Hauschka - Room to Expand (Expanded Edition) (2016)

German composer Volker Bertelmann--aka Hauschka--writes imaginative, pop-derived experimental pieces for piano that truly sound like nothing else out there. Compositionally, he works in a mode similar to that of Harold Budd, alternating between subtle melodic movement and rhythm-focused circularity, but his piano--which is often chopped and jerry-rigged and tampered with--possesses a unique timbre. Unlike many modern artists who use the recording studio to mess with sound, Bertelmann messes with sound and then records it in stunningly clear audio verite. The results are hypnotic.

Bertelmann had already been experimenting with prepared piano for at least a few years when Room to Expand was originally released in early 2007. His dedication to the technique was already such that he named his 2005 album The Prepared Piano. By the time of Room to Expand, he had become so adept at making his piano sound like other things that, even when fully aware of the fact, one could easily forget that all of these crinkles, clicks, and other percussive elements weren’t coming from a range of instruments and players, but from one.
Accompaniment, when it comes, stands out all the more for it: the stately string arrangement on “La Dilettante”, or the horns on “Belgrade” and “Chicago Morning”, the latter of which remind of Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois from two years prior, whether or not Bertelmann was familiar with it. Where Abandoned City buzzes with restless virtuosity, Room to Expand (Expanded) is fidgety but more at ease, with Bertelmann allowing his compositions greater breathing room. Hauschka’s inventiveness is a notch more subtle than it would become, but that makes it likelier to catch one off guard.
The album sways back and forth almost song by song between a more traditional chamber-indebted style and its less static experimental descendant, but the dueling moods align naturally. Likewise, though the six songs that make up the new fourth section are more minimal and intimate – or in the case of the new closer, “Vakuum One”, more abstract – than the preceding dozen, they compliment the original album without sticking out.