BLUE
The blue of water is never the same – it changes into icy white, the deep black of the ocean floor or tropical turquoise.
And just as the physical conditions of water change with different temperatures, PIANO PARTICLES explores a variety of musical states on his sophomore album Blue.
Electronic dance music with assertive bass frequencies, colorful chants of iridescent radiance and a string quartet plus a 16-piece string orchestra – analog meets electro. Like atoms that repel, orbit each other and converge.
Coming
With the opening single Coming, the artist arrives on new terrain. Voices and electronica gently drift in to join the piano as companions. Together they traverse the unknown until they separate again on the album’s final song Parting.
Glacial
The inspiration for Blue was a voyage through multiform icebergs in the Arctic North. Realizing that even more massive structures are hidden beneath the water made a deep impression on PIANO PARTICLES, as the challenges of navigation seemed like human encounters:
We never know ourselves completely. And with others, we certainly don't know all the things that shape their biographies. The other person becomes a projection surface.
In C is a nod to minimal music pioneer Terry Riley, with a dark pulsating piano note of C rising to an increasingly loud heartbeat in string orchestra lines and electronic beats.
The visualization renders life under a microscope and through a telescope all at once, as vibrating particle constellations suggest that the individual and the universal are the same.
Radices
Radices (latin roots) tells the story of individual streams that unite into a single river on their way to the sea, existing as two states at the same time. This quietly drifting flow unfolds perfectly in the cinematic documentary Rhinegold - Faces of a Great River with German actor Ben Becker as the voice of Father Rhine.
Live
From a reduced speckled sky to nocturnal particle explosions, the floating stage installation from debut album White appears in ever-changing patterns and bold reconfigurations for the Blue release tour.
Collabs
Renowned choreographers have developed their own interpretations of Blue – Eric Gauthier & Company at the Theaterhaus Stuttgart, Marco Goecke with the ballet company of the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz in Munich, and Tarek Assam with the ballet company and orchestra of the Theater Gießen.
At Friedrichsbau Varieté Stuttgart, a nouveau cirque show with an international ensemble of artists and more than 50 performances was created around the haunting sound of Blue.
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