In recent years, pianist and producer Mirek Coutigny has worked on his own world of sound with electronic and acoustic instruments. He improvised on sketches that he wrote over the last 10 years and reworked them for piano, strings, percussion and electronics.
The common thread running through “The Further We Ventured” is a fascination for the “suburbs”, more specific, the contrast between the often similar facades and the diversity of stories behind those facades.
This is also reflected in the contrast between the acoustic elements of the record (the “Safe Gray” of the neighborhood in which you grow up) and the slumbering electronics (the “Colorful Danger” that typifies a child’s raving imagination).
This second album sounds a lot more intuitive and organic: where debut album “Revisions # 1” was a record of thoughts, “The Further We Ventured” is a record from the heart. Sometimes complex, sometimes
amazingly accessible; comparisons with Jóhann Jóhannsson or Ólafur Arnalds are never far away.
After the first album, a live set was worked out with Jonathan Bonny (percussion) and Jolien Deley (cello). In this formation they won a few months ago both the audience prize and the jury prize for “Fresh Fish”, a competition for young talent from the Leffingeleuren festival.
Coutigny also worked with Spectra Ensemble and Gabi Sultana and he was with his collective “Headliner” curator as well as organizer of the contemporary music festival in Belgium “En Avant Mars”.
Mirek Coutigny studied contemporary composition and electronics; the latter is also reflected in the electronic revision of “The Further We Ventured”, which will be released later.