Split Scale by Brueder Selke & Midori Hirano

Brueder Selke & Midori Hirano’s debut album unites two artists who share both inimitable skill and depth of expression. Pillars of Berlin’s new music community and globally lauded composers, they each share a background in classical tradition while practicing on the cutting edge of modern music. The brothers Sebastian and Daniel Selke are open-minded, critically-acclaimed instrumentalists and composers with a sprawling catalog of international productions. As Brueder Selke, aka CEEYS, the polyinstrumental duo focuses their passion for genre-bending music primarily on their hand-picked Q3Ambientfest, sharing the stage every year with fellow artists such as Laura Cannell, Mabe Fratti, Resina, Jules Reidy, Grand River, Yair Elazar Glotman, and now-collaborator Midori Hirano. Midori Hirano’s mastery of sound sculpting has put her in high demand as a composer for film and television, including recent soundtracks for All or Nothing, Tokito, and a documentary on the Premier League, alongside astounding collaborations with artists including Hprizm of Anti Pop Consortium and Ilpo Väisänen of Pan Sonic. In addition to her own composing, Hirano has remixed the likes of Robot Koch and Rival Consoles. Split Scale, the group’s first album together, follows a series of live collaborations. The artists chose a simple concept, following a western scale from beginning to end, and from this created a suite of sublime, synesthetic soundscapes and cinematic movements. The vivid tapestry of sound and color is luminous and emotive.

The immediacy and emotional power of Split Scale belies the precise nature of its creation. The group began by splitting out the notes of a scale, A through G and back to A, using each as a starting point and tonal foundation for a piece on the album and then equally split the pieces with Midori starting half and the Selke’s initiating the other half. The album then was refined by artists trading tracks, each working on a piece as if in dialogue with the other. The pieces were meticulously edited with a focus on the subtle shift in tonality, translating the simplistic premise into an affecting exploration of mood and atmosphere. Hirano elaborates: “I feel that this naturally became like one piece of music, as if we were climbing up a long, colorful staircase.” There is a distinctive live, “played” feel to the suite, despite each track being slowly pieced together across separate studios. Brueder Selke explains: “In order to keep the soundscape tight and organic, we would both play multiple instruments and devices simultaneously. For example, Sebastian would support his cello passages with synthesizer in the sub-bass range, while Daniel might build arpeggio runs on the synthesizer that are unplayable by humans, then compete with them on the piano. The unhurried pieces are painted with graceful melancholy and curiosity, at times lavishly exploring single hues or technicolor gradients all stemming from the tonal center.

Split Scale’s opener “A” begins the conversation between the artists, with Hirano’s cyclical arpeggios feeling out the space, Brueder Selke adding subtle noise and texture with washes of smudged cello and synthesizer. “C” finds the artists trade roles, Hirano’s rippling electronics rising like heat shimmers before shapes start to coalesce amidst the haze, Sebastian and Daniel tracing the outline of the landscape in arcing strings. Closer “AA” takes the final step on the cycle with one of the album’s most explicitly electronic moments, ascending skyward with pulsing, prismatic chords before breaking apart into astral ambience.

Split Scale touches on many western musicians’ foundational experiences with sound, the equal tempered scale. “We, in a way, traveled back in time back to our beginnings… our choice of tones was relatively simple, intuitive, almost child’s play,” notes Brueder Selke. “We wanted to take this unique opportunity with Midori to start from zero, and to do it together.” Split Scale is an album born of a collective experience and mastery of instrumentation and arranging that manages to convey a dazzling sense of wonder, as if one was playing an instrument for the first time and truly listening.

Composer, pianist and electronic music producer based in Berlin, Germany.

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