words by ODM
photo by Florian Kalotay
Although, it isn’t often talked about in this way, but a piano is actually a percussive instrument, a mechanical drum with eighty eight hammers that just happen to be hitting strings. Hence, when it’s played right, it can cast some serious spells, because it possesses the power of a drum, but it can sing its heart out, as well! Bálint Dobozi’s music draws from this multi-faceted nature of the piano. Technically, it can be filed away under “club music”, but really, it’s so much more than that!
Atlas, the first single from his debut full-length titled Avarnes (a creative spelling of awareness), sounds like something that the French avant-garde composer Erik Satie would write, but after spending a weekend out clubbing. It’s a piano piece, but it has the swing of a soft techno jam. The pulse is heavy and the whole thing is full of drive, even if it’s mostly implied! And it’s still very lyrical, too, pensive and full of melancholy. As per the press release, it’s a song that was written after a journey through the Atlas mountain range. According to its creator, it’s about the tug-a-war between the power you draw from the feeling of having this unbound freedom and the humility that comes along with the experience. It’s also about being lost, like physically lost, and dealing with the brutality of raw elements as in man vs nature. The composition feels like a a winding journey, one that carries you gently all the while it puts you under its spell.
Avarness will be out on October 16th, and from what we heard so far, it’s full of songs that were made from the sounds sourced from a century-old piano. This instrument was played on, banged on, strummed – you name it! The sounds that it produced were then processed, sometimes to the point where you wouldn’t ever recognise that they originally came from a real piano. One thing to remember: most of the compositions found on the record are closer to a club aesthetic, Atlas, in fact, is more of an anomaly on here. Bálint Dobozi is a Swiss composer / producer and musical director, you might have heard him on some of the freaky productions from the man known as Kalabrese.
