Circa 2011 I was particularly interested in modal music and I always had an affinity with the Lydian mode; the sharp 4 always carried an evocative, yearning tone to my ears, which I love. As a result, a lot of what I was creating at the time was based around this. 'a cluster of stars' is one example—it being composed in C Lydian. Also around this time I was playing a lot with electric guitar textures, tones and looping. Further, I had quite an interest in improvisation—from the jazz standpoint of understanding deeply what you’re doing in spontaneous creation—so I would vamp in a mode and build dozens of layers of tones with the guitar.

One day my dear friend TJ—one of my favorite piano players— came by my studio, where we would often hang, and I asked him to play some piano with my guitar. At the time he was becoming more and more interested in minimalism, in addition to being an accomplished piano player, so when I told him this idea I had was a vamp in C Lydian he understood.

We set up a simple, stereo recording session with my guitar amp in the same room as the piano (pictured in the header above) and recorded what would be 'a cluster of stars' live in one take to 2-track. During the recording, TJ stood while playing the piano and I sat on an ottoman while playing the electric guitar. Only communicating through the music and some visual cues, 35 minutes later the piece was done. There was no editing, no further mixing, no further processing; it was a shame it wasn’t recorded to magnetic tape, my favorite format.

After sitting on the piece for some months and re-listening to it a lot we decided to see about a release. Turns out, Sonic Oyster Records released it on cassette tape—a format that could only help the music, in a limited edition of 50. Here now, many years later, it’s available for the first time as a digital download.

TJ and I are still good friends, and we both still make music in our own way, but this still remains the only time we’ve come together on a composition. Therefore, it’s unique in a few ways: the way it was conceived, the way it was recorded and the fact that it’s been a one-off collaboration.

Thanks for your interest, listening and support.

-Will Klingenmeier
Yerevan, Armenia Spring 2020