All but one of the songs on Abandoned City, the latest release from master of the prepared piano1 Hauschka (Volker Bertelmann), were composed in a 10 day period following the birth of his first son. The result is a collection of tunes bursting with life and movement and packed with complex rhythms.
This is perhaps ironic, given that all of the songs are named for and/or inspired by by abandoned cities. Or, I should say, cities abandoned by humans; wind and waves and sun and sand and the creatures of the earth have asserted their dominion instead.2
The one song not named for a specific city is Who Lived Here. It is the most mellow track, and while it is specifically inspired by abandoned desert towns, it both evokes and reflects the combination of curiosity and dread felt by anyone, anywhere who comes across places that humans once lived, but have since fled.
All of the tracks are strong, and picking favorites is hard, but I did particularly like Pripyat (creepy and menacing, like a haunted house), Bakerville (rollicks like an old-time saloon) and Sanzhi Pod City (sounds like the thrill of the discovery of the otherworldly feels).
As an example/enticement of the treasures within, here is the video for Elizabeth Bay, named for a deserted mining town in Namibia:
1 “Prepared piano” means he has stuck foreign objects inside the instrument, like tambourines, or sticks, and so on.
2 Cities referenced are, in order of appearance: Elizabeth Bay (mining town, Namibia); Pripyat (located near site of Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Ukraine); Thames Town (new development rejected by consumers outside Shanghai, China); Agdam (abandoned during civil war, Azerbaijan); Sanzhi Pod City (also known as “UFO houses“, Taiwan); Craco (rendered uninhabitable by landslides, Italy); Bakerville (ghost town, Colorado); and Stromness (former whaling station and destination of rescue mission led by Ernest Shackleton in 1916; South Georgia Island).
