vie en rose
Coming soon on Puremagnetik. Music for pianos, tape, and synths - with special guest Eric Gorfain. Cassette and streaming on Friday, February 16.
Orgelwerke
Released on Touch Music’s Spire bandcamp, 2023
“…it’s like being surrounded by organ players at times, and each track builds to a kind of ecstatic crescendo before washing away like the tide going out… If you play this loud enough, it’ll probably shake your speakers off the shelf.” - Burning Ambulance
Orgelwerke began as a pile of rare organ vinyl from a library’s discard box. As I listened to this forgotten music late at night, I developed a process of transformation- digitizing them, turning them into loops and gestures, then reshaping them with tape, broken amplifiers and analogue echo boxes. It became something like a ritual, an exhumation of long-unheard music reanimated as glacial drones and ghostly symphonic movements — the sound of the cathedral transmuted into an enveloping shadow of pulsation, echo and glitch.
Dread Sea
Released on NNA Tapes, 2022
Dread Sea is a confluence of two streams of electroacoustic music that started to emerge in the fall of 2020 and continued through the spring of 2021. The pieces started as improvisations on an mbira and a tiny accordion, both going through complex systems of electronic treatments. These heavily transformed instruments resisted “playing” in the traditional sense, but contributed their own layers of sonic material: feedback, transpositions, distortions, intentional or accidental patterning. All of the material was played live, improvised in real time, and much of it was recorded on a mono cassette machine through its internal mic, placed a few feet away from my amplifier. The long form emerged gradually, through unexpected linkages discovered through editing, layering and collage.
Text Pieces
Subtext In Dub
Compilation of performances of open form compositions including tracks by Isabel Crespo Pardo, Aaron Edgcomb, Wendy Eisenberg, Jonathan Starks (aka Jon Download) Alec Toku Whiting.
Dub improvisations for accordion, omnichord and analog synths. 35 minute live bonus track available here.
(March 2020, Bandcamp)
Reeds & Oscillators
Live improvisation for accordion and analog synthesizers. (July 2019, Bandcamp)
To make a long story short, but also, in a way, backwards- in the middle of making a dub record (not “Subtext In Dub”) I made this, then threw away the dub record. As I was working on it, I read Alice Notley’s introduction to Ted Berrigan's “Sonnets,” which includes this quote from Alfred North Whitehead’s "Process and Reality": “A duration is a cross-section of the universe; it is the immediate present condition of the world at some epoch.” Notley is talking about the “Sonnets” as an expansion of time, a refraction of a moment into a long series of poems. So I started to think of this piece as a sort of inverted musical variation of that idea- as if you took a musical duration, say an Augustus Pablo record, and compressed it into a singularity of pure tone, then re-expanded it horizontally in time in totally abstracted form and color. But that was more of a conceptual methodology applied to what they call in showbiz, post. This is an improvisation. Everything you hear was played live, in real time, with no overdubbing or layering, then processed through some of the techniques and concepts listed above.
“Nothing Till The Voice Throw Image”
Extended improvisation for accordion through analog synthesizers. (May 2018, Bandcamp)
Airs, Reels & Hornpipes
Accordion played in real time through a few pedals - no edits, no overdubbing, minimal post-processing/mixing. And no actual Celtic music. (March 2018, Bandcamp)
Get Out Of My Chateau
Music for amplified accordion recorded during the fall of 2016. Accordion, amplifier, simple effects and basic mixing - no other sounds. (August 2017, Bandcamp)
Voices
music for Yamaha DX7 synthesizer and other sounds.
Ted Reichman - DX7, organ, electric guitar, percussion
Andy Fordyce - drums, percussion
Warren Senders - voice
Derek Beckvold - tabla
(August 2017, Bandcamp)
Accordion Solos Vol. 1
Music for amplified accordion recorded during the month of July, 2016. No electronic manipulation beyond basic mixing - this is purely the sound of the accordion, a few simple pedals, the amplifier and the room, as well as interferences between them. (August, 2016, Bandcamp)
My Ears Are Bent
Music I wrote during a time of renewed infatuation with New York City. It reflects the sounds that surrounded me at that time- skronky rock, dub, a couple of jazz piano traditions. "My Ears Are Bent" is my most piano-focused record. It was the first thing I ever mixed on my own - aided by my superlative co-producer Anthony Burr. It's also one of the earliest recordings of Mary Halvorson.
Ted Reichman - piano, electronics, guitar, bass, percussion, pump organ
Mary Halvorson - electric guitar
John Hollenbeck - drums
Produced by Ted Reichman and Anthony Burr
Engineered by Andy Taub (Brooklyn Recording), Sue Garner (Mule Yard)
Mixed by Ted Reichman (Subtext Sound System)
Mastered by Doug Henderson
(June 2006, Skirl)
Emigré
From the Tzadik website: “A veteran of countless Tzadik projects led by (among others), David Krakauer, Marc Ribot, Roberto Rodriguez and Anthony Coleman, accordionist Ted Reichman steps out on his own in this moody, hypnotic portrait of one of the 20th Century's greatest photographers, André Kertész. Beginning with his early life in the Jewish community of Budapest, Ted eloquently tells the classic story of a man who leaves his Jewish heritage behind only to find further alienation in attempted assimilation throughout France and the United States. A fascinating and touching musical journey by downtown NY's premiere accordionist.”
Dougie Bowne: Drums
Joyce Hammann: Violin, Viola
Ted Reichman: Accordion, Electronics, Guitar, Hammond Organ, Percussion, Piano, Pump Organ, Zither
Roberto Rodriguez: Percussion
Mark Stewart: Cello, Electric Guitar, Mandocello, Tenor Banjo
Doug Wieselman: Clarinets, Bass Harmonica, Guitar
Emigré is not available for streaming. Visit Tzadik for more info.