Album Reviews

Back in 1956 at the dawning of the hi-fi era, the easy listening piano duo of Ferrante and Teicher, (whose career spans six decades) released an album called Soundproof! on Westminster records (WP-6014).

The cover art, featuring an iconic flying saucer shot taken from the MGM movie “Forbidden Planet” alerted potential buyers to something “futuristic” in the LP’s grooves. The back cover annotation explains that the two Steinways’ innards have been “gimmicked” with electronic devices.

Remember: this was before the age of synthesizers. The sounds the duo coaxed from the pianos was a combination of straightforward piano and exotica, the likes of which hadn’t previously been heard by most listeners outside of a laboratory.

While the sounds they create are exotic, the duo apply them to standards like “What is This Think Called Love,” “Greensleeves,” “Baia,” and “Breeze and I.” Nonetheless, the duo’s orchestrations and use of purposefully distorted and electronically altered percussives was massively creative and way ahead of its time, though fans of Les Paul will hear similarities to some of his multi-track extravaganzas and to Martin Denny’s exotica.

These guys were Julliard trained musicians, so they could play and they could arrange, and these tunes are skillfully arranged to alter and contrast textures and timbres. The keyboards, sometimes sounding like woodblocks, sometimes like a celeste, sometimes like a harpsichord or a guitar, were making music that was literally out of this world. Part of the reason is that they were plucking the strings inside the piano, or banging on them with their elbows, or hitting strings that had been modified with wood and/or rubber.

Though the recording featured 17 channels (remember, this was 1956!) and was mixed live for both mono and stereo, though stereo LPs weren’t available in 1956. For some reason the stereo mix never was released. Instead, Westminster issued a stereo version of Soundproof! (WST 15011) a few years later featuring the same cover art and the same back jacket annotation, but using a completely different set list, though the tunes, a combination of standards and South American kitsch, caught the same flavor as the original. Then to further muck up the hi-fi waters, Westminster issued Soundblast! (WP 6041), which was the mono version of the tunes on the stereo version of Soundproof!. The cover art was similar but it didn’t use the movie image, probably because of licensing issues.

I don’t know how many copies of these albums sold (Westminster surely didn’t help sales by warning potential customers in the back jacket annotation’s opening sentence that “IF YOU DO NOT HAVE THE finest high quality audio equipment, don’t bother to play this record.”) but if you find any of them for a reasonable amount of money, don’t pass them up.

What does all of that have to do with Martin Vatter’s Try a New Way/Night Impressions? Well, Vatter is a young German pianist who has composed and arranged a series of mostly short, symmetrical, almost geometrically precise compositions that feature plucked and muted piano (in this case a Yamaha Concert Grand C7) in addition to normally struck keys. Some of the sounds he achieves are similar to what Ferrante and Teicher managed all those years ago, but few are quite as exotic, and that’s fine since Vatter is going for a more subtle, atmospheric sensibility.

Compositionally, most of Vatter’s pieces evoke anticipation as portrayed in 1970’s electronica. Like the opening “Night Train,” which, after a rumbling train sound effect, evokes a train’s rocking, linear motion. It’s all built upon one insistent chord around which the pianist builds repeated clusters and variations thereof. You have to listen deep into the layers or it begins to sound stifling and repetitive after a few minutes. Give it a chance and you can almost see the train rumble off in the distance, helped by an excellent recording.

The second track, “Midnight Prayer,” lets you know that Vatter’s going to keep working this very thin musical vein, with another piece that’s also built on the anticipatory motif of one chord and a cloud of clustered smoke, this time a tinkly riff at the upper end of the keyboard and blocked chords lower down. Very mathematical and “new agey.” Some will find it monotonous and perhaps even annoying, but others may be inspired, depending upon whether you think Vatter has purposely reigned in the musical possibilities and chosen to work with a limited palette or that he’s simply not equipped to produce anything broader.

The third track, “Time-Slave” let’s you know you’re in for another anticipatory morse-code like hoe-down, with a juicy plucked bass line over which is another set of tinkly riffs that build, but don’t resolve or really go anywhere. It’s all very mathematical. At this point you sort of feel the music is the soundtrack to a bank heist movie or something like that. I thought “Chariots of Fire” meets “Thief.”

“Moon Mania” starts with a promising simple intro but then becomes yet another anticipatory piece that builds and builds (and builds and builds) but goes nowhere except to sounding like the intro theme from a “heartwarming,” family-based TV drama. You can almost hear the announcer reciting the stars’ names and their character names. It gets precious fast.

The side ends with “Magic Night,” another piece of musical math built upon an upper keyboard cycle and portentous bass notes. And then? And then of course comes the morse code plucked piano riff again!

Side two, “Try a New Way,” is mostly more of the same anticipatory, morse code tapping rhythms, more circular riffs and portentous bass notes and more of the same everything, though the mood is somewhat more uplifting, but often in an overly precious manner. On a few tracks including the resigned “That’s Life,” Mr. Vatter plays in a less angular, more ornate style, but it resolves into Hallmark card preciousness. On “Grey,” Mr. Vatter moves to an even more pensive mood, riffing off of a familiar classical composition I can’t recall the name of (I hate when that happens). The side ends with the melancholic “A Heartbreakers’ Voice,” probably the most successful composition of the lot, though it too verges on the heart-tugging and overwrought.

What keeps the proceedings mildly interesting is the stellar recording and mix. The project was supported by a variety of German electronics companies including STAX Germany, T+A and others that will be less familiar to American readers, as well as by the German magazine Audio.

The recording’s atmospherics are notably rich and full-bodied, the individual high notes bell-tone pure, the low notes deep and enveloping. Dynamics are ultra-wide and as the stylus makes its way to the inner grooves, tracking becomes more problematic, though if everything’s set up correctly you should hear no gross distortion or break-up, just a slight loss of ultimate clarity. It’s inevitable.

You may find this boring, you may find it trite, or you may appreciate Vatter’s precision and impressive organization within an admittedly constricted framework. However you react to the music, the recording will get your attention. There is no U.S. distribution. The album must be ordered directly from Germany at the website noted where we usually put catalog numbers (label). This record has none.