The Leaf Lab

Triosk pianist Adrian Klumpes’ debut solo album. Like a Rothko canvas, Be Still is minimal and introspective, yet rich and intense; a rush of colour from a deliberately limited palette. As Klumpes explains: “Minimalism assumes much more involved actions before and after the event”. As a result, the album is vested with a range of emotion: feelings of violence, relief, loneliness, pain and finality are integral to the recordings. Recorded in a single five-hour session in Klumpes’ hometown of Sydney, all the sounds were captured in the same room, with the same mics, using the same piano. Simultaneously premeditated and spontaneous, the recordings strive for an edgy tranquility.

On the face of it, there’s an unbridgeable chasm separating the innovative jazz maven Sebastian Rochford and London-based, Portugal-born rapper Jyager; but as anyone familiar with either artist’s work will appreciate, these are artists for whom categorisations have little meaning. Common Ground is a concise, 25-minute collaborative mini-album, with music almost entirely derived from samples of Polar Bear’s Peepers album.