De Lin is four reinterpretations of a Debussy piano prelude: La Fille aux Cheveux de Lin, which roughly translates to “The girl with the flaxen hair.” The reinterpretations are created using samples of the original score, improvisations around the original score, and influences from the gamelan music that inspired Debussy; as well as exploring the curiosity surrounding the harmonic realms of the piano that fascinated him throughout his compositions.

 

The entirety of the compositions are created using extended piano techniques; i.e. playing, bowing, plucking, preparing & other miscellaneous sounds. In some cases the samples have been digitally manipulated, however all sounds are recorded at source solely from a grand piano.

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Listen here or buy here.

 

         

01. Floating Trees takes all of the extended techniques explored in this project and combines them. The opening is inspired by the beginning of La Fille where the first note, Db, hangs in the air building suspense before delicately lilting down to the rest of the phrase. The beginning of Floating Trees is a series of Db samples in different extended technique mediums that slowly become more distorted, allowing tension to build in a new way. Bowed piano is layered throughout, a beautifully unique and rich sound to discover. This track includes pitch bends: the only technique that was difficult to explore acoustically and therefore was created by digitally manipulating the samples.

 

02. Angin (translates to “wind” or “breeze” in Indonesian - the home of gamelan music) uses plucked piano samples for all of the melodic sounds, some of which were distorted or filtered post-recording. The piece also takes inspiration from Reich, particularly the polyrhythms he uses in his music.

 

03.Yellow builds on miscellaneous piano sounds such as pedal squeaks, tapping the lid with drum sticks, mallets, and brushes, and using a guitar plectrum on the strings. A high drone is created using a repeated sample from the tail of a resonant sung note in the piano, where the damper was silently lifted allowing the corresponding string to resonate sympathetically with the voice.

 

04. Désert Nocturne uses an improvised piece of prepared piano music, where rubber, metal, pieces of wood, and a coin (creating the cymbal-like sound) sits beneath a chord progression from my favourite 4 bars of La Fille.

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The cover art illustrations are by Staffan Gnosspelius, check out his work at www.gnospelius.com.

The creature on the front is one of his ‘creatures of no particular importance’.

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Release date: 02 February 2018

 

Composed, produced, engineered & mixed by Fia Yana.

 

Mastered by Katie Tavini who I cannot recommend highly enough.

 

Recorded at Bankstock studios.

 

Cover art by the insanely talented Staffan Gnosspelius.

 

Liner notes designed by bruv, aka Adam Roberts.

 

The Biggest thanks:

 

Assistance in engineering, compositional inspiration and infinite belief & motivation from Vicky Freund, Carl Robinson, Imogen Wilde, Maxine Sircana, Mum & most of all Jon; without whom De Lin would not exist.

 

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But the piano is more than just an instrument; in the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, it is a “wondrous box,” filled as much with 

hopes, yearnings, and disappointments as with strings and hammers and felt.

(P. 5. Isacoff, S. 2011. A Natural History of the Piano. London, UK. Souvenir Press Ltd.)

© Fia Yana 2017