Bathed in sound: thoughts on Nightports w/ Matthew Bourne

Another unusual direction with the lunchtime concerts series at University of Leeds, after austraLYSIS, however this time piano-based.

Nightports is based on a simple but unbreakable rule of restriction: only sounds produced by the featured musician can be used. Nothing else. But these sounds can be transformed, distorted, translated, reworked, processed and reprocessed, stretched, cut, ordered and reordered without limitation. Nightports is about amplifying the characteristics of the featured musician and the sounds they make.

Today's concert was the live performance of this album.

The four musicians performed on three (prepared) pianos and electronics. The whole effect was very much contemporary piano to ambient electronics, reminiscent of Hauschka, Nils Frahm, plus Ólafur Arnalds in the more introspective sections. There were breaks for applause but the event felt very much like one journey through different sounds and emotions.
The prepared piano aspect of the performance was really interesting - pencils, boxes, clothes, masking tape, you name it! Piano as typewriter even at certain points.
The introspective sections very beautiful and remininscent of Arnalds.
The last piece started with electronic hip hop beat with seemingly random sound effects before morphing into a more pianistic based piece.

The album is available via BandCamp and The Leaf Label. Definitely worth a further listen!

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