Well Up by Liz Durette

HELLO :)

This previously digital-only album is now MASTERED (thanks Jeff Carey) and in LP form (go to Feeding Tube Records for LP copies! Or, the distributor is Forced Exposure).
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Please note:
-the older, unmastered version has been deleted from bandcamp
-to those who bought the previous version: I sent a free download code for this version
-I don’t want to make you pay twice, that isn’t fair!
-If you didn't hear from me, contact me!
-apologies :)
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ABOUT THIS ALBUM, words from my friend Rob Thomas:

Liz Durette returns with a gorgeous fourth LP (her third for Feeding Tube) and not a moment too soon! With "Well Up", Liz delivers a bright & sparkling sonic gem to illuminate our days & nights.

Liz is an artist, keyboardist, improviser, & deep thinker based in Massachusetts, after many years in Baltimore. She has created an uncanny body of musical work of keyboard improvisations. Her style strikes me as utterly unique, and this latest album offers an entirely new example of her vision.

While her earlier records were often shifting, madcap melodic constructions, "Well Up" offers another side, in a rich and distilled scope. Here, Liz generates a lush & enchanting sound world of morphing, cycling melodic phrases which gently swirl & pool into three great lakes of beauty.

Liz improvised this music on a Midi Polyphonic Expressive keyboard, but the album can't be characterized as a "synth", "ambient" or "minimal" release. Her employment of multiple voicings of pre-modern sounds like flutes & reeds create a singular headspace that defies easy description.

"Heart" begins the album with serene, mysterious melody that unfolds in elastic and expressive motivic gestures. All of the three songs are built on phrases of simple melodic variation that spiral out of simplicity, slowly and steadily, with subtle layers of increasing ornamentation . The touch sensitivity of Liz's instrument with its parameters of ultra bendy notes spill phrases across the soundstage in delightful patterns. It’s a beguiling stew.

The second piece, "Lake" was born from Liz's complete mis-remembering of a Lebanese folk song which transformed itself into this special and hypnotic reverie. I can picture a court of dazzling beings promenading in a splendid choreography as I listen to this track with my eyes closed. You may capture something equally grand in your mind's eye while listening, it's ultra visual music.

Side two offers us the side-long opus of "Naga". It gradually unfurls & billows into a vast & deep pool of sound that I don't light heartedly describe as cosmic. I can imagine this piece playing on for eternity like some gyroscopic, perpetual motion machine that generates the world's dreamiest tones.

The album is another rare example of music that generates a strange emotional response (at least for me), operating in a special region that exists somewhere at the border of joy & sorrow. I can't conjure a word or phrase in English that captures it accurately but I'm sure you'll know it when you hear it. The sounds surely live up to Liz's brilliant & peculiar cover art featuring an exquisitely manicured hand threatening to insert a deep blue push pin into a blazing pink balloon.

While Liz has openly expressed having derived inspiration from improvisation and ornamentation across a variety of eastern and western traditions, this work seems to me to be pure Durette. Calm, soothing, novel, exotic, luminous and expansive - much more could be said or written about this album but the wonderful sounds do a fabulous job of speaking for themselves. Please let them speak to you.

Rob Thomas - 2025

THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTINUAL SUPPORT MY FRIENDS AND FANS :)