Duncan Blachford – Ill-Prepared Piano [CS]

"This site-specific recording was performed on a decaying piano found on the street outside an industrial warehouse, recorded toward the tail-end of a blistering summer workday.

Although pulverised by the elements, a small handful of the piano's keys still worked – if only intermittently – setting the parameters of what notes could be struck, and at times, determining when. While played, damaged sections of artificial ivory detached themselves from wood – providing a clattering rhythmic accompaniment to the discordant and weather-worn keys.

The recording site, bordering a Darebin Creek walking-trail and an industrial backstreet in Thornbury, offers a unique acoustic environment: whirring circular-saws combine with birdsong; rustling debris with motorbikes and cars; and two-way radio-calls with improvisatory piano – the field recordings colliding with the piano's interventions in instant composition. Shortly after these recordings were made, the piano was gone. The album closes with a field-recording captured after-hours, outside the factory, following the piano's removal.

Duncan Blachford is a musician from lutruwita (Tasmania), based in Naarm (Melbourne), Australia. Previously active in Exhaustion, Actual Holes, Drunk Hands, Rubbish Throwers, Goodgrief Commune, Psychic Baggage, Swawklor, Cross Brothers and Keith's Yard. 'Ill-Prepared Piano' operates as a companion piece to Blachford's other piano works, 'Suite for Piano' (2013), 'Glaciale Klavier & Schlagzeug' (2022) and 'Improvisation for Piano and Rain No 1' (2023)."

Endless Melt, 2024