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Adrian Klumpes, "Be Still"
Stunning and devasting from beginning to end, this Triosk member's solo debut emotes relentlessly, unrestrained by any prescribed genre boundaries. To futilely classify this pensive meisterstück, as some critics are wont to do, defies sense, as the piano-driven music in effect speaks for itself, in despondent whispers and virtual screams.
For Be Still, Sydney-based pianist Adrian Klumpes has constructed a severe, deeply isolationist soundtrack to depression, a complex feeling that grips so many these long autumn nights. Not even loosely related to the creative avant-jazz of the artist's primary band, "Cornerned" sets this self-abusive ritual into motion, with backwards loops like shards of broken glass amid the ivories. Glitchy ambience plays a larger role on "Weave In And Out" to the point where intently following along could lead to unintended strain. The far more minimal title track returns a uneasy calm which gradually and quite naturally builds into something almost fiery and provoking, a characteristic that reappears as an all-out tantrum during the album's frantic centerpiece, the ten minute opus "Unrest". A queasy interlude named "Why" follows before segueing into "Exhale," which plays out more like unhealthy venting than much-needed release.
Though we are led to assume that Klumpes is pouring out his emotions here, he still finds enough time to toy with ours as well. The last few beautiful seconds of the otherwise atonal "Give In" tease or, rather, torment with a freshly tinkling, and cruelly fleeting, pattern relieved of the atmospheric weight that precedes it. Closer "Passing Pain" bitterly refuses to acquiesce to the demands of those transiently clean moments, the now-familiar palette of black and white keys producing a frigid tonal climate assuring much misery even after waning.
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