The Rules of Another Small World

by M. Ostermeier

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4-panel digipak featuring the photography of Craig Ferguson.

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Full Digital Discography

7

releases

Get all 7 M. Ostermeier releases available on Bandcamp and save 25%.

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Tuesday, She Stayed Away, Percolate (2019 reissue), Tiny Birds, Still, The Rules of Another Small World, Chance Reconstruction, and Lakefront. , and , .

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1.	Micro Forest Updraft 02:58	buy track
2.	Streambed Arrangement 02:49	buy track
3.	Sunlight On My Desk 02:49	buy track
4.	I Took Out Your Picture 03:09	buy track
5.	Floorboards, Well-Worn 03:54	buy track
6.	Trickle Down 02:32	buy track
7.	Fast Darters 02:52	buy track
8.	Underwater Drifting 03:21	buy track
9.	Retreating Night 04:01	buy track
10.	Suspicions 03:15	buy track
11.	Ngth 05:27	buy track

about

The Rules of Another Small World is otherworldly yet strangely beautiful, much like the desolate Taiwanese San-Zhr Pod Village gracing the album cover.

While elements of electroacoustic, modern classical, jazz, glitch, drone, ambient, and even lounge weave in and out of the record’s eleven compositions, The Rules of Another Small World is the opposite of an eclectic collection of songs.

Instead, a cohesive album springs forth from the subtle commonalities in texture and structure etched into every song. These commonalities derive in part from the “rules” of the album title, a reference to M. Ostermeier's self-imposed limitations adopted during the composition of these pieces.

Despite its minimalistic leanings, The Rules of Another Small World paints a melodic, freeform world full of detail. Slow melodic fragments dance in and out of focus, while small sounds both tinker about in the foreground and percolate curiously in the aural architecture underneath.

The superposition of unadorned piano melodies and unpredictable sonic microorganisms lifts the melancholic darkness M. Ostermeier explored on Lakefront (Hibernate, 2010) revealing a tone that is more optimistic – even playful (think Cluster, Benjamin Lew, Carpet Musics, Pawn, or Opitope).

Towards that end, most compositions are constructed in the three-minute pop-song format, blossoming with lives lasting only long enough to explore their environment before they metamorphoses into something new.

Reviews:

A brilliantly subtle album. Highly recommended.
— Cyclic Defrost

Offering something new to a path well trod...a stunning collection of pieces exploring the intricacies of found sounds and electronics and the beauty of the piano in its natural state.
— Fluid Radio

A distinctive electro-acoustic collection dotted with micro-tonal detail that largely sidesteps any one delimiting style for a more open-ended presentation.
— Textura

I think I'm going to use the word brilliant again.
— Norman Records

credits

released May 10, 2011

m. ostermeier : electronics - acoustics - piano
recorded : baltimore md usa
photography : craig ferguson
www.tenchrec.com

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