Records)
Hollander’s works sound simple but are incredibly detailed and multi-layered, her treated piano solos evoking wind, rain and air

People have been playing the piano for centuries, but few people have ever made it sound like Celia Hollander does. Her latest album genuinely seems to redefine what the instrument can do. The music made by the Los Angeles-based composer – both under her own name and under the pseudonym $3.33 – is all about digital manipulation: 2020’s Recent Futures saw her mutilating everyday sounds; the sampladelic disfigurations of 2021’s Timekeeper recalled Brian Eno’s ambient works.

Here she uses the same techniques on an upright grand. While serving as composer-in-residence at an arts centre in Nevada, she recorded herself playing a series of piano improvisations – epic, swirling solos, featuring tumbling arpeggios and harp-like cascades – and then brilliantly mangled them in post-production. Fragments of her improvisations are sped up, slowed down, played backwards, pitch-shifted and put through numerous digital effects.

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by John Lewis via Electronic music | The Guardian

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