Loud Sounds 121
Córdoba/Ciurkot – Pseudobulbar Affect
Ignacio Cordoba is an adventurous improviser and composer from Madrid based in Copenhagen. And Agata Ciurkot is a no less adventurous Polish pianist, improviser and composer who lives in Berlin.
The music they make together exists on the border of real world (the voice of the piano played by Agata) and the supernatural (textures, noises and sound fx brought in by Ignacio). All of this is showcased on this standout track from their album "Ephemeral, Basal". Read on the composition's backstory below.
Ignacio Cordoba is an adventurous improviser and composer from Madrid based in Copenhagen. And Agata Ciurkot is a no less adventurous Polish pianist, improviser and composer who lives in Berlin.
The music they make together exists on the border of real world (the voice of the piano played by Agata) and the supernatural (textures, noises and sound fx brought in by Ignacio). All of this is showcased on this standout track from their album "Ephemeral, Basal". Read on the composition's backstory below.
Ignacio Cordoba
For this song, recording, writing and mixing were totally intertwined, making Agata and me fall deeper and deeper into its black hole. It started as an improvisation in a one-day recording session in Berlin at the beginning of the summer of 2018. After the summer, I worked on editing it and found this melodramatic piano melody by Agata that I completely fell in love with. The take continued by developing into more and more abstract sounds and I found that I could bring back that first melody as a coda with a new harmony around it and even more melodramatic arrangements around it.
Shortly after, Agata and I met again in Copenhagen on another one session only aimed to process and effect the piano sounds of the Berlin session beyond recognition.
The first version of the edited takes, now in the form of songs, waited in the furthest corner of a hard-drive until Pink Cotton Candy heard them and asked us to release them as an album.
Then it was my time to finally record the arrangements for Pseudobulbar Affect that I had always heard in my heard. A brushed drum track throughout the song and a string quartet for the ending melody. I went down to the basement of my Secret Tower Studio in Copenhagen and recorded the drums myself late at night. I tried to make it fit but nothing made it work til I started processing the overdub until it became the distant, cavernous, echoey, subby kick drum that make the song walk forward.
When the time to record the string quartet came, I understood that it needed a similar approach to the drums and i went super minimal about it, freezing in reverb the last note of each line of the piano melody. That plus the heart beat of an 808 kick, made me get emotional and close to tears every time i would listen back to the end while mixing. Hence the title, Pseudobulbar Affect, which is a clinical term for a condition that makes people cry beyond any kind of proportion.
Shortly after, Agata and I met again in Copenhagen on another one session only aimed to process and effect the piano sounds of the Berlin session beyond recognition.
The first version of the edited takes, now in the form of songs, waited in the furthest corner of a hard-drive until Pink Cotton Candy heard them and asked us to release them as an album.
Then it was my time to finally record the arrangements for Pseudobulbar Affect that I had always heard in my heard. A brushed drum track throughout the song and a string quartet for the ending melody. I went down to the basement of my Secret Tower Studio in Copenhagen and recorded the drums myself late at night. I tried to make it fit but nothing made it work til I started processing the overdub until it became the distant, cavernous, echoey, subby kick drum that make the song walk forward.
When the time to record the string quartet came, I understood that it needed a similar approach to the drums and i went super minimal about it, freezing in reverb the last note of each line of the piano melody. That plus the heart beat of an 808 kick, made me get emotional and close to tears every time i would listen back to the end while mixing. Hence the title, Pseudobulbar Affect, which is a clinical term for a condition that makes people cry beyond any kind of proportion.
Check out more tracks from the duo's label Pink Cotton Candy Records.
Mazey Haze – My Lillies
"My Lillies" in notable for its light-footed groove (that took some time to get right, according to the artist), airy synths, washed out piano chords and a weightless melody that just begs to be played on repeat. And yes, there's a gorgeous sax solo! Perfect.
"My Lillies" in notable for its light-footed groove (that took some time to get right, according to the artist), airy synths, washed out piano chords and a weightless melody that just begs to be played on repeat. And yes, there's a gorgeous sax solo! Perfect.
Nadine Appeldoorn
The entire song was written in a few hours at night. The songs that come through fully formed are the best to me. We only added the guitar and replaced the synth solo for a soprano sax since it was my dream to have a saxophone solo on one of my songs. We did spend quite some time on getting the groove right to get to the end result as it today.