We featured New England-based Derek Piotr back in January, with a review of his collaborative release with Paul Heslin. This April he released his fourth solo album, Tempatempat, via Monotype Records.
The album is a departure from his previous release, with increased layering leading to complex arrangements that are far more nuanced than Raj’s attempts to convey a simpler, more primal emotion. Tempatempat also sees Piotr sing for the first time, a striking change from his previous instrumental work.
‘Tempatempat’ is a word chosen ‘both for its repetition and meaning.’ In Indonesian, the word could have two meanings depending on where it is broken, with “tempa tempat” meaning ‘foraging place,’ and “tempat empat” meaning ‘forth place’. Indeed, much of the album is infused with Indonesian and Sufi imagery. Piotr sings in both English and Indonesian, and the tracks ’Bhadrakali’ and ‘Yogyakarta’ are apparently the product of a possession he experienced (!), with the Indonesian ‘lyrics’ only translated months later.
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Reading this short description of the album, you could be forgiven for thinking the album is a dense maze of spiritual references, inaccessible without some form of chemical aid. While there are elements of this, some of the tracks do stray remarkably close to what could be labelled pop music. If you took the Dirty Projectors avant garde pop sound, and made it marginally weirder by the slowing bits down and speeding bits up and emphasizing the wrong notes, you would probably be left with something similar to Tempatempat. Listen to ‘Rift’ or ‘Terminal’ if you don’t believe me.
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You can buy the album via Monotype Records, or directly from Piotr himself.