Summertime Piano Mutilation
I don’t know what it’s like where you are, Dear Reader, but in Budapest spring is here and there are flowers all over the place. Summer is right around the corner, which for this writer means drinking lotsa beer outside with friends, having loud conversations, eating cherry soup, dancing to records in various poorly lit rooms with creaky disco balls, checking out all kinds of live music, and generally having just about the best time I’m gonna have all year.
It also means that we here at The Little Black Egg pick a feelgood jam of the summer. Last summer, our feelgood fun jam was “Vomiting Mirrors” by Clockcleaner. Usually the feelgood hit is a new release, but not always—in 2006, the feelgood hit of the summer was “So Inernational” by B-Legit (feat. Too $hort), which actually came out in 2002. But this year, we return to the present day with Melissa St. Pierre’s “fig. VIII,” off of her Specimens EP released on Table of the Elements. 
I didn’t grow up listening to jazz , so every time I listen to improv or experimental or “new” music a certain amount of effort is required for me to wrap my head around the sounds I’m hearing. Not that I’m complaining—I’m willing to put in the work. In my experience, active listening is usually rewarded.
But sometimes, intensely active listening can make me feel like I’ve been on a really long sea voyage on the Sloop John B, and I just wanna go home: for me, “going home” means sitting around listening to Alice Cooper. I’m sure I can’t be the only person who feels this way—hungry for new sounds, but secretly craving tunes that make you want to get down. Getting both can be a rare thing indeed, but when you do . . . oh, when you do.
Enter Specimens.
The album has eight songs and clocks in at just over fifteen minutes. But really, it could run like one long song in eight parts. The main instrument is a prepared piano, which proves to pretty rad both on paper and in practice. 
As many of you probably know, the prepared piano was invented by John Cage, and is basically a piano with stuff stuck between the strings so that the piano makes a whole bunch of different noises. I don’t really know much about John Cage, but I do know that John Cale prepared his piano by sticking paperclips in its strings to get the crazy-ass sound you hear on “All Tomorrow’s Parties” offa The Velvet Underground and Nico.
The sound of the prepared piano on Specimens veers between atmospheric noise piano and sounds that are more percussive—whole hosts of weird piano tones that sound like bells or steel drums or just odd, ringing, resonant things. Who knows what strange fate befell this piano, but it makes sounds that you’re not going to hear anywhere else.
I don’t know who else plays on this record, but it sounds like someone is triggering samples on a laptop, and there’s someone playing drums. That might not sound like it would be accessible but it is. Strange territory is explored, and the music goes in a lot of different directions without being alienating or difficult. In fact, it’s downright catchy—sort of a Zeena Parkins vibe by way of Konono No. 1.
Sixteen minutes, eight songs, one slab of music. And I don’t know for sure, but this might be the first instance of a prepared piano record that you can dance to. (In fact, you should dance to it.) Don't hold back. Go have a good time—it’s the summer, for chrissakes.
It seems there’s a video for fig. VIII.
Finally, might I add—that Table of the Elements label? They’re a class act. They consistently release top shelf product. Here’s to hoping that this album sees a vinyl release.
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