Wind, the natural movement of air - is invisible but perceived through mediums: swaying branches, whistling pipes, blowing hair, clashing wind chimes. Filled with these daily associations with the wind it’s easy to overlook the beauty of the wind itself: an ethereal turbulence of air molecules with their own dynamics, wildly shifting direction and momentum.
Celia Hollander’s album 2nd Draft, out November 10th on Leaving Records, is a tribute to the motion of making music: the invisible, forceful current that runs through humanity. In the way wind finds expression in the mediums of leaves, hair or dust, music is an unseeable current with its own energy that finds expression through resonant bodies, vibrating strings, trained fingers, colliding objects and more.
2nd Draft was recorded while Hollander was a composer in residence at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts in Nebraska City, NE in 2022. While working on multiple projects, she decided to improvise on their upright practice piano for an hour everyday. Writers refer to this type of practice as a “free write:” letting words from the unconscious torrentially fill a duration. Hollander compares these sessions to a sitting meditation: at best the hour soars by, and at worst it can feel like a tedious way to spend time. Once back in Los Angeles, she sifted through the recordings, chose excerpts and digitally marinated and simmered morsels of audio until achieving a desired texture, viscosity and aroma.
Hollander considers all released music to be drafts: building from a previous piece and working towards something unknowable in the future. 2nd Draft is literally so: a sequel to DRAFT, the 2017 tape on Leaving Records under her bygone moniker $3.33. Both feature improvised piano, an exception to a more digital-composition based process heard in the rest of her discography.
Like a draft of wind - a sudden gust, invisible but felt, something from the outside broken through to the inside - these piano free writes are meant to stir the external and the internal, ruffle the energy of a room, provide a refreshing breeze and surprise with spontaneity.
| 1 | Receiver |
| 2 | In Plain Sight |
| 3 | 2nd Wind |
| 4 | First Sustain |
| 5 | Messenger |
| 6 | Cumulus |
| 7 | 2nd Sustain |
| 8 | Knife Drawer |
| 9 | Illuminator |
| 10 | 3rd Sustain |
| 11 | Fielder |
| 12 | The Point |
| 13 | 4th Sustain |
| 14 | Beginner |
| 15 | Night Bloomer |
| 16 | 5th Sustain |
| 17 | Clearance |
| 18 | Last Sustain |
