Fancy a tinkle?

I just got the new Hauschka album, Ferndorf (I'm pretty sure it counts as an album although I once got berated for accidentally referring to a Gorecki 'symphony' as an 'album'. Jeez, some people are so picky. It had tracks on it; why can't it be a fucking album?...)

I really liked/like his 2007 offering, Room To Expand, and I'm acclimatising myself from listening to alot of Roots Manuva's Slime and Reason album in the last while (it's fantastic) and getting into this.

This is the work of German pianist and composer, Volker Bertelmann, and in many ways he is trying to strip away the stuffiness and rules of piano-based music by meddling furiously with the style, technique and often the instrument itself.
He's a musical manipulator and experimentalist in the world of 'prepared piano' - a term coined by John Cage, for a style where the pianist places objects on or between the strings and/or hammers to get a particular sound.
Bertelmann embraces this technique along with the incorporation of some beautiful string work and even some flourishes from the world of glitchy electronica (Aphex Twin has dabbled with prepared piano too).

The result is often unusual and frequently beautiful and I think this clip should demonstrate it well. The new album was released last week as far as I know and Pitchfork TV have a lovely clip from it which I will not embed here because it's too big for the Blogger format. It's here.