by Jessie Roberts
John Freeman praises Abandoned City, a new album by the German composer Hauschka (aka Volker Bertelmann), who uses alternative techniques to “look at what makes abandoned cities attractive and weird”:
[E]very sound on the album was created on a standard piano, using the ‘prepared piano’ technique, mastered by Bertelmann over the last decade. “A prepared piano is a method that involves taking a piano sound and adding an object – it could be metal or felt or plastic – to a piano string or between the hammer and the string to create a new tone on top of the piano note,” Bertelmann explains. “By using the prepared piano method, I get to use every single element of the piano, which gives me the freedom to do very modern, almost electronic, sounding music without using electronics as a sound source. On Abandoned City I used only delays with a little distortion to process the sound – everything you hear was played on a piano.”
So it transpires that the jagged percussion patterns on ‘Elizabeth Bay’ (a disused Namibian mining town) were created by jamming wooden sticks between the piano strings, while Bertelmann achieved the brittle clang of ‘Pripyat’ by blocking strings with his fingernail. This ambitious dedication to craft such an array of sounds – be it an imagined harp, drum or even a Melodica – using such simple, yet imaginative, techniques ensures Abandoned City carries a sense of wonder and intrigue.
The Dish 