Simon James Phillips has created Chair, an album of clustered piano works, where notes compound and flutter in a spiraling flow of attack and decay. Using the natural sustain of both his chosen instrument and the recording environment -- the Grunewald Church in Berlin -- Phillips' playing draws out the natural harmonic saturation of his subjects. Of the recording Phillips notes "My sound engineer Mattef Kuhlmey used numerous microphones, placed in various positions around the church in order to capture not only the sound of the piano, but also how this sound behaved in such a richly resonant environment." Unashamedly beautiful, Chair is a record that does not shy away from the transcendent quality of the piano. Part pulse, part harmony, Phillips' playing taps into the finest minimalist traditions while not dwelling on repetition. Manipulating the pacing of his playing, Phillips creates an unsettled sense of time. Pieces like "The Voice Imitator" utilize large decay tails -- the spaces between the notes ringing out a kind of spatial mapping, that speaks as much to the instrument as to the space. By contrast, "Moth to Taper," with its embracing overtones generates a profound quality of acoustic texture -- notes tumbling into their counterparts in a sea of inter- locking harmony. Chair reminds us that less is almost always more -- one player, one instrument, one room. Outside of his solo work, Phillips spends his time as one-half of Pedal (with Chris Abrahams), as a member of The Swifter (with Andrea Belfi and BJ Nilsen), and he also performs with The Berlin Splitter Orchestra.
