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blue thirty​-​five

by Suren Seneviratne

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about

Short, sweet and rather lovely. This small suite of MIDI piano sketches by Suren Seneviratne – perhaps more familiar to some as outsider house don My Panda Shall Fly – is also restless, glitchy and endearingly playful.

Sometimes the notes popping across your ears lure you into a false sense of security; you can feel yourself sinking into this delicate rain of sounds only to be unsettled by a jarring frequency, an unheimlich interval. It’s like some other intelligence is at play in this music, hiding between the notes, dragging the rug out from under you just when you start getting cosy.

“These recordings came about from experiments exploring DIY methods for unpredictable methods of composition. Using the Korg SQ1 sequencer and Yamaha MU-15 tone generator that I was circuit-bending in real-time,” Suren explains. “I was able to yield unexpected and musically interesting results - which isn’t always the case with live hacking.

“The sequences sent from the SQ1 were essentially repeating loops but it was the manipulation of the MU–15 circuit board that creates all the preset variation, noise artefacts and glitches.”

“The recordings were done in one take with no overdubs or editing.”

As you progress through blue thirty-five, the chimes, clunks and tiny hammers of the pianos seem to separate, with more negative space seeping into the tracks – ribbons of white among dots and dashes of colour and furious scribbles.

Childlike in the best possible way – not twee, but joyously released from the tyranny of formula and expectation – this music feels somehow unlearnt, explorative and instinctive and full of curiosity and enthusiasm.

Praise for blue thirty-five:

"The attack and decay applied to piano notes inverts and mutates them into organ drones and faulty buzzers. The result is far more meditative than one might imagine, and almost a complete deconstruction of the musical confines Western classical music places upon itself via piano keys. Under Suren Seneviratne’s guidance, these machines are let loose across the virtual MIDI keyboard, and the findings capture a kind of spiritual snapshot of the instrument – ironically only by having smashed it to shreds along the way." - The Quietus

"Harmonically the release is a held breath, never resolving into contentment or joy or melancholy, instead taking a jagged alleyway that runs between them all. It’s charming, yet unsettling. Playfully simple, yet deftly complicated. The compulsion to re-listen only gets stronger each time, yet the loop just won’t close. The listener is forever left trying to pinpoint precisely what makes blue thirty-five so compelling, coming up with a catalogue of descriptive near-misses instead.@ - ATTN:Magazine

credits

released May 18, 2020

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Blue Tapes UK

For more than 10 years, Blue Tapes has curated a numbered series of releases emphasising different aspects of minimal music - from grime to gugak, American primitivism to Japanese ambient - presented with appropriately minimal and often abstract cyanotype artwork. ... more

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