Robert Piotrowicz’ – Lincoln Sea
Published October, 2013
by Easterndaze
‘Lincoln Sea’ is an almost 40-minutes multilayered composition, divided in two parts to fit the vinyl format. It’s a second Robert Piotrowicz solo album this year, coming after enthusiastically received ‘When Snakeboy is Dying’. There, apart from his trademark analogue synthesizer, he deployed piano, guitar and vibraphone – in effect that record is gentle, thus differing greatly from his previous efforts. The new one is much more energetic and impetuous. Both albums were mastered by renowned Rashad Becker, who didn’t interfere in the material he had received, but made it sounds richer. Thanks to that it didn’t lose nothing of its original force transferred to vinyl.
This time Piotrowicz, using only modular synthesizer, is giving the listeners an opportunity to go trough a rich sound-experience, demanding attention so they are able to immerse into rough sea of strident microtones. The piece begins with metallic buzzing, which is transformed and gains in strength. It wasn’t improvised but meticulously crafted in studio.
The author admits that the composition’s form and narrative arc are closely related to the sound’s image structure, which means that often the music’s progress was dependent on it’s timbre and architecture. “The material was determined by microtonality, elements of harmonics and emotional status of sound masses. It was realized through a variety of methods, for example a constant intensification and a continuous expansion of the same. I wanted to achieve a limit of the capacity of the sound picture, while at the same time keeping the maximum clarity and resolution of the horizontal factor. The idea of a sound mass took away the autonomous properties of singular elements of piece. Obviously it remains in contrast to purely solo parts, which as a material stay tantamount.”
He also adds that “the concept of multidimensional total structure in a constant movement was crucial to creating a model of the sound masses. In the composition, I wished to reconcile this utopian idea of an independent structure with a time-determined narration of a musical piece. There is a fine line between narrativity of this album and its sound sculpture, it’s something that I feel constantly challenged by.”
As for the title – Lincoln Sea is a barely inhabited part of Arctic Ocean, covered for the whole year by an ice layer thick even up to 15 meters. But Piotrowicz hadn’t been there and it wasn’t his intention to create a musical portrait of the place. The record is related to the area on a symbolic level – aggression and exhilaration interwoven, sound treated in a holistic way.
LINCOLN SEA by Robert Piotrowicz
By Karolina Karnacewicz, see her blog here