Notes on “Ars Nouveau”
There is a single feeling under “Ars Nouveau”: a long look at forests.
I kept the takes that sounded like weather and cut the rest.
Made small, on purpose.
Let it pass through.
piano
Art Nouveau as a creed: beauty in the organic line, refuge from the noise.
This is contemplative ambient: the piano used as a way of listening rather than speaking, tuned toward Art Nouveau and the thresholds beyond it.
The recordings — “Ars Nouveau” — are stations on one continuous passage.
Made for headphones at midnight, or a room with the lights down.
There is a single feeling under “Ars Nouveau”: a long look at forests.
I kept the takes that sounded like weather and cut the rest.
Made small, on purpose.
Let it pass through.
I don't choose Art Nouveau; it keeps choosing me.
The piano does the thinking here; I only choose what to keep.
That is all it wants to be.
I make music about Art Nouveau and stillness, and I mean every note — but I won't pretend it's free.
Choosing quiet can look, from outside, like disappearing. Some days the calm I write about is the calm I most need myself.
If you make gentle music and feel overlooked, you are not doing it wrong. That is just the shape of it.
In the lineage of Erik Satie · Claude Debussy · Ludovico's quiet school · Federico Mompou · Harold Budd