adrian lim-klumpes
SOLO
Adrian Lim-Klumpes (Adrian Klumpes)
Adrian has developed a unique sound blending the clarity of the piano with the textural elements of electronics and preparations. Improvisation and the immediacy of creativity underpins Adrian's performances and compositions.
Yield (Preludes and Fugues for Piano), released in 2017, is an album of solo piano works; ten tracks composed as paired preludes and fugues. Written in part as a homage to Bach’s piano work “The Well-Tempered Clavier”, Adrian brings his unique sound palette of jazz harmony, prepared piano, and electro-acoustics to this traditional form, creating sonorous music that pushes at the boundaries of post-classical, post-jazz aesthetics.
Yield also continues Adrian’s exploration of compositional and improvisational approaches to creating music. All performances were recorded in one 6-hour session on a Steinway piano with a multitude of microphones and recording techniques. These series of improvisations on composed themes were sound edited and developed into the final tracks.
Inspired by the rich textures found in Bach’s polyphony, Yield uses sound editing and post-composition as techniques to create multi-layered harmonies. Further dimension comes from the expanded piano timbre palette, including preparations, overdubs and extended resonances. Through these devices Adrian is able to explore, in his compositions, the conflict between the natural acoustics of piano playing and the manipulation of these soundwaves made possible by studio editing.
Yield can be seen to be a distillation of Adrian’s experience as an improvising musician and composer, and this new body of work evidences his growth and development as an artist.
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Adrian's 2006 debut solo album Be Still demonstrates his exploration of electronic textures, improvisation technique and post-composition. As the track titles suggest, a sense of unease pervades the album, drawing the listener in and highlighting a narrative rare in instrumental music, as Adrian seeks to exorcise the ghosts in the piano. The centerpiece of Be Still is the 10-minute ‘Unrest’, a masterpiece of dissonance and harmony that ebbs and flows like the sensation of breathing.
Be Still reflects a search for peace in a fractured world. Like a Rothko canvas, Be Still is minimal and introspective, yet rich and intense; a rush of colour from a deliberately limited palette. As Klumpes explains: “Minimalism assumes much more involved actions before and after the event”. As a result, the album is vested with a range of emotion: feelings of violence, relief, loneliness, pain and finality are integral to the recordings. Recorded in a single five-hour session in Adrian’s hometown of Sydney, all the sounds were captured in the same room, with the same microphones, using the same piano. Simultaneously premeditated and spontaneous, the recordings strive for an edgy tranquility.
Adrian has also produced other solo tracks for video artists, short films and choreographers. An offer from BiP_HOp’s Philippe Petit to contribute to an ongoing compilation series gave Adrian the space and impetus to record overlapping, foreboding piano motifs, in response to what was a tumultuous end to more than one relationship. A silver lining of fresh love becomes apparent. This 10 minute solo track Together Under the Clouds Rolling In is available on BiP_HOp’s Generation #9 compilation (2008).
TANGENTS
Shoeb Ahmad (guitar, pedals), Ollie Bown (computer), Evan Dorrian (drum kit, percussion), Peter Hollo (cello, effects), Adrian Lim-Klumpes (piano, rhodes, mallet percussion, pedals)
Tangents is a Sydney-based quintet that melds electronic production, experimental rock and free improvisation. The band draws together veterans of the experimental music scene, Adrian Lim-Klumpes (Triosk, 3ofmillions) Ollie Bown (Icarus, Not Applicable) Peter Hollo (FourPlay) and Evan Dorrian and Shoeb Ahmad (the duo Spartak).
The first-ever meeting of the ensemble, performing live improvisations at the Megaphon studios in Sydney, became their debut album I (hellosQuare, 2013). The band followed up with another album-length improvised set recorded by the ABC for their Sound Quality sessions in 2014. Their second album, Stateless (Temporary Residence, 2016), marked a shift into a more studio-based production mode. Tangents released their third album, New Bodies, with Temporary Residence in 2018.
“Tangents create a delectable hybrid of styles – porous, lively and drenched in multilayered patterns… the quintet comfortably embraces jazz, post-rock and electronic music, echoing the same type of bold, free improvisation and experimentation as Can, Tortoise, Four Tet and The Necks.” -WOMADELAIDE FESTIVAL
3OFMILLIONS
Abel Cross (bass), Adrian Lim-Klumpes (piano, rhodes, percussion), Finn Ryan (drums)
3ofmillions are a Sydney-based electro-acoustic improvising trio who take elements from free jazz, post-rock, punk and electronic music to create unique sound textures. 3ofmillions are an electro-acoustic, improvising trio who take elements from free jazz, post-rock, punk and electronic music to create unique sound textures and visceral live performances. At the time of making the recordings, the trio often wrestled with histories and stereotypes of jazz music, the notion of “post-jazz” and all of the shared and individual musical influences that combined in their sound. One can hear this blossoming as an joint eagerness to explore and redefine their music.
