200 Words: KELLY MORAN
(In 200 Words, we highlight a new record we like a lot, via a 200-word review by Marc Masters and 200 words (or so) from the artist about whatever they choose.)
KELLY MORAN - Bloodroot LP (Telegraph Harp)
Music created with a specific, defined process has the extra advantage of immediately working on multiple levels. You might not know exactly how Kelly Moran prepared her piano when she made the entrancing pieces on Bloodroot, but you can hear the process right away. The sound is so tactile and air-moving, it’s like your ears are right next to the piano strings as they vibrate and ring out and echo. So you can instantly enjoy Bloodroot on a pure acoustic level, as a document of a fascinating way to coax sound from strings.
But of course there are other levels to Moran’s compositions, dimensions of aesthetic beauty and emotional resonance that may not be as immediate as the above, but eventually prove even more powerful. In places these qualities are so strong that their presence is actually felt pretty quickly, but in an oddly subliminal way, as if your brain can’t initially reconcile the idea that you can both be in awe of the pure physical sound Moran is making and enthralled by the mood it’s conjuring. Such moments are when Bloodroot goes beyond multi-leveled into something more three-dimensional: a work that melts distinct phenomenological categories into one vibrant universe.
– Marc Masters
KELLY MORAN on Bloodroot
My interest in prepared piano started in college when I became bored with studying traditional classical piano repertoire and wanted to delve into modernist piano music. I did an independent study with a professor who was an expert on extended techniques, and I spent my junior year learning music by Henry Cowell, John Cage, George Crumb, and other composers that utilized alternate means of generating sound from a piano. I was particularly enamored with Cage's works for prepared piano and learned several of his pieces. I've always been fascinated with manipulating sounds using digital processing, and I loved that preparations seemed like an organic way to change the sound of a piano. It felt like there were suddenly endless sonic possibilities one could explore with this method. Though I've composed lots of music that employs other kinds of extended techniques (plucking, strumming piano strings) it wasn't until recently that I started composing my own pieces for prepared piano. In early 2016 I found myself confined at my parents' house for a few days when a huge snowstorm hit New York, and I used it as a opportunity to explore composing for prepared piano. As soon as I started playing, I felt like I had unlocked a whole new way of composing in terms of how I thought about constructing melodies and harmonies since now I was hearing all sorts of new resonances and overtones. I ended up obsessively composing endlessly for days and writing most of Bloodroot in the span of two weeks.
Bloodroot is out now on Telegraph Harp. Buy it here.