Pierre Jodlowski - Séries for Piano and Soundtrack [Kairos Music - 2024]Séries for Piano and Soundtrack is a six-track album where complex-to-moodily felt piano playing meets electronics- be they textured, atmospheric, dramatic, or just generally creative. Each of the pieces offers its own tone/ vibe for a wonderful varied, at-points eventful ride of an album. The release brings together French composer Pierre Jodlowski- whose work sits at the crossroads between acoustic and electric sound. He has composed the six pieces here, as well as adding in electronic elements. And highly talented & versatile Polish pianist Małgorzata Walentynowicz- who handles all the solo piano elements for the recordings. The six pieces here date from between 2007 and 2022- been presented in a chronological order, and as the booklet write-up describes we very much get six sonic colours and six sonic stories. The runtime of each piece sits between the just under seven to near eighteen-minute mark- with a total release runtime of just shy of seventy-five minutes. We move from ringing sear- to to-slicing texturing hammering, darting keyboard work, and shifting old film dialogue samples of “Série Noir”. Though to “Série Rouge” which moves from a blend of discordant gloomy plod, textural hiss, and electro steer. Though to darting piano pitch swifts- hit by doomy rock purrs and scrambling electro-tone pile-ups. The album finishes off with the epic seventeen and half minutes of “Série Cendre” which shifts from mixes of bounding low-end clunks & mid-range tinkles underfed by textural rattle ‘n’ rub. Onto blends of buzzing to throbbing elector sustain, darting key work, and texture grain or scrubbing shuffle. Jodlowski and Walentynowicz have been working together for a decade now- so let us hope they do a follow-up to Séries for Piano and Soundtrack- as it’s most certainly an intriguing, at points unpredictable, and always highly creative meeting between acoustic and electronic sonics. Roger Batty
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