“3ofmillions invigorates with its fearless attack, and embodies the genre-advancing spirit that was once standard practice in jazz” – Textura Magazine
“[Abstruction] provides ample evidence, should it be needed, that 3ofmillions rank amongst Australia’s finest improvising musicians, committed to developing their own complex language and vocabulary. Their music is created out of a genre-hopping three-way conversation that freely plunders electro and ambient music, minimalism, musique concrete, and industrial rock, without necessarily sounding like any one of them. If Abstruction inevitably ends up being filed under ‘jazz’, it’s not because this music has no other refuge. Instead it’s because the future of jazz is being written in the here and now by bands such as 3ofmillions.” - Australian Jazz
TRIOSK
Adrian Lim-Klumpes (piano, rhodes, pedals), Laurence Pike (drums), Ben Waples (bass)
The music of Triosk brings the familiar jazz piano trio format together with elements of post-bop jazz, minimalism, ambient electronica, post-rock, electro-acoustic music, free improvisation, and musique concréte. This project was active between 2001 and 2007, releasing music with Jan Jelinek on Stefan Betke’s now defunct ~scape label, and two highly acclaimed albums for UK’s Leaf Label.
“Triosk offered a compelling glimpse of what jazz in the new millennium can become.” - The Guardian
KLUMPES AHMAD
Adrian Lim-Klumpes (piano), Shoeb Ahmad (electric guitar)
In 2008, after two years of collaboration in improvised live performances, Adrian Lim-Klumpes and Shoeb Ahmad committed to a series of recordings that would become the album In Bed We Trust (hellosQuare). As a duo, they trace their way through minimal composition, bathed in electronic noise and analogue systems to bring us ten pieces of shimmering beauty, loop studies and kosmische drone.
“The piano melodies often unfurl with the stark beauty of time-lapse photography of a flower opening and they add a layer of solid narrative to the mists and heat hazes of ephemeral electronic improvisations.” - John Shand, Sydney Morning Herald
HEAVY METAL WORK ORCHESTRA
A collaboration between Fred Rodrigues, Scott Tinkler and Abel Cross, the Heavy Metal Work Orchestra was brought together in 2010, to create a performance by two musicians, Adrian Klumpes on prepared piano and Scott Tinkler on trumpet, accompanied by a 12 piece orchestra of computer-controlled power tools and appliances. The piece of music was composed by Frederick Rodrigues, Abel Cross, Scott Tinkler and Adrian Klumpes. Fred Rodrigues developed the software to control and mix the orchestra. The performance was presented at the Red Rattler Theatre in Sydney.
THE SIMS INTERACTIVE MUSIC SYSTEM
A collaboration between Adrian Klumpes, Fred Rodrigues, Defektro, Kusum Normoyle, Abel Cross, the SIMS (SMS Interactive Music System) was made in 2009 and was a world-first performance in which audience members could ‘conduct’ a live improvisation via sms. The system allowed audience members to participate in an improvised performance by sending text messages that altered parameters of effects and live process the signals from each performer. The project played in Sydney Brisbane and Melbourne. The software was made by Fred Rodrigues with the help of Ankur Badwhar and Claire Herbert, and with Adrian Klumpes, Abel Cross, Hirofumi Uchino and Kusum Normoyle.
OTHER PROJECTS
Joanna Logue Hill End: New Works (2011). Adrian contributed original music for Joanna Logue's short films as part of her solo exhibition at Bathurst Regional Gallery.
Ivan Perez Elevation (2010). Adrian was commissioned by choreographer Ivan Perez to compose a 26 minute piece for a major work for Nederlands Dans Theater. Ivan has also used Adrian’s music from Be Still for two of his other dance works.
Scott Morrison Ballads for quiet horizons (2010). Adrian contributed music for one of Scott Morrison's 10 minute videos in a video installation and DVD release.
Machinefabriek Passeridae II (2009) - a file exchange split 10” release, this features two tracks. Each artist provided the other with a base improvisation to then explore with overdubs and electronic treatment.
Tomasz Bednarczyk Let's Make Better Mistakes Tomorrow (2009) Adrian’s piano featured in the joint composition 'The Sketch'. This album was released on the US label 12k.
PVT Make Me Love You (2005) - Adrian was a member of PVT (formerly Pivot) from 2001-2006, contributing keyboards and occasional composition.