Mike Adcock: Moment of Discovery

I love the prepared piano. It brings out the fact that the piano is a percussion instrument where it's strings that get hit. Sometimes a prepared piano sounds like percussion, sometimes it sounds like a zither, and sometimes it's musique concète. It's still a western instrument, but it can sound as though it has the different tuning intervals of oriental stringed instruments. It can be Rachmaninov and it can be the Goon Show, within the same bar, or within the same chord.

Here Mike Adcock plays nine improvisations for "quickly" prepared piano, which is even better. I bought this CD from Mike at the gig he played at Over the Top in Sheffield in 2001 (or possibly 2002). Having mentioned how few CDs I buy these days, I think this is absolutely the best context to buy them: to show extra gratitude for a good performance, and to provide a memento of said performance.

Were it not for this CD, that evening would have passed almost completely from memory. Improvised music is hard for memory to grasp at the best of times. No catchy tunes. But I really like the balance of Terry Riley and slapstick on this album. There's a sample of one track at the bottom of this page.

I was the first Last.fm user ever to play ('scrobble') any Mike Adcock music, so that gives you an idea of how popular he is.

MusicBrainz entry for this album