a book of waves – album

Andy Graydon, electronics, no input mixer
Klaus Janek, doublebass fx

release date June 2025 on Room40 label

Composed and recorded 2022-2024 in Berlin; Minneapolis; Serra Grande, Bahia; and Haʻikū, Maui.
Additional mixing by Brendan Dougherty
Mastered by Lawrence English at Negative Space
Thanks to Stefan Helmreich for the original book of waves

Writing on the water

After playing together for years, our tide was turning. What began as a happy rhythm of show dates in Berlin, from cozy trios in Klaus’ home studio to ten-piece ensembles at Ausland, was now ebbing away thanks to Andy’s move to the US. Whenever an accustomed pattern shifts it can take time to readjust, to find the gravity that will pull to shape an orbit again. What had been working well between us remained on both our minds for a few years after: the tension between complimentary forms and reflexes—from deep bass to airy hiss, from swift improvised gesture to slowly developing layer—these still animated our imaginations. But they had been honed in live playing, a situation now vanishingly rare. Then Klaus simply suggested we work toward a record, in gradual steps, no pressure, by trading recordings and responding to them in turn. This would be a conversation in concrete sound objects as opposed to the intuitive communication and reciprocal flow of on-stage collaboration. A different listening, becoming a different sounding.

Again we found seemingly opposing tendencies resonating to surprising effect in the long-distance, long-term recording and exchange process. A new productive tension was added to our process: between the excitatory becoming of live playing and the carving directly in fixed blocks of sound that felt more like writing than performing. We took our time, savored the eddies and deluges, gaps and jumps of building a work together asynchronously. Around the time we were working on the last track of this collection, Andy pored over Stefan Helreich’s A Book of Waves, a brilliant exploration of the ocean wave in its many forms and meanings across science and cultures, from histories to technologies to ecologies. In both the title’s turn of phrase and the depths it plumbed, we felt we had found an echo of our cyclical endeavor, circumnavigating an idea, a shadow of which we can finally share in the shape of this record.

Reviews:

“These are two players who know each other very well and know how to interact with each other, doing a great job.” (Vital Weekly -FdW) “And perhaps that is the secret joy here: Graydon and Janek remind us that music, like water, has no need to hurry. It will find us, carve us, drown us, or cradle us, whether or not we’re ready.” (chaindlk.com – Vito Camarretta)

“Texturally absorbing excursions in liminal space between electro-acoustic music and a scrabbly sort of computerised free jazz” (Boomkat)

“A Book of Waves flows-floats with its highly nuanced blocks of suggestive, liquid-like waves of sounds, and this cyclical sonic adventure perfectly echoes Helreich’s book and its deep ocean metaphors. (salt-peanuts.eu – Eyal Hareuveni)