Just wanted to share the word about our second release! It was recorded immediately after my partner, Ola, made it home from a three week period of quarantine/isolation after contracting COVID-19.
Ola teaches high school art at a small private school and was informed that one of her students had tested positive for COVID-19 the day after she had taught her class. She immediately isolated at her mother’s home, where she could have the entire second floor of the house, with a separate bath. My 85 year old mom lives with us, so it seemed best. A week into quarantine, she opted to be tested and was shocked that the test came back positive, as she was entirely asymptomatic. In the midst of this, I dropped off some of her music equipment, including our sorely neglected Zoom H4N recorder, to help pass the time. I don’t think she’ll mind me sharing that it was a stressful time with some real uncertainty about symptoms and potential symptoms. She developed some mild symptoms right at the end of her quarantine and while our county public health department cleared her to return home, we played it super-safe and got her in to her PCP who was very honest about how little is really known and thought we were wise to play it safe.
TLDR- Ola had COVID-19, we were fortunate and she is fine.
Now the fun part. In the midst of all of this we both recorded a few skeletal pieces for the other to respond to. Our previous album “both | and” was recorded live in 2017 and is just piano and modular. This album, “vol”, is more varied, with voice, field recordings, bowed banjo, a broken radio, and a garden implement called the Garden Weasel. Also piano and modular.
Because we have focused infinitely more on playing live than recording, and all of our few previous recordings had been live, this was actually our first time doing true multitrack recording together. That was previously by design, but this time it felt like a necessity, as we were trying to capture something of our experience during our time apart.
Hope you’ll give it a listen.
We have also played around with promo photos, using an out-of-date Sony camera with a ten second timer, in the snow. Much fun was had.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CKweCKHhb8R/?igshid=1mn1h6eiqqz3v
Thanks all!
