Goldmund
Two Point Discrimination
Western Vinyl 2007

01. Leading
02. Then
03. From
04. Light
05. To
06. Shadow
07. They
08. Will
09. See
10. As
11. One.

More Goldmund = more piano, still playing the seasonal, mood card, with its clusters of suspense and romance. Calm and vibrating, drama barely scrapes the surface of this music, choosing to soar somewhere above. Of course it would be interesting to know the context and the setting, and what Keith Keniff was dreaming of while ringing his sweet minor chords. No dangerous improv at all - pretty traditional, old-fashioned even - yet it makes you think and feel, and that's what's so funny about it. The question of the context may be fundamental, but the playing itself is not heartless by any means. So what do we have? "The craftsmanship of interaction with the space"? If the press release so much insists, like it wasn't the most obvious thing already. I'll just add "on a seasonal, mood card", with Christina Carter singing "Life is not a blessing, not a curse" in some very distant background.

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Two Point Discrimination marks Goldmund (aka Keith Kenniff)'s 3rd release after his highly praised debut Corduroy Road and follow-up 7" for Type Records. Part of Western Vinyl's "Portrait" series, this collection features 11 short pieces for solo piano focusing on the sensation of touch and its relationship to sound. With emphasis on restraint and space, almost at times crossing into the inaudible, Kenniff's focus is not only on the sounds that are presented to the listener in an auditory environment but how those sounds are manifest physically. Such detail is brought out by the close mic'ing of the piano so as to bring the listener right up to the hammers as they strike the strings, we hear the sound of the pedals being depressed, the sound of fingers moving across the keys. In the spirit of composers such as Howard Skempton and Morton Feldman, composition and sound culminate together as space is something that is dealt with directly. And interpretation along with improvisation are both tools that blur the lines between composer, performer and listener. -p.r.