Matt Rösner - Empty, Expanding, Collapsing [Room40]

[Scaramouche]

Another great addition to the Room40 catalogue that dropped earlier this month. Worth checking out if you like Lawrence English or Taylor Deupree. 

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Empty, Expanding, Collapsing was recorded in the months after the release of 2021’s No Lasting Form. Whilst No Lasting Form documented a return to the creative process after a long period away, Empty, Expanding, Collapsing comes from a more confident and assured place.  

At the heart of this record is an upright piano, loaned from a dear friend for safe keeping. Built in the 1898, the piano is heavy, laden with time, a resonant lead sound board and the carefully restored hammers and strings.  

These pieces started as loose piano improvisations played in the early morning light to be later assembled alongside an array of guitars, electronics, synthesisers and percussion. Whilst the basis of the tracks started as tentative improvisations, the overdubbed parts were very much painstakingly written, rewritten and aged with sounds of the surrounding dune systems seeping through the wafer thin studio walls.