专辑简介

by Dan Warburton

Sourced from field recordings made during his travels in Amsterdam, Baltimore, Berlin, Caudeval, Lausanne, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, St. Pölten, and Zürich, Songs for Nicholas Ross (the dedicatee being the two-year-old son of Rossbin label manager Alessandro Bianco) marks something of a departure for Swiss-based American percussionist and composer Jason Kahn. Unlike the large spans of slow-motion sound on his releases with Toshimaru Nakamura in Repeat and his solo outings Plurabelle and Miramar, these are tiny exquisite sonic Polaroids, inspired by a famous Morton Feldman quotation -- "Don't push sound around." The microphone follows Kahn into supermarkets, underground car parks, and airplanes, as he rattles coins in a paper cup, plays with creaking doors and floorboards, and converses with his four-year-old daughter. The focus is on sounds that hover just beyond the realm of active listening -- though not necessarily discreet or small ones -- and the abrupt stop/start of each track reinforces the immediacy of the event. It's a ravishing and cunningly assembled collection that opens our ears to the sonic wonders of the world around us.