Warp

Jon Balke

EN / DE
Warp situates the solo piano of Norway’s Jon Balke within a subtle architecture of composed soundscapes , in fluctuating dimensions of space. “As always,” says Balke, “the more you explore and discover, the further you want to go, and things are not so simple anymore. It’s a very interesting process.”  And what begins as gently exploratory solo piano gradually acquires an almost hallucinatory aspect.   Balke’s solo piano was recorded at Oslo’s Rainbow Studio, and the sound images were recorded and processed by Balke and Audun Kleive. Additional field recordings by Balke were integrated in the mix of the album at RSI Studio Lugano in September 2015.  Warp was produced by Jon Balke and Manfred Eicher.
Inmitten einer subtilen Architektur aus komponierten Soundscapes wird auf Warp das Soloklavier des Norwegers Jon Balke hinein in fluktuierende Dimensionen des Raumes platziert. „Es ist, wie immer“, so Balke, „je mehr Du erforschst und entdeckst, desto weiter willst Du gehen, und desto schwieriger gestalten sich die Dinge dann. Das ist ein wirklich interessanter Prozess.“ Und was als sanfte Erkundung auf dem Soloklavier beginnt, gewinnt allmählich halluzinatorische Aspekte. Balkes Soloklavieraufnahme wurde im Rainbow Studio in Oslo gemacht, die Klangbilder von Balke selbst und Audun Kleive aufgenommen und weiterverarbeitet. Im September 2015  wurden außerdem noch zusätzliche Feldaufnahmen Balkes in die Albummischung im RSI Studio in Lugano integriert. Warp wurde von Jon Balke und Manfred Eicher produziert.
Featured Artists Recorded

September 2014, Rainbow Studio, Oslo

Original Release Date

12.02.2016

  • 1Heliolatry
    (Jon Balke)
    03:19
  • 2This Is The Movie
    (Jon Balke)
    05:18
  • 3Bucolic
    (Jon Balke)
    04:05
  • 4On And On
    (Jon Balke)
    04:56
  • 5Bolide
    (Jon Balke)
    04:51
  • 6Amarinthine
    (Jon Balke)
    03:03
  • 7Shibboleth
    (Jon Balke)
    02:47
  • 8Mute
    (Jon Balke)
    01:15
  • 9Slow Spin
    (Jon Balke)
    04:22
  • 10Boodle
    (Jon Balke)
    02:25
  • 11Dragoman
    (Jon Balke)
    03:41
  • 12Kantor
    (Jon Balke)
    04:04
  • 13Geminate
    (Jon Balke)
    00:52
  • 14Telesthesia
    (Jon Balke)
    01:28
  • 15Geminate var.
    (Jon Balke)
    01:58
  • 16Heliolatry var.
    (Jon Balke)
    03:51
Eigentlich könnten die geheimnisvollen Melodien seiner Stücke und deren zerklüftete Auslegungen für sich alleine stehen. Aber das entsprach offenbar nicht der Vorstellung des Künstlers. Für die Ausgestaltung seiner Musik, die manchmal aus anderen Sphären zu kommen scheint, brachte er weitere Ideen ein. Zuweilen unterlegte er seine akustischen Piano-Exkursionen mit Electronics, selbst aufgenommenen Umweltgeräuschen, Rezitationen und Vokalsequenzen. [] Sie klingen wie Echos der Erinnerung, die in kongenialer weise Balkes im Vordergrund stehendes Spiel ergänzen.
Gerd Filtgen, Fono Forum
 
Zu hören sind die unterschiedlichsten »Environments«: atmosphärische Field Recordings aus der Natur am Randsfjord, wo Balke und Audun Kleive nach den Pianoaufnahmen im Rainbow Studio an den Sound Images bastelten, aus der Straßenbahn in Oslo, elektronische Elemente, ferne Gesangaufnahmen mit Mattis Myrland und Wenche Losnegaard oder auch mal die akustische Kulisse eines Spielplatzes, nie aufdringlich und vordergründig wohlgemerkt. […] Doch der Fokus ist zu jedem Zeitpunkt der Flügel, die poetischen, ebenfalls impressionistischen Improvisationen, die Balkes hohe Meisterschaft als Maler am Flügel ausweisen. Der Interpret und die künstlich geschaffenen Räume gehen eine faszinierend emotionale, sich durchweg gegenseitig bereichernde Beziehung miteinander ein, eine Einladung, sich das alltägliche Hören zu erleben.
Ingo J. Biermann, Nordische Musik
 
