Penultimate Press is proud to present the debut vinyl release from Derek Baron. From Chicago, IL, now residing in Queens, NY Baron’s work muses on the interior and exterior via explorations of history, memory, listening, domestic ambience and the collective understanding of sound as amorphous matter. Crooked Dances presents a series of Erik Satie’s piano works as played in a flatshare with various interruptions by those who also contribute to the electricity, water and internet bills. It comprises six tracks, where Satie’s Danses Gothiques (1893) and other keyboard sketches are interspersed/interrupted by conversation, drones both accidental and deliberate, and the ever changing mise-en-scène of rooms opening out onto further hidden rooms. This guerrilla field recording is a multilayered meditation on the housing pressures of megacities, on private versus public space, Satie’s early ideas of ambient music, and the soothing qualities of his compositions.

Limited to 300 copies Crooked Dances comes in a high gloss sleeve designed by Maja Larson with bland photographs supplied by Baron.

Crooked Dances is a melancholic, playful journey rooted firmly in the real