About

Hania Rani is a pianist, composer and musician who splits her life between Warsaw, where she makes her home, and Berlin where she studied and often works. She has written for strings, piano, voice and electronics and has collaborated with the likes of Christian Löffler, Dobrawa Czocher and Hior Chronik, and released an album with her Polish group tęskno last year. She has performed at some of the most prestigious venues in Europe - from the National Philharmony in Warsaw, to Funkhaus in Berlin, to The Roundhouse in London (where she made her debut at the Gondwana 10thanniversary festival last October) and at festivals such as Open’er, Scope Festival and Eurosonic. Her compositions for solo piano were born out of a fascination with the piano as an instrument, and her desire to interpret its sound and harmonic possibilities in their entirety and in her own way.

Esja is her debut solo album and for Rani it is her first, real, personal statement as an artist. “No hiding behind the "collaborations" or "projects" anymore. For the very first time, finally - just me, as I am”. Recorded at Rani’s apartment in Warsaw (the piano room has a beautiful reverb and the space has become part art studio and part sound laboratory for Rani) and at her friend Bergur Þórisson’sstudio in Reykjavik, Esja is a series of beautiful melodic vignettes. Sensual, sensitive, rhythmic, atmospheric, free but harmonious, beguiling and hypnotic, collectively they project a sense of unlimited space and time.

Indeed, for Rani it is often an image or a colour that comes first, what she calls a sound image. “I can really feel the colours, the mood - just like with photography. If the image is strong enough, sounds come along very quickly, trying to build the right image stuck in my head. The music fills the space, the music brings the new worlds, new spaces. One such inspiration was the collage artist Anthony Zinonos whose artwork adorns the cover of Esja and whose work Hania first found when she was working on the music that would become this album.“I really like the mix of colours and minimalistic style which perfectly describe me as a person and as an artist. I am really in love with his sense of humour and rare ability to match pure shapes with energetic colours and mood” A powerful, entrancing statement that offers new delights and new insights on every listen and announces Hani Rani as a major new artist. — via Label

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Label: Gondwana Records
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album
Released: 2019
Genre: Electronic, Classical
Style: Ambient, Modern Classical, Contemporary, Minimal

File under: Ambient / Modern Classical
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