Hear ML Buch, Laraaji, & Alice Boman’s Tracks From New Solo Piano Comp piano1

Next month, the label section1 will release piano1, a new compilation dedicated entirely to solo-piano works. Many of the artists on the compilation — a list that includes people like Youth Lagoon, Hand Habits, Kelly Moran, and Brad Oberhofer — are known for considerably more complex music, but the idea is that this compilation will force both artists and listeners to slow down, breathe, and find a moment of peace. You can hear where that prompt leads on the new compilation tracks from ML Buch, Laraaji, and Alice Boman.

ML Buch, the Danish artist who released the powerful album Suntub last year, turns in the lightly ominous instrumental “Getting To Know Each Other.” Here’s what she says about it:

My piece is a dialogue between different piano elements with their different timbres. It deals with both the euphoric and confusing awkwardness of getting to know someone new. The piece starts with a call n response between a very simple riff played on a grand piano and a melody answering both in pitch and completely out of tune. It’s been fun playing a very expensive newly tuned grand piano and also layering 5 upright pianos each in its own very bad shape. The riff transitions into an ostinato and another piano enters and tries to learn that ostinato — sines played with an EBow on the piano strings flow on top. Looking back, I guess I treated the piano more like a guitar and tried to mess a little with that clean and precise sounding instrument.

Laraaji, the ambient veteran who was collaborating with Brian Eno back in the early ’80s, contributes a relatively florid piece called “waltz life,” and it comes with a video of guys fighting in mud. Laraaji says:

The piano has been my major instrument of joyful expression since the age of 10. My dear mother honored my interest in piano and violin at a very early age by having a piano in the house and allowing me to take piano lessons. With piano I go into many various worlds of the imagination, dancing images, space images, mysterious images, unfamiliar tonal worlds.

The Danish singer-songwriter Alice Boman is represented with the soft, haunted “17.” Here’s what she says:

I have been playing the piano since I was a child, and I remember moving from playing sheet music when I was younger to playing more freely and exploratively — just for the joy of it. That was a big change in what the piano meant to me. Making this tune I was going back to that — just playing around, letting the fingers lead the way.

Below, check out all three tracks and the piano1 tracklist.

TRACKLIST:
01 Kelly Moran – “Heart Thread”
02 Brad Oberhofer – “I Hugged A Clown In My Dream”
03 Alan Wyffels – “Intermezzo”
04 Laraaji – “Waltz Life”
05 Alice Boman – “17”
06 ML Buch – “Getting To Know Each Other”
07 The Kimba Unit – “Three Sundays”
08 Mark William Lewis – “Josh, this is Lin, I accidentally left my documents in your car yesterday”
09 Matthew Tavares – “COOL PIANO VIBE”
10 Hand Habits – “Not Worth The Lie”
11 Youth Lagoon – “The Harvest”
12 Ichiko Aoba “2024-06-13”

The piano1 compilation is out 11/22 on section1.