Toronto musician Nick Storring with his solo record Music From Wéi (ORANGE MILK RECORDS OM161), produced entirely using pianos (and maybe a Disklavier at some point), whereon he exhibits a wide range of techniques, including getting inside the piano, using magnetic pickups on the strings, contact mics…and mostly just playing in his very fluid and accomplished manner.
When we last heard him with My Magic Dreams Have Lost Their Spell he was playing a lot more instruments, many keyboards I seem to recall, plus his main instrument the cello, and the keynote for that album was one of lush production, electro-acoustic treatments, and heat-haze “unreal” sound to the enterprise. For today’s record, there’s still that dreamlike vibe but it’s being produced by more minimal means, indicating that Storring is the kind of gifted semi-surreal player who can make anything turn into a sewing machine and an umbrella just by touching it. You’ve gotta believe he could pick up a clarinet and end up with a bunch of ripe bananas at the end of the day. The full title of this record includes two Chinese characters which we can’t reproduce on WordPress, but it seems they translate roughly as “becoming”, or “turn into”, which is apt given Storring’s capacity for musical metamorphing, but the title comes to us from Yvonne Ng who invited Storring to perform with her on her dance piece of this title. Nick Storring ended up joining the choreographer on tour and needed a reasonably portable way of getting around by plane without carrying heavy instruments with him. He writes as though he was the only musician to have ever thought of accompanying dance with piano, but you get the idea – and he deserves credit for how he wheedles the Yamaha Disklavier into the album’s fabric.
It’s true the music is pretty varied across these eight parts – now quiet, now dense, now melodic, now noisy, and only on occasion is there something resembling a rhythmic pattern which one might consider suitable for dancing, but that shows my ideas about modern dance are in need of an update. Storring’s music does have an affable charm, which wins me over even when it’s on the verge of being rather glib and eager-to-please. Note how the front cover artwork makes a slight visual pun between smiling teeth and the keys of a piano, even as an impossible porcelain horse is floating on top of a Rothko-lite background of fuzziness. (21/09/2022)
Thank you for this, Ed! Happy New Year!