A new concept album is coming soon in 2024 by the Bedford Virginia-based pianist, composer, and producer Micah Pick. The album is titled Frameworks and it explores the human ability to adapt to surroundings and situations as well as changing their worldviews and habits as new situations occur. Frameworks is Pick’s seventh album and it follows his cinematic-sounding Undecoded album from 2023 and another concept album of his in It Feels Great but the Planet is Dying from 2022. Micah Pick – Framework is an eleven-track and forty-eight-minute experiment for the listener to see just how they adapt to the environment and experiences brought on while listening to the album. To pull off this experiment Pick incorporates the use of some brilliant composing and producing techniques.
When composing Frameworks, Pick needed to bring a balance of warmth and tension to the music to create an experience that needed adaptation and also had entities that were inviting. The warmth is brought on by the collection of instruments that Pick utilizes in the album which includes a blend of granular piano, orchestral strings, analog and modular synths, and varying atmospheric ambiance. The tension is brought on by the use of non-standard tuning of the instruments as well as the addition of chaotic production effects and stereo panning. A constant tension-building production technique found throughout Frameworks is the use of fast-alternating filters that change a specific instrument or ambiance profile from stereophonic to monophonic. This is a similar effect that you could create yourself while listening to the music if you were to jiggle the input jack of your headphones going into the playback device creating a crackling-like effect.
As the uneasiness of the dissonant instruments, off-centered panning techniques, and the chaotic filters first hit the listener, it is the warmth from the blend of instruments as well as occasional Lo-fi beats and ASMR tapping sounds that keep the listener engaged throughout the album. There are also moments when the original melodies from the granular piano sound as if they were pulled from the Impressionistic period of music and composers like Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. As you make your way through to the end of the album you will find that you have indeed adapted to where the constant tension heard in the beginning is now the norm and is accepted and all it took was the inviting aspects of the music to keep you engaged while your listening habits adapted over time. We highly recommend that you listen to the entirety of Micah Pick – Frameworks in one sitting so you can experience the full listening experiment and the eureka moments that come with it as you realize your listening habits have adapted in the process.
Stream the Micah Pick – Frameworks album on Spotify below!
