Neither Present Nor Absent

Steve Jansen, the English multi-instrumentalist, composer, and producer, is best known for his work with the art pop band Japan and subsequent solo works. Maiya Hershey is Portugal-based audiovisual artist and sound designer whose interest in anthropology and philosophy forms part of her creative process. The duo’s musical collaboration – Neither Present Nor Absent – is a work meant to expand upon its title and their mutual interest in experimenting with sonic techniques and exploring their connectedness with identity and the past
This state51 Conspiracy release is a welcome rendering of ‘Neither Present Nor Absent’ as a physical artefact, with James Ginzburg of Emptyset and other projects remastering it for vinyl. Certainly, its five quiet instrumental pieces, fashioned via piano and electronics, have a dignity and depth that deserves corporeality. Assembled remotely over some 12 months by Steve Jansen and Maiya Hershey, who live in London and Beirut respectively, this is their first collaborative release
Age-wise, they may be a generation apart – Jansen’s first record, as a core member of high-minded art-rockers Japan, was released 15 years before Hershey was born – but share much in their musical philosophy, with instruments (Hershey’s piano, often, but also saxophone, cello and bells) manipulated and folded into various field recordings and other aleatory sonics. And yet, while this is by any measure experimental music, there is a pop sensibility in the kernel of ‘Neither Present Nor Absent’: take the central melody of ‘Toward The Surface’, or the mournful, cinematic ‘As We Drift’. Jansen can claim over 40 years’ experience forging experimental/popular music links, while Hershey has rather more modern credentials, with a solo piano piece heard by several million people thanks to its inclusion on a meditation app