Casio Music 2, the second installment in Nick Joliat’s series, is a loving meditation on obsolescence, a musical identity crisis, a deep dive into polyrhythms and timbre, and a transmission from the isolated world of chronic illness.

A then-recent college grad and classically trained pianist, Nick was trying to create music that felt personal and true to his multifaceted inspirations— modern and minimalist classical music, years of playing in a Balinese gamelan, and DIY and experimental rock. Feeling stymied by the perfectionism of his classical background, and alienated by the “professional” sheen of modern production software, Nick turned to old toy keyboards.

Beyond being a useful creative constraint, the obsolescent keyboards turned out to be a way to explore the tensions in his musical life. The resulting music at once revels in the lo-fi texture of the instruments and strains against their limits, drawing from them surprising complexity. For instance, the sampler, which re-pitches sounds by changing playback speed, becomes an engine for creating complex polyrhythms and phasing, and exploring the underlying unity of frequency and rhythm. The canned rhythms (“rock”, “disco”, “samba”), intended as simple accompaniments, are stuttered and interleaved, played like an instrument.

The introduction, “Projector,” is a version of a soundtrack composed for artists Maya Erdelyi and Dan Rowe (who created the artwork and design for the album, respectively). Starting with a layered, polyrhythmic tapestry, coherent rhythms coalesce, until the drum machine sputters and then goes into warp-speed, done by shorting the keyboard’s circuitry. The second track, “Ornithopter” (named for an archaic flying machine), rattles along with off-kilter drum loops and bird-call-like fragmented melodies, before giving way to a zonked-out Terry Riley-esque fugue of overlapping loops.

Out of shimmering feedback loops that begin “Rainbow,” melodies arise and dance over ever-shifting drum machines, supported by swirling piano and crashing electric guitar. “Underwater Garden of Forking Paths” is a slow burner, with large stacked polychords and stuttered drum machines. After a free-improv breakdown, the earlier theme returns, bolstered by counterpoint and a killer bass solo by secret weapon Dan Wick, who also plays bass on track two and guitar on track three.

Track five goes back to basics— no effects or “real” instruments, just dueling Casios, with a funky lopsided melody giving way to a buildup of increasingly intricate polyrhythmic arpeggios. At the coda, the rhythms build to a whirling climax, before slowly dying away, a short-circuited keyboard suggesting a dying Hal from 2001: Space Odyssey.

The project took on an unexpected dimension in 2017 when Nick fell ill with ME/CFS, a debilitating condition similar to Long Covid. During the first few years he was still well enough to finish the compositions and occasionally perform, but was increasingly confined to home and bed. The recording was painstakingly done in the rare hours when energy allowed. Editing and mixing were done from bed.

Ultimately the project comprises a bridge between healthy and sick eras. The recording was done in such a way as to preserve the physicality of the original live performances— the clicks of plastic buttons are audible, as well as the clanks and thumps of keys being held down with household objects or elbows. But the small keyboards were also luckily adaptable to playing while lying in bed. In this way the project represents a hard-won gratitude for the joy and strange wonder of music in difficult times.

Special thanks to my friends Sophie, Joel, and Dylan for their feedback and support throughout this project. Also a particular thank you to Dan Wick for, in addition to playing on the album, helping to workshop his parts and playing the music live, and being an excellent collaborator.“

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