Gold On The C String

Two of the foremost faces in Perth's experimental music scene; post-rock explorer Adam Trainer and ambient scientist Matt Rosner had been aware of each other since the mid-'00s, as they shared bills in bands such as Radarmaker (Trainer) and Pablo Dali (Rosner). The pair first collaborated on Rosner's 2009 release Repeat. Asked to provide piano, Trainer's contribution didn't quite turn out as he imagined. “Matt gave me the record and I listened to it and I didn't know what he wanted me to play on. I just came up with a few sketches for all of the tracks on the record, and then when he finally rocked up, I was like 'Which were there specific tracks?' He was 'Yeah, just this one track'. I was, 'Ok, cool, so is there anything you have in mind? What do you want me to play?' He goes 'Could you play a C?' 'There it is, bang, C'. He goes, 'Ahh, maybe play an A as well.' Was it just that I had a piano at my house?” he demands of his musical partner as they sit in the hermetically sealed confines of an RTRFM studio.

Trainer's efforts were not in vain however, as other sketches later made it onto Rosner's Tape Series No. 1. What's more, they provided the impetus for their first full-blooded communion, the fruit of which is the soon-to-be-released LP Terrane. “I had a friend who has a really amazing piano in his house,” Trainer begins. “He's got a fake roof, so the room's acoustically treated for this grand piano. He's even got a dehumidifier. We went there and we basically recorded one sort of 50-minute piano – it was kind of an improvisation based around a bunch of sketches. That was the genesis for this record.”

The second wave of recordings took place at Rosner's home in Myalup, a small beach community near Bunbury. “There's a hundred people living there,” Rosner elaborates. “It's really quiet there. All the gear's set up in my lounge room and we just, sort of, record over a weekend. When we're not recording we can go for a walk, spend time down at the beach or at the lake that's near us. We take a lot of photos; do a deal of field recordings as well.”

The biggest challenge for the live shows has been trying to replicate a record that has so many parts on it with only two musicians. Sampling was the obvious suggestion, but not the answer, according to Rosner. “We tried a set-up where I'm just using the laptop and Adam was playing, and then we tried to do live sampling and tried to incorporate elements of the record as samples into the set, and I think we got sick of it within a couple weeks. For me, I just feel after ten, fifteen years of using laptops and sampling, it just doesn't feel right when you play…” Ultimately, the pair got rid of the laptop and decided not to play pieces exactly as they appear on the record, but to make something of a similar aesthetic, using an electric piano, guitar, pedals, percussion, an accordion and a fairly rudimentary recorder for some extra lo-fi ambience.

Buoyed by the results so far, Trainer describes the collaboration as “a really enjoyable process,“ as coming from similar-ish musical backgrounds, they understand where each other is coming from.  “It's always a really easy process,” Rosner adds with a nonchalance that will have other, more frustrated musicians gnashing their teeth with envy. “It just sort of happens. I think Adam and I – and this is something that I struggled with in the past with other collaborators – know when not to play. We're not making this record to say, 'oh gee, Matt's a brilliant guitar player or Adam, he's a master of the piano…'

“We're doing this because it's about texture and it's about not overplaying it,” Rosner summarises. “There's really no ego in it.”