Sign-writer, lighting engineer, prop designer, New Age composer and performer Paul Harrison plays the XPiano, an instrument built of recycled and reclaimed piano parts.
Assembled from the guts of waste pianos, customised and tuned to the pitch of an angel’s whisper. Xpiano is an art piece and a musical magic carpet. ... Born from a passionate dedication to sound exploration, Xpiano maps an otherworldly ethnological adventure. Through the lost tribes and forgotten cultures of the cosmos, to destinations of the imagination. -- Armchair Astronaut
Sign-writer, lighting engineer, prop designer, New Age composer and performer Paul Harrison plays the XPiano, an instrument built of recycled and reclaimed piano parts.
His own creation and design, the XPiano or X Piano is built of reclaimed and recycled piano parts, the strings re-tuned to unusual scales.
I first came across Paul Harrison playing his XPiano in the Bohemian part of Brighton known as North Laine on a lovely warm sunny Autumn afternoon. He was sitting outside Two Feathers, an Amerindian shop (North Laine is that sort of place), the sign and shop front having been designed by Paul.
He has released one album XPiano Volume II. The music on the album is different to what he was playing on the street. On the street more percussive, the album more New Age, at times, especially the first track, shades of Tangerine Dream, at times reminiscent of Prem Joshua, also very much of the genre found on the New World label, only much better. [sample track 1]
Paul Harrison plays the XPiano with tiny hammers. A technique used by the girls in the Chinese group 12 Girls Band who play traditional Chinese stringed instruments with tiny hammers.
Interest in the XPiano, has already led Paul Harrison to build XPianos to order, each one custom built, each one unique.
XPiano Volume II is available from the Armchair Astronaut Record Label, a record label that specialises in the cutting edge of ambient, improvised, hypnotic experimental music. And of course direct from Paul himself, if you should be lucky enough to chance upon him playing on the street.