Eric Lane releases ”Montessori”

Eric Lane began piano lessons at four years of age, given that he did not conform to his Montessori teachers’ expectations of conventional obedience. His somewhat disorderly behaviour at an adolescent age did not leave him, but was rather canalised into classical music studies outside of regular school lessons, and which allowed the earlier stages of his musical journey to incorporate and evolve through other musical influences and genres such as jazz and, by the time he was at high school, numerous funk and hip hop influences from his hometown in Colorado. Equipped with a combination of various melodic passions, as well as jazz-fusion influences from the likes of Miles Davis and Medeski Martin & Wood, Eric’s avocations led him to Brooklyn in New York, where has has since worked with artists including Cautious Clay, Joan as Police Woman, Los Cumpleaños, Margaret Glaspy, and Tei Shi.

Now an established artist who is always looking to push the boundaries of the everyday musical genres, Eric Lane is now releasing his own solo work, brimming with an unrestrained enthusiasm and zeal for delivering his audiences with unique acoustics and synthesized sounds. These include bespoke musical elements from the likes of broken ice cream bowls, popping bubble wrap, barking dogs, shredding paper, and any other worldly sounds that assist Eric in taking you on his melodic and multiversal musical journey.

 

Eric Lane’s track “Montessori” takes listeners on a journey whereby musical elements are continuously manipulated and toyed with. Sounds derived and manufactured from the likes of the clanking of heavy metal chains, the soft poppings of bubble wrap, the joyous sounds of handbells, and a fleeting input of melismatic vocals, all come together as a harmonious but somewhat reality-distorting consonance. 

Commenting on the track, he shares, “The track began as a recording of an after school music program I was teaching at a Montessori school in Manhattan. I had the kids singing solfège along with ringing the corresponding pitches on the hand bells. Pitched lower, the bells resonate somewhere between the ringing of a bell tower and a buoy in the fog on the water, both somewhat distant and gray.”

Adding, “When I played them higher on my keyboard, they became much more like a set of chimes getting blown by the winds of the upper stratosphere. The bells formed a bedding for a somewhat classical counterpoint intro played on a Jupiter 8; a stark meeting of worlds old and new. Then came the bubble wrap. Who hasn’t enjoyed the satisfaction of smashing packaging from a young age? It’s stored in my brain’s hard drive as some of my first memories. You get to feel and hear the miniature explosions. Those explosions are a percolating percussion layer that culminate in a final giant bomb ending the song.”

Listen and watch the video to Montessori below

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