FJ019: Released simultaneously with Opposites End, the second disc for 2021 is a big departure from anything I’ve done previously. Something In the Way consists of three extended improvisations on piano, kind of my first instrument if you count the disturbed barrages I made on the ivories as a young kid. The aforementioned abuses didn't last very long but I rediscovered the keys many years later, albeit that was still a long time ago and it's taken me another 20 years to record any of it. There was something in the way I guess. The instrument in question was left in a rental property by my then landlord and had definitely seen better days but I think that gave it a charm of its own. The sound is also pretty lo-fi, taken from a mobile phone and with a bare minimum of editing done. The three pieces were recorded in late 2019 and early 2020, the latter not long after Covid hit Australia and we went into the first round of lockdowns (so far thankfully the only lockdown for the island state I call home). It’s all fairly minimal and sombre but whilst there was a lot of anxiety around the unknown at that point in time (before we all got used to the new normal), I didn’t intend this music to be about the pandemic so much as it was the outcome of a lot of personal stuff coalescing at the time. I was working with some rebetiko-like melodies on the two longer tracks, appropriate perhaps given the themes depicted in that music. I say rebetiko-like because I’m unschooled on the piano like I am in everything else musically-related and I never really know what I’m doing on a technical level. Despite, or maybe in spite of that lack of training, something seems to happen to me when I sit at the keys. (There is more where this came from too.) - Tim Something In the Way by Tim Panaretos
