24 Postludes For Piano, Vol. 2

Solo piano, unique - cross between classical, jazz, ragtime, and avant garde. Are these any good? I think so. Satie is a good comparison. Virtuosic playing, almost sounds like a player piano at times. In a way it’s making fun of “difficult” music.... i think... The shorter tracks are easier to take – 5, 6, 10. 8 is a good “what the fuck” track. For some reason I’m in love with track 7. Quotes below are from the liner notes.

*1. Starts slow and meandering, after one minute starts some flirty runs that remind me of Ligeti’s piano etudes. Compositionally pretty damn cool – free.
2. Chopin or Schumann throwback.
3. Teetering, off-balance, poking at the keyboard in clusters and jerky runs.
4. Mysterious wandering – is apparently a tone poem about a guy who is a file clerk by day and anti-corporate saboteur by night.
*5. Quick, jerky, rockin’. Great chord very near the end.
6. Rythmic, melodically disjointed, a little bit like a less “out” Cecil Taylor. Yeah mull that one over.
*7. Kookily passionate. Lots of ragtime-ish riffs, kind of romantically frilly. Holds my attention if only for the insane technical piano playing.
*8. “aimed to induce a quasi-Sartrian nausea”
10. “Disillusionment. Greyness. Doldrums”
11. Kinda mechanical and fugue-like but whimsical. Neat quickie runs. Not sure I can take the whole 6 minutes but it’s fun for a while. According to the liner notes, it might be full of allusions to music I’m not familiar with.
12. Like a church organist who decides to mess with the congregation. Funny.