DENMAN MARONEY – NITS MUSICA (Cuneiform Records) (2024) (DL only)

Veteran hyperpiano master Denman Maroney presents, through the ever-inclusive Cuneiform label, three pieces of mostly abstract piano music in its broadest sense stretching over an hour, with an additional edit of the first ‘Nits Musica’ movement, if I can call it that. The overriding influences that come across are John Cage, Ornette Coleman, Oliver Messiaen and Karlheinz Stockhausen, although occasionally when Denman actually plays the piano (rather than bowing and sliding the strings with ‘household’ objects of various shapes - hyperpiano), glimpses of his other stated influences such as Duke Ellington and Thelonius Monk, come through.

The style is what’s called temporal harmony whereby the composer/ player improvises in multiple tempos; another way of looking at Denman’s approach would be to say that he ‘tampers’ with a piano, rather than actually playing it in the conventional style, so creaks and plucks are audibly heard in the second ‘movement’, along with many otherworldly and, it must be said, strange sounds, strongly impressionistic in some instances, meowing cats perhaps at the start of the third part where Denman explores the percussive possibilities of the innards of a piano to the nth degree with some amazing results. So, the music may well be better experienced in live performance, and it is intriguing to ponder on how much of the music is improvised and to what extent composition plays a part. Strangely strange but oddly normal once one gets acclimatised, I would say, and quite compelling for what it is: a different kind of music making and a unique sonic experience.