New Album! Serendipity by Steve Lawson and Daniel Berkman

Time to release another of the complete shows from the Steve Lawson/Daniel Berkman FingerPainting: Complete set. This one, titled Serendipity, was recorded in Petaluma, California, and was the 2nd-to-last show of our January tour. It is, of course, included in all of the full sets of all 10 shows, or on its own from Bandcamp for £5.

Click here to buy the USB Stick of All 10 Shows.

It has a markedly different flavour that the rest of the shows, due to Daniel electing to leave a fair few of his laptop-type gadgets and controllers out of his set up, and instead using a sitar-guitar on a couple of tunes.

The decision was in response to our observation that the average age of the audience was considerably older than previous shows, so we might want to go somewhere a little mellower with the music. However, just before we started, we overheard an enthusiastic conversation involving about half of those in attendance, about the relative merits of various 20th century composers: John Cage, Stockhausen, Harry Partch… REALLY difficult music. So we were once again freed up to play some pretty weird music as the muse led…

The end result is a record that’s both distinct from the rest of the set but deeply consistent with the aesthetic. It’s fun, exploratory, overflowing with melodies, and features two stellar vocal contributions from Artemis, the 2nd of them entirely wordless. So often the vocal improv was the high point of the show, the pinnacle of the show’s emotional crescendo. Huge thanks to Artemis for sharing her amazing skills on all these gigs!

Big thanks must also go to our amazing hosts for the night, Darin and Jessica Wilson. Darin is himself a fabulous musician. Go here to listen.

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