Day 401: Lubomyr Melnyk – Corollaries

I’ve been unusually tired for the past few days or so, and today I decided I’m going to just lean into it and go for the most mellow and relaxing album I can find. However, it can’t be so mellow that it’ll put me to sleep, so I’m after a very specific category of albums that are relaxing but not too relaxing. I think I may have actually found the perfect artist who’d fit that description: the Ukrainian composer Lubomyr Melnyk.

Album cover courtesy of Erased Tapes

Lubomyr Melnyk is a classically trained pianist and composer, who pioneered the something that he called “continuous music”, a technique of playing a continuous fast-paced stream of notes over an extended period of time. He can play an almost incomprehensible 19.5 notes per second per hand, and keep up a pace of 13 or 14 notes per second throughout an hour-long performance. He holds the record for being the world’s fastest pianist, having played 93,650 notes in a single 60-minute session.

He started gaining an international audience when he was signed to the UK label Erased Tapes and released the album Corollaries in 2013. It was a collaboration between him and ambient musicians Nils Frahm and Martyn Heyne and it was produced by Peter Broderick.

Despite the speed, it is a very relaxing album, the soundscapes are simultaneously fast but soothing and dreamlike. It’s almost meditative, constantly changing but repetitive in its elements. The continuous style is very unique, it becomes oddly hypnotic when you listen to it.

However, nothing really elevated it to that next level for me, I had a good time listening to it but it didn’t have any stronger effect than that. I guess it was missing the je ne sais quoi that would really blow me away, although it’s the kind of music where you know it would probably move you if you were hearing him play it live. But it’s a bit frustrating to me that I can’t pinpoint what I think it’s missing or what I wish was there, I’m left just thinking it’s good but there’s an aspect of it that leaves me a little bit cold.

It’s a hard album to rank, I find his style of playing soothing and it’s a perfectly enjoyable album all around, but I just don’t see myself returning to it. To me, it just sounds like a better version of album that you might hear at a spa. I’m giving it a conservative 7/10.