Jozef Dumoulin - This Body, This Life

This Body, This Life is Jozef Dumoulin’s second solo work. The first, A Fender Rhodes Solo, came out in 2014 and achieved cult status rapidly after its release. But whereas the latter was the product of a restrictive exercise (no overdubs and only one single keyboard allowed, namely the vintage Fender Rhodes), This Body, This Life offers an explosion of different timbres and sonorities. We hear not only the Fender Rhodes, but also piano, synthesizers, electronic beats, voices, guitar and a lot of field recordings.

Jozef explains:

“A couple of years ago a producer and label-owner proposed to me to make an album where I would mix piano and Fender Rhodes. At the time I was thinking of recording a second Fender Rhodes solo and was reluctant to the idea of adding the piano to the equation. I feared it would drastically change the focus, pulling the Fender Rhodes back to that uninteresting position of ‘electric piano’. However, I liked the idea of making a record as an answer to a challenge, so I accepted to play the game.

Very soon after I started the first sketches the producer pulled out due to artistic differences; I guess he had some genuinely nice and soothing music in mind that I wasn’t ready to deliver. Still, by then I was too hooked up to the enterprise to just leave it so I decided to move forward on my own.

My method has been as simple as it has been time consuming: I recorded a lot of Fender Rhodes improvisations and a bunch of piano improvisations. I made pre-selections for both recordings and then took the time to see what piano would fit what Fender Rhodes. Once I established a certain number of compatible pairs, I considered that everything was allowed to make them into self-sufficient, working pieces of music. After all, I had to reunite water and fire; or at least that was the feeling I got.”

The result is a collection of 14 highly original pieces of music, designed like a palace full of magic doors and gates, enabling a limitless journey through time and space, or - if you will - into the depths of oneself.