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What Flows Between

by Mark Treffel

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1.
What Flows Between 02:57
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2.
No Chick in Here 02:21
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3.
First Steps 01:39
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4.
Scandinavian Skies 05:25
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5.
Misha 02:43
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6.
Found Melody 04:22
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7.
So Far Away 07:43
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8.
Fairground Ride 01:43
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9.
A Bend in Time 05:52
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about

This is an album of piano improvisations. It is the truth, absolute honesty, and a total immediate reflection of my brain at that moment. I had no idea what I was going to play until the moment my fingers lay on the keys.

The music owes a lot to the ECM label and the influences some of their more abstract contemporary piano players have had on me, such as Misha Alperin and Bobo Stenson.

During a case of Bell's Palsy in April 2019, and on a course of steroids to treat the condition, a side effect was chronic insomnia, which led to some middle of the night studio time, typically around 4am. This time is when your conscious mind is least involved in the music, and you can just get into the flow of unhindered improvisation.

The first 3 improvisations I did in a 30 minute period on the first night of insomnia. It still amazes me to think that I created these tunes on the spot without any idea of what would happen, and no idea of even what key I would start in. I truly felt like I was a receiver channelling something, possibly a much better piano player! The rest of the improvisations were recorded over the following week in similar early hours sessions.

Found Melody and So Far Away are subtly different in that for Found Melody I improvised around a chord progression i’d found a moment earlier, interspersed with free improvisation between the chord cycles, and for So Far Away I knew I was going to start in Eb minor.

The last tune on the album is not just a solo piano piece, but started as a piano and Moogerfooger delay improvisation, where I play some improvised piano whilst controlling the delay time of my analogue delay with a foot pedal, hence the strange bends of pitch. I then added a field recording made the following night of birdsong outside my house, and then Moog and Prophet synth parts, and finally a Roli seaboard flute-like part.

My piano setup for this recording was a Roland V-Piano as the master keyboard, triggering the truly groundbreaking grand piano from Spectrasoncis Keyscape.

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released April 20, 2019

Mark Treffel - Piano

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Mark Treffel Brighton, UK

Mark is primarily a piano player, but loves layering vocal harmonies and experimenting with the mixture of acoustic and electronic instruments.

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