Jan Wagner - Energie Braucht Zeit (2024)

With his latest album, "Energie Braucht Zeit" (energy requires time), composer and pianist Jan Wagner concludes a trilogy of sonic meditations on the theme of loss, centered around the passing of his mother. With this installment, he addresses the concept of time: the foundational element of reality and the force ensuring the inevitable dissolution of all things. He proposes that it is the acceptance of this polarity that not only makes healing possible but also makes it impossible to align yourself with the vital energies within and around you without it. In other words, this music is a big and undeniable yes towards life, wrapped up in eight delicate compositions. Incandescent, full-bodied, tactile – this music oscillates between the gentle, serene, and somewhat spectral; and a rich gradient of forms pulsating, dancing, and ecstatic. The album features guest appearances from violinist Tobias Preisig and spoken word artist AINT ABOUT ME.
"When I started to work on this record, I felt like I had nothing to say. I also couldn’t touch the piano. What I realized was that the grief I felt after my mother passed away was entangled with the sound of the piano. On my first album (“Nummern”), I literally pressed my grief into the keys and made it resonate in the wooden body of this instrument. So every time I played it, I was transported back into that space. Then “Kapitel“, my second album, dealt with the aftermath. But I’ve moved on since. I had nothing more to add to what I had said on my previous records.
What I found was that the background noise, the so-called throwaway stuff of recording, sounded more interesting to me than the sound of the actual piano. In the beginning, I was using all these expensive mics, but eventually, I recorded with my phone or MacBook. Looking back on it, I think that I wanted to experience the distance between me and the piano, literally. So instead of recording the instrument, I started to record the room. And that’s when the record revealed itself to me, and everything started to fall into place. Synchronicities started to occur. For example, with the spoken word track featuring AINT ABOUT ME, I had a feeling I should drop the recording of his vocals into an instrumental composition I was working on at that time, and it worked without any adjustments! And not only that, but it put words to what I was feeling: that it was time to move on. It was not only time to accept the loss and own it but to accept all the beautiful things that life has been feeding me. When you look at the album cover, it’s that. It’s the commingling of tragedy and love, and specifically, this deep love for life that makes the picture complete.” – Jan Wagner