Transcend! by Nick Peck

These pieces were recorded very quickly over a few days at my home studio. Some were based on rough sketches of a tune or ostinato - everything else was completely improvised.

"Lin-lan-lone" is found in a line by Blake: "What sound was dearest in his native dells? The mellow lin-lan-lone of evening bells..."

"Transcend" and "Passacaglia" are improvisations on a set of synthesizer patterns. I was thinking of the work of Klaus Schulze and John Surman. I met John on a few occasions when he guested with my high school band. He was extremely funny, encouraging and down to earth - (at the time I had not yet become aware of his original music).

"The Orb Weaver" was a garden spider who took up residence outside my kitchen window during the fall of 2020 and was my only friend during that period. Disappeared following a storm and was never seen of again.

"Inner Beauty" & "Teaser" are improvisations on simple tunes I sketched out. I later added some synthesizer parts in order to expand upon the harmonics I hear emitted by the piano.

"Backrooms" Is an improvisation that has no-clipped beyond the bounds of our reality and is searching for a way home.

"Longing" is an improvisation that searches for something, but what? A vacation? True love? A pizza?

"Love", is like "Jazz", in that it means radically different things to different people.

"The Knight's Regret"; he reflects on the lives of those he took and those he lost and wonders why he alone was spared - destined to spend an eternity never reaching the end.

"The Valley of 10000 Bells" is an improvisation on a raga of my own invention. I tuned the chimes by hand using a ruler, calculator and a hacksaw. A raga is then expanded upon in a (predominantly) stepwise fashion. I subsequently found my neighbors' set to be tuned an augmented fourth away. I was later arrested in the middle of the night armed with a hacksaw. My case comes up next month.

Nick Peck is a multi-instrumentalist and composer who has performed across Canada and Europe.

His recorded music blurs the lines between composition and improvisation, sometimes evolving into vast multi-tracked symphonic forms, colored by experiences performing jazz, contemporary classical, folk, electronic and freely improvised music.

nickpeck.com