Alister Spence - Within Without (2025)

From Alister Spence
I first owned a fender rhodes electric piano in the late 1970s. It was a Mark 1 model (wooden key action). I had a band with my younger brother and my best friend from school and this was my ‘portable’ gigging instrument that weighed ‘a ton,’ and only just fitted in our small car. (I eventually got smart and left the 15 kg lid at home.) I had one effects pedal, a Boss chorus. Sadly—due to the rise of synthesisers and electronic keyboard instruments—I sold this lovely instrument in the late 1980s to make room in the house when our daughter Alexandra was imminent.

Fortunately in 1990, I was able to buy a Mark II model (plastic keys). As time went by my approach to the instrument began to change as my interest grew in more broadly sonic forms of musical expression. The rhodes became for me a place of exploration where any part of it was open for investigation as a sound source: albeit sometimes stubborn and resistant to any form of resonance! I used it in tandem with a growing selection of sound modifying guitar pedals and slowly began to settle into a collection of those and a sound area that I enjoyed delving into.

By 2014 I had begun to use the rhodes in this way in performances and recordings. With Sia/Shoeb Ahmad and Raymond MacDonald I had the good fortune to perform, tour, and record as Sensaround. I also began to take this approach into more expressionistic terrain working with Satoko Fujii; firstly in a piano/rhodes duo, and more recently in a quartet called Kira Kira.

But it is in paired back solo exploration that I find the strongest connection with the instrument.

This album was recorded at home, in two sessions, in the strange quiet of the Covid isolation experience—except for the birds who found that less people provided more space for them in inner city Sydney.

Going into this space is always an endurance test: to listen, like crazy, and be patient and trusting; alert for curious connections and disturbances. But it’s such a joy to go there!