From Scattered Accidents - Szymon Kaliski (CD)

Specification:
148 x 180mm, 16pp loop-stitched book, offset printed, full colour on uncoated paper

Edition:
1000

Track List:

1. OF SYMMETRY
2. OR DETACHMENT
3. NOT WHAT THEY SEEM
4. INTERLUDE I (WITH PETER BRODERICK)
5. BY A HAZE
6. SO INDISTINCT
7. INTERLUDE II (WITH AARON MARTIN)
8. FOR STILLNESS

“Musically, Szymon Kaliski is a wise old soul, gracefully venting a thousand years of Polish despondency on his broken-down piano and colouring it grey and greyer with electronics. Mishap and flaw are key to his aesthetic, but craftsmanship and attention to detail the organizing principle.”
— Igloo Magazine, Sweden

”His work combines familiar acoustic and invented instrumentation. His work has a tranquility that often evokes a suspension of time within a vast sonic depth of field.”
— Wajobu, USA

“12th December 2010, oldest sound, broken piano key….”

“From Scattered Accidents” is the first Kitchen. Label release from Polish multimedia artist Szymon Kaliski, who has up till now released 3 albums well-received by international critics. Known for combining lo-fi techniques with new digital technologies in exploration of individual methods of expression, compositions are always borne of acoustic sounds which are then looped, decayed and reconstructed digitally through his own self-made software and unique hardware.

“From Scattered Accidents” centers around the themes of imperfection and fleeting phenomena. Recording began in the Winter of 2010, and the album chronologically documents his creative process over a year. Preferring to pick up anomalies in his recordings which arose from the process of constructing his acoustic loops and curated set of found sounds, a single key on a broken piano with its patina and wear was picked up as one of the few working materials. Accidental collisions were deliberately allowed to occur. This study of flawed beauty and quietude echoes the distinctly Japanese pantheon of Wabi-Sabi. Two collaborations precede, featuring prodigious young composer Peter Broderick on violin and Aaron Martin on cello who add variation in harmonics and dynamic ranges, heightening emotions and the scenic intensity of this work.

“From Scattered Accidents” resonates a form of pastoral decay amidst the city dross, filled with cracks suspended in slowed down soundscapes. Accompanying the tracks are 16 pages of monochrome photography by Jan Hoffmann, who has captured the desolate side of urban life and the lesser-seen parts of Paris from odd angles. To paraphrase Baudelaire’s observations on the city – absolute and eternal beauty are but an abstract notion, creamed off from the general surface of different types of beauty, and Parisian life is rich in poetic and wonderful subjects saturating us like the atmosphere but we fail to see it. These images have become a representation of memories fractured and broken in parallel to Szymon’s sound craft, and as part of the sound and visual diary the latter has kept over the period of time.

Szymon lets his subtly shifting textures flow on their own unhurriedly, almost with an organic sense of timing, and they seem to take us through scenes of smoke-filled rooms, the aroma of coffee on rainy days or the fragmented conversations of strangers dissolving into distant chatter, evoking sentiments of desolation and solitude in the context of urban pastoralism.

https://www.kitchen-label.com/store/no-11-scattered-accidents-szymon-kaliski/