Jon Balkes Solo-CD ist zweifelsohne ein ganz besonderes Klangerlebnis. Er entführt uns in Klangwelten, die so fremd sie auch zuerst wirken, doch allmählich eine große Ruhe und Gelassenheit erzeugen. Ein rundum gelungenes Solokunststück.
Johannes Kaiser, Deutschlandradio Kultur
 
The vast majority of the 16 pieces here are miniatures, only one is over five minutes. Balke plays solo piano throughout, and accompanies himself by utilizing field recordings and other electronic sounds placed carefully in the backdrops and margins […] ‘Warp’ is curious. Its quark strangeness may prove a tad unsettling early on, but settles into a quietly compelling invitation for the listener. The entire experience offers a different series of questions, answers, and conclusions each time it is encountered. The language Balke speaks is that of the piano as it encounters the inner resonances of its physical body, as well as those of the outer, indefinable tongues of sound itself.
Thom Jurek, Allmusic.com
 
In this super-ambient release from Jon Balke, his second solo disc for ECM (who else since atmosphere is such a key component?), the former Magnetic North Orchestra leader's keyboard forays are augmented by an array of field recordings which create ‘a subtle architecture of composed soundscapes’. Balke neither obviously plays with nor against these supplementary sounds; the two coexist, like the sounds from adjacent anechoic chambers accidentally streamed together: delicate, Nordic tone-tinged piano explorations of musical space underscored by what might be the sound of children at play in a school yard (on 'Boodle') or haunted by distant singing voices (on 'Kantor'). It's a subtle, gently phantasmagorical experiment; the results could even be described as revealing what a piano sounds like when it dreams aloud.
Robert Shore, Jazzwise
Each of Norwegian pianist Jon Balke’s ECM albums has opened another window on the processes of improvisation. On Warp, a sound-sculpted meditation on the nature of solo playing, Balke looks at the ways in which “a lone musician, in his cloud of aesthetics, interacts with the world, or how the world warps into his space. How the world reverberates into art and vice versa.”
 
The starting point this time was the idea of situating the piano “in an architecture of sound”, incorporating field recordings with “distant homogenous sounds of city life”. Initial recordings of solo piano were made in sessions at Oslo’s Rainbow Studio with engineer Jan Erik Kongshaug. The next stage was to work with Audun Kleive at Madstun in the Norwegian hills using elements of electronics, sound, field recordings and more.
 
The music on Warp incorporates both pure solo and subtly enhanced piano, with additional information and mysterious half-buried detail. Balke’s field recordings include, for instance, sounds of a schoolyard, sounds of trams braking at the stoplights near the pianist’s Oslo home, ambient sounds from the Hagia Sofia church-mosque-museum in Istanbul. Singers Mattis Myrland and Wenche Losnegaard put in distant appearances, contributing to a layer of songs, hidden deep in the soundscape. To thicken the plot, Balke’s daughter Ellinor reads an airport announcement in three variations. Many other details can be perceived in the furthest corners of the mix.
 
In preparing his sound images, Jon also used a long list of keyboards, samplers and software to shape the setting in which his piano is heard. “Then we brought these hours of music back to Rainbow with Manfred Eicher involved, for more recordings and focusing of the results,
which we mixed in Lugano a few months later, with Stefano Amerio as engineer.” Sequencing was finalized by Eicher and Balke and the album mastered at Munich’s MSM Studio with Christoph Stickel.
YEAR DATE VENUE LOCATION
2025 September 04 PUNKT festival Kristiansand, Norway
2025 September 05 National Radio House-Store Studio Oslo, Norway