Sure. Erik Satie is “cool” in certain circles and everything, but let’s face it: he’s French. And dead. And you’re American. And not really sure how to pronounce his name properly. You need a new guy. A Lancaster Pennsylvania-born guy. A 21st-century guy. A guy with a catchy name and shiny, shiny moniker that you can easily whip out any time you need to demonstrate or defend your deep, pillowy love of quiet, gorgeous, cinematic, minimalist piano music.
Enter Keith Kenniff — a.k.a. Goldmund (a moniker lifted from the Hesse jam Narcissus and Goldmund, in which the Goldmund character abandons his comfy to go find nothing less than the goddamned meaning of life) — and the lead-off track “As Old Roads” from his forthcoming album Sometimes. It’s like a drop-dead gorgeous stroll through the most bucolic meadow on earth, only the ground is all lumpy and wet and there might be some cow shit around, but you can’t tell because it’s night time and you don’t know where you’re going, so you’re stumbling and sort of drunk on top of it. Yeah, it’s pretty much like that.
No, really. It is: “I like mistakes, I like when things don’t go perfectly. I do have a tendency to want for things to be perfect and precise, but I have to also realize that a lot of things I like about music and art are very rough and impulsive, the slight imperfections that give something or someone a unique voice,” says Kenniff. And on this track, as well as the subsequent 16 cuts on the record, which were “improvised, and recorded in one or two takes, often late at night, after work-for-hire was finished, and the kids were in bed,” the idea of “feeling things out in the dark” is what it’s all about.
Sometimes is out November 13 on Western Vinyl, and you can pre-order it there right now on vinyl, CD, and digital hologram.
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