#daniel selke

[adrianoesteves]

[dustedmagazine]

Brueder Selke and Midori Hirano — Split Scale (Thrill Jockey)

Photo by Roman Koblov

A grounding cadence of piano arpeggios, a tremulous wash of strings, the fluting pulse of synthesizers, Berlin experimental artists Sebastian and Daniel Selke (“the brothers”) and Midori Hirano mix together organic and electronic sounds in this meditation on the scale. Eight pieces start with one note from a standard scale and unspool outwards. Each is split down the middle with either the Selke brothers or Hirano starting and the other finishing.

The scale is split, but you’ll be hard pressed to find the seam. The players work and rework their elements of the music so that they blend into a gorgeous mesh, some cuts languorous and yearning and full of emotionally-resonant sustained tones, others rhythmic, cerebral and idealized. It’s even hard to make out which sounds are made with traditional instruments and which ones sampled. An electronic element which sounds, and doesn’t sound, like an oboe carves through the regular progression of piano notes. It’s too clean to be a real reed, not enough nasal wobble in it, but so close in timbre that you read it as such.

The journey begins at “Scale A” with a piano figure that cycles repeatedly, the wash of tide rolling over it. Think of the piano as the skeleton of the piece, draped over with soft undulating flesh—edgeless washes of strings and synthesizer given shape by the keyboard’s gentle discipline. Likewise, “Scale D” has a mist-shrouded romanticism, deep string tones playing in a surf of shimmering vibration. It has a Celtic skirl in it in some spots, a lavish Debussey-like mirage quality in others. “Scale G” is denser and more dramatic with the high glissando of strings and the rolling undercurrent of piano. It feels effortful and striving, like an orchestra piece that celebrates a successful struggle.

We ascend, step by step, all the way to where we began, in “Scale AA,” this one more pizzicato and synthy, with a lattice work pulse of electronic tones. After the preceding cuts’ disembodied swoops and swoons, “AA” turns pointillist. It has a precise, machine-like quality, more cerebral less emotional. It flits and cavorts, then takes on gravitas from the piano.

All three players are well-known in Berlin. The Selke brothers recording as CEEYS and curating the Q3Ambientfest. Midori Hirano has carved out a space for herself in film and TV soundtracks. She recently set a documentary on the Premier League to music. Both sets of artists collaborate freely with classical, electronic and experimental artists, but this seems like an especially fruitful partnership. The scale is the foundation of everything, and it is such a lovely foundation here.

Jennifer Kelly

[thenewobjective]

Jakob Lindhagen ~ Memory Constructions

Jakob Lindhagen ~ Memory Constructions

Who are we? Do we construct who we are? Hit play on this beautiful new album from Jakob Lindhagen and consider that it might not all be as simple as you first thought. There’s a fascinating episode of Revisionist History, the podcast by Malcolm Gladwell, about Brian Williams, an NBC news anchor who was fired after telling untrue stories on air about an incident in the Iraq war in 2003. According…

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