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Kasper Staub: Slow Music for Fast Times
Kasper Staub Trio Str?g
Jaeger Community Music
2017
In Danish Str?g means stroke and the title could be understood both as the soothing gesture of calming someone or as a description of an aesthetic described in pianist
Bill Evans
piano1929 - 1980
Miles Davis
trumpet1926 - 1991
In the same way, bassist
Jens Mikkel Madsen
bassb.1988
For those who have heard the previous records, there is nothing new under the sun, but this is exactly what is so recommendable about this trio. It exists in its own world outside tiresome commercial expectations of sixty transformations in a minute. Instead, each record is a meticulously crafted universe of light melodies heavy with meaning. This is music that feels precious, each melody delivered like a bird flying out of a closed hand.
The rubato ballads and elegiac moods reference everything from
Jan Johansson
piano1931 - 1968
Kasper Staub Aisle Arch Attic
Jaeger Community Music / Les Disques de L'Accalmie
2016
Staub's solo work is just as uncompromising in its minimalistic beauty as the work of his trio. In fact, there is a direct link between Str?g and Aisle Arch Attic. It is the composition "Lentando" that shows up on the trio album simply as "Lent," transformed like a butterfly with new wings. The difference between the two compositions also describes the nuances in aesthetic. Whereas the trio favors slowness in movement, Staub on his own works even more with slowness in space.
His trio, being a true interactive unit with each voice contributing to the whole, unfolds complexity through simplicity, but alone at the piano Staub seems to be even more radical in his way of boiling each melody down to its essence while letting the notes linger in space. In his notes to the vinyl version of the album, released in collaboration between Jaeger Community Music and the French label Les Discques de L'Accalmie, Simon Raymonde points out the connection with the French impressionists: Satie, Ravel and Debussy, but there is also a more recent influence that comes to mind. The echoing, ambient chords of the piano recall the way Harold Budd would approach a solo piano record.
Staub plays the piano like a landscape unfolding. Little narratives played on a piano that feels like it has lived a whole life and now stops while looking across the horizon. Both the trio and solo record from Staub encourage reflection and presence. It is much needed slow music for fast times.
Tracks and Personnel
Str?g
Tracks: Zoom Out; Aero; Felt; Wave Train; Dendrite; Silk Street; Zoom In; An Ocean from Here; Lent; II III I; Str?g; Ding.
Personnel: Kasper Staub: piano; Jens Mikkel Madsen: bass; Anders Vestergaard: drums.
Aisle Arch Attic
Tracks: Fever Dream; Arch; Attic; Aisle; Realthought; Quiver; Grey; Sometimes; Lentando; Fever Dream Juno Rework (vinyl version bonus track); Timebend (vinyl version bonus track).
Personnel: Kasper Staub: piano.
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