HEAVEN HEAVEN PRESENTS
SKYSCRAPING
Meet SKYSCRAPING
‘Skyscraping’ is an ode to ambivalence, a merging of electronic and acoustic, tension and release, familiarity and novelty. The project ‘Skyscraping’ was brought to life by dutch multi-instrumentalist, sound designer and producer Daan Leever, to bridge the different worlds he’s deeply emerged in. On one side, composing, playing and improvising with (acoustic) instruments such as saxophone, guitar and piano, while on the other side deeply emerged in the world of electronics; obsessed with signal flow, programming, modular synths and samplers.
The music arose from his love for acoustic improvised and composed music (e.g. Classical, Jazz and Cinematic music), and more modern electronic music (like Ambient, New Age, Japanese Video Game music). The result: a mélange of sounds and atmospheres that take you on a journey through your emotional landscape.
Daan asked Koen Schalkwijk to join this HEAVEN HEAVEN Live Session. Koen plays piano, Wurlitzer and syntheseizers in different bands in the Netherlands. He graduated in 2013 at the conservatory of Amsterdam, studying Master Jazz Piano. During his studies he went to Philadelphia as an exchange project with the Temple University. Soon after graduating he won the Keep An Eye Records prize which enabled him to record an album with his project Koeniverse3, called Two Cities.
tHE HEAVEN HEAVEN EXPERIENCE THROUGH SKYSCRAPING’S EYES
The atmosphere surrounding the sessions was very nice. Everyone involved seemed very keen to get the best results out as possible without putting pressure on us as performers. Also the visual estethics and the idea of a team where there’s different people focusing on different aspects of a video recording like this worked very well and i felt it inspired us as artists to play even better and get into the vibe even more. For example the way the studio was dressed up and also the plants that were present really helped us get into a serene mood, which i think fits perfectly with the music we make
ABOUT THE EP
This session was our first time performing these songs together in a duo setting. Shortly before recording this live session Daan was finishing up on the debut album for this project. The music was written for that album which had the concept that the whole album would be performed by 2 acoustic guitars and then mangled and processed in different ways to make the whole album just using the acoustic guitars and the modular synth. The challenge of this live session and thus EP was for us to reinterpret the songs for Guitar and Wurlitzer/keys. Some of the songs fitted really well to this new format and for others we had to move some things around. The last song ‘Home’ is not on the Skyscraping debut album and is a song Daan once wrote on a piano so it made a lot of sense to play this together with Koen, the lyrics are about finding a place that you can call home, even for people that feel very alone on this world. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a physical place but can also be the culmination of friendships and relationships that you build along the way, or it could even be a feeling.
HEAVEN HEAVEN live session FEAT. skyscraping
PRE-SAVE SKYSCRAPING’S ep on bandcamp
their single: 'Tatari' was conceptualized as a sequence of chords that Daan played on his acoustic guitar, whereafter he processed the recording of the acoustic guitar with his modular synth to make beautiful soundscapes. He first made a demo version from this recording overdubbing some guitars, a bass synth and some vocals. When Daan got together with Koen to make a version for acoustic guitar and Keys, Koen came up with the idea of performing the sequence of chords with a VCV rack patch (a virtual modular synthesizer patch) Daan had prepared, not particularly for this purpose, in order to have some more options for Koen next to playing his Wurlitzer and effects. Daan took on the role of an atmospheric layer on top of this sequence of chords that Koen played on the VCV Rack patch.
