Brand New Music With Daniel Berkman

I’ve got new recordings backing up here – too many lovely things that need releasing into the wild. Next on the list is definitely the album with Mike Outram (now over 2 years over due!) but later this year, I’ll be putting out a recording taken from the two shows I did with Daniel Berkman in San Francisco in January.

Daniel is an incredible multi-intrumentalist – on these gigs he played Gravikord (electric Kora), Handsonic (electronic percussion) and synth sounds running on his laptop, played via a TINY keyboard. The versatility of his sound-world from these three elements is mind-blowing, and he proved to be one of the most sensitive and adaptable improvisation collaborators I’ve ever met. He does a lot of looping himself, so like Michael Manring, has an innate awareness of what’s needed to make loops that are ‘human’, rather than metric, ‘work’. On this tune, the drum parts all pivot on him playing the snare on beat 3, ignoring the (hugely variable) downbeat of the bar, and playing ‘in time’ with wherever I happened to put it that time 🙂

Anyway, other than a brief soundcheck, this is the first thing we ever played together – enjoy! Please feel free to comment, ‘favourite’ it if you like it, and share the link around. it all helps a lot 🙂