After a few releases in the early 2000s following more or less in the gradually progressing improvisation mold of the Necks — the project for which he is certainly best known — pianist Chris Abrahams began using his efforts outside that longstanding trio to explore further reaches of sound-making. The 2009 double CD Germ Studies with guzheng player Clare Cooper was a shocker — 198 very short bursts of noise packaged to look like an instructional DVD and a far cry from the hour-long tracks for which the Necks are known. His releases with sound artists Alessandro Bosetti and Lucio Capece have been similarly far afield, more given to abstract sounds and abrupt events than the bulk of his work. And a duo with Magda Mayas of improvisations on piano, harpsichord and harmonium was another pleasant and unexpected turn of events.
Memory Night feels like a culmination of the work he's been doing over the last decade, often with younger and less conventional players. At the same time it comes off as a return to form, re-embracing the creeping paces for which he's best known. It's still shorter pieces — four tracks ranging from six to 12 minutes — but the development is never rushed. Nevertheless, there's a thicket of sound going on here. In fact, it's more than halfway through before unaltered piano playing is heard, and then it's only for a few minutes. There are a lot of other piano sounds before that. There are (or seem to be) objects inside the case, string preparations, percussion of some sort, close mike placement and electronic manipulations. Beyond that, there are (according to the notes) guitar, Yamaha DX7, Moog Voyager, Kurzweil K2600, Nord Stage, a Hammond organ and a Verona Mono Lancet analog synth. Which is to say there's an awful lot going on, but to Abraham's credit it never sounds busy.
But it's not the assemblage of instruments that makes the album so compelling, it's the assemblage of sounds. The four tracks are certainly compositions, even if not in the traditional sense, with a lot of care put in to timing and development. While there's far from any linear, narrative feeling to the music, it is wonderfully, engagingly dramatic.
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