Alabama Places

Monroe Golden
Alabama Places

Tense, surreal, and sometimes frightening compositions for microtonal keyboard and piano that meet somewhere between sparse jazz, dark folk, and Bach exercises. For such a simple combination of instruments and composition, these songs are remarkable in that you simply cannot stop listening to them. Almost hypnotic, they incrementally add to your reserve of patience and leave you hooked until the final note. Consider this a good mood setter before tackling john cage and his ilk. 5-9 form a suite, so consider playing them together. This could pass as a silent film’s soundtrack.
FCC clean
Try: 1, 3, 6, 12, 16

1. (6:19) Slow, haunting outer space keyboard cascade
2. (5:25) choppy, insistent piano.
3. (3:05) slow and delirious
4. (5:46) rural exorcism
5.(2:48) disorienting, head spinning.
6. (2:01) quiet and pretty, almost like a music box.
7. (3:48) Stronger, like a quaint chase scene.
8. (1:35) pleasant, perky but slow. Space between notes feels like ages.
9. (1:46) an enraged husband in a silent film reads a letter and his eyes get wide and he slams his fists on the table and storms out.
10. (2:28) bagpipe-ish drones and a sullen piano.
11. (3:28) repetitive, but dips down into lower keys occasionally, giving it a dramatic spark.
12. (4:46) Angry squeezed out harmonica-sounding keyboard and frustrated piano stabs. Very odd.
13. (5:54) UFO delirium
14. (5:51) angry barron argues with wife; scuffle ends in someone’s unplanned demise.
15 (5:51) quiet for 10 seconds. Tense sustained notes give it a horror film feel.
16. (12:04) forceful, exuberant, PISSED. Then we calm down and our performers thoroughly explore a number of varied moods.