Grandbrothers Promise “All the Unknown”
It is a big promise, and Grandbrothers fully intend to keep it. “All the Unkown” is the title of the experimental piano/electronica duo’s new album, their third. It is released on 15 January 2021 by City Slang. Having previously set themselves the rule that all their sounds would be created in the moment, they have now decided to adopt another rule, namely that rules are there to be broken.
Grandbrothers are Erol Sarp, a German pianist, and Lukas Vogel, a software designer and sound engineer from Zurich. Both were students at the Düsseldorf Institute of Music and Media when they began to work with each other in 2011. Inspired by the likes of John Cage, Alvin Lucier and Steve Reich, but also contemporary electronic experimenters like Jon Hopkins or Aphex Twin, they created a complex set-up that combines a conventional grand piano with a mechanical contraption that plucks, hits and tickles the piano strings, and a computer/sampler that allows the resulting sounds to be manipulated live on stage. At home in both classical concert halls, clubs, and venues like the Village Underground in London, their first two albums and three EPs have generated an intense interest across Europe, leading to commissions to write several film soundtracks.
With “All the Unknown”, Sarp and Vogel – who no longer both live in the Düsseldorf – have decided to allow themselves the use of recordings to add more layers to their already complex and sophisticated music. “Although the music is yearning and at times highly energetic, and the hard beats are pushing you forward, we still want every song to hold a bit of hope at the end.” says Sarp. “Despite all the anxiety and fear that we experience all day, living in a very uncertain and to be honest kind of messed-up world, there still is the urge to progress and overcome all those things that make you tremble.”
Grandbrothers are planning to celebrate the release of “All the Unknown” with concerts at the Paris Trianon, the Philarmonie in Berlin, and the London Earth Theatre in March 2021.
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