Ten Steps is the highly anticipated collaborative album from Brooklyn, NY and Tokyo/Black Country Pathfinders Max ZT & Dan Whitehouse. Released on September 8th and followed by a UK tour in October (which we highly recommend), we have the pleasure of sharing their new video Shizuka which means ‘quiet’. Shizuka is being released as a single tomorrow, which you can pre-save here; it’s also our Song of the Day.
Most recently, Dan was featured on Folk Radio with the release of Reflections On The Glass Age, an acoustic reworking of his acclaimed 2022 album. As pointed out by Mike Davies in his album review, it offered a new sonic experience:
…Reflections On The Glass Age is one to be embraced in calm and solitude and a glowing illustration of Dan Whitehouse’s versatility as a musician to bend songs to different purposes. In what is probably a first, it chalks up an impressive triumph in having two versions of the same album, twelve months apart, both claiming a spot in my year’s best.
Mike Davies
Some may recall the background to Ten Steps when we featured the extraordinary and beautiful title track as a Song of the Day in 2021. It was thanks to the Global Music Match programme earlier that year (organised by English Folk Expo in partnership with 19 other countries) that Dan teamed up with hammered dulcimer player Max ZT of House of Waters – “One of the most original bands on the planet,” NY Music Daily.
They went on to tour the UK in November 2021 and to record this album. ‘Ten Steps’ SIDE A (tracks 1-5) was recorded between New York City and Tokyo and completed during 2021, while SIDE B (tracks 6-7) captures Max ZT’s improvisations performed at their meditative live gigs in November of that same year, which inspired Dan’s own words and music.
Some music can resonate with a listener in unexpected ways, especially when being created by musicians who go beyond genre constraints. Musical experimentation seems to be flourishing more than ever…it may be that more are looking outwards in response to cultural changes – not dissimilar to the way that Spiritual Jazz has seen a resurgence. This seems to apply to the music of Max ZT & Dan Whitehouse; while what they are creating is exciting and exceptional, it’s also deeply intuitive, poetic and rewarding because they are unhindered and open. As they say below, “we yearn to get outside of our own heads and see the world from another’s perspective”. They have achieved that in the most humblest of ways.
Dan and Max’s on Ten Steps
Dan: We are all interconnected. The best collaborations seek out differences. You have to look inwards to find fluency within and consistently look outside yourself.
Max: Yeah, if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room! I read that quote by Howard Hughes, and I love that; you have to consistently look outside of yourself.
Dan: When Max plays, it feels like the ground, or the sky, is opening up. I see things that weren’t there before. My perspective is changed. Ultimately I think that’s why we turn to art – be that a record, picture or a film – we yearn to get outside of our own heads and see the world from another’s perspective. This is what I hope Max ZT and I are bringing to you on this tour and with our album – a deep magnetic field.
Max: Our album and our show incorporate elements of improvisation; we are trying to be in the moment as much as possible. That’s enlightenment, that’s the real deal – if you can get your fluency, your vocabulary and your grammar into a place where you can just talk and just be ….that’s heaven, you know – now you have just expanded yourself.
We rarely get moments of stillness in life. Having a performance space where you can still have stillness, patience and this moment of just being – this feels like something unique to our show.
From the feedback from audiences to date, it’s clear this music is important for people; working with Dan and his poetry, it’s been great to see how these two worlds can coalesce.
On Shizuka
Dan: Shizuka means quiet in Japanese (it can also be a name); it’s about the gentle, soft glow of the low-hanging sun here, and how this matches the restrained, polite culture of their everyday exchanges and behaviour.
Due to an ear injury, I was landlocked in Japan for 18 months and found myself on a journey into Japanese culture. Out walking at Tokyo Bay, I encountered a group of people that would congregate at sunrise, face the sun and sing to it as it rose, no words but a distinctive sounding scale – I was on a zoom call to Max at the time, who immediately identified this as the Insen scale.
Max: It’s a raga called Shivrangani, the Indian form of the Japanese scaled Insen – Insen is what they were singing. The Insen scale has this dark tri-tone – an interval that used to be called the devil’s chord they used to execute people for composing with this chord! It’s the note in between a perfect 4th and perfect 5th, so even though it has this unease, it still has this hope-filled suspension. I think we bonded over the ‘tense but hopeful suspension’ feelings you get from ‘The Devil’s Chord’.
TEN STEPS UK TOUR 2023
Wed 18th October – Arc Theatre, Winchester
Thur 19th October – Music At The Unicorn, Abingdon
Sun 22nd October – Stables 2, Milton Keynes
Tue 24th October – The Pheasantry, Pizza Express, London
Wed 25th October – Ropetackle Arts, Shoreham
Thur 26th October – The Old Stables, Cricklade
Fri 27th October – Royal Birmingham Conservatoire
Sat 28th October – The Stoller Hall, Manchester
Tickets: http://www.dan-whitehouse.com/live/