Roedelius & Tim Story - 4 Hands (2022)

"4 Hands" is an intimate conversation between friends - conducted with the hands on the piano. It is a surreal musical conversation between German sound pioneer Hans-Joachim Roedelius and US composer Tim Story. Impressively, this collaborative project demonstrates the heartwarming and yet otherworldly beauty that can emerge when two people from different, overlapping directions approach their beloved instrument.

Recorded consecutively on the same grand piano, work on "4 Hands" began when Roedelius visited his longtime friend Story in the U.S. in May 2019 and spontaneously recorded a series of piano etudes. Tim then dealt intensively with the complex phrasings and used the following months to put his own ideas about them into sound figures.

"We created the core of these compositions together, partly preparing the piano with various objects (or even my hands), and we first recorded Achim's passages on tape. I continued writing and refining my parts in the months that followed. Because the entire album was recorded on the same grand piano, it has a consistent, unified sound overall - with our individual contributions hopefully melding into a single, holistic voice," Story says.

"4 Hands" unites minimalist sonic figures, in the course of which a ghostly interplay reveals itself again and again very delicately and surprising harmonic twists flash up: Roedelius' approach, based on instinct, intuition and improvisation, goes hand in hand with Story's counter-intuitive approach as the US-American distills ideas over longer periods of time. Two sides emerge, two perspectives of a captivating conversation that is thought-provoking and takes new shape with each listen, revealing new depths
"'4 Hands' is more than just a new album - the logical continuation of a long-standing friendship between two composers," Roedelius adds. "It's about mindfulness, about listening instead of hearing, and about developing a new sonic language by bowing to the infinite possibilities offered by the piano played by our four hands. For me, these compositions express a kind of beauty all their own. What they evoke is more than the sum of their parts; they are a wordless dialogue, a bridge across the great water that separates our cultures. Allons enfants des deux patrie, haha!"

TRACKLIST

01. Roedelius & Tim Story - Story, Roedelius: Nurzu
02. Roedelius & Tim Story - Story, Roedelius: Spirit Clock
03. Roedelius & Tim Story - Story, Roedelius: Haru
04. Roedelius & Tim Story - Story, Roedelius: Rever
05. Roedelius & Tim Story - Story, Roedelius: Seeweed
06. Roedelius & Tim Story - Story, Roedelius: Allegro Estinto
07. Roedelius & Tim Story - Story, Roedelius: Crisscrossing
08. Roedelius & Tim Story - Story, Roedelius: Thrum
09. Roedelius & Tim Story - Story, Roedelius: Bent Rhyme
10. Roedelius & Tim Story - Story, Roedelius: Skitter
11. Roedelius & Tim Story - Story, Roedelius: Ba