No time to wait, we’ve another release to put out before we’re off on holiday. ‘Silence Of The North‘ is the creation of Stuttgart, Germany based artist Frank Baker, which sees the careful assembly of 3 hour’s worth of late night piano recordings. This album condenses the recordings into around 45 minutes of cinematic neo-classical pieces which are joined by carefully crafted soundscaping. With its wintry charm, Silence Of The North will appeal to fans of Hauschka, Nils Frahm or Dakota Suite. You can listen to a preview of the album by using the Soundcloud player below or keep a check on our Facebook page to preview the packaging when we share it.
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press release
“Frank Baker is a composer/producer from Stuttgart, Germany who has mainly released music through his own label Frank Baker Music. He began recording guitar back in 1999 with cassette tape experiments and began recording under his own name around 4 years ago with his debut ‘Noctilucent’ being released in winter 2013. He also records Ambient/Drone material as Noonsize and Post-Rock as Hawks From The Ocean Abyss.
In Silence Of The North, we have a generous twelve track offering centred around recordings from a 1970s Yamaha grand piano as an imaginary soundtrack inspired by the Northern Hemisphere. Frank spent around 3 hours one evening, sat at the piano as he improvised into the dead of the night. The material has been whittled down to a dozen short pieces, and a familiar thread returns throughout the record which tells a story much like a movie. With the piano at the heart of everything, the sound is naturally cinematic and references colder climes with Frank having been inspired by visits to Canada and Scandinavia. Frank’s main idea was to record an album that characterises silence and whilst the lonely old piano would evoke that alone, his added sound design featuring prepared-sounding piano strings, cavernous noise and found sounds programmed into Logic delve further into the ideas of loneliness, isolation and silence.
With its clear film soundtrack aesthetic, it would be all too easy to reference classical music – Frank points out that he is not a piano player but instead, he used the piano notes to paint his picture in what has more to do with Ambient music than classical. As humans tend to search for warmth and reside nearer to the equator, Silence Of The North embraces a stark coldness that is often ever presence within the lesser populated Northern Hemisphere. Recommended if you like Hauschka, Nils Frahm or Dakota Suite.”
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