When pianist Arnold Kasar began the time-consuming process of viewing recordings already made for his new solo album RESONANZ two years ago, he chose as his workplace the route network of the Eurocity train, which connects Berlin with Prague, Prague with Wroclaw and Wroclaw with Vienna. Arnold Kasar, who has been travelling regularly throughout Europe since the days of the Sonar collective, prefers the railway over the car and the plane, and the Eurocity over all other trains, because in it you can forget time.

"I am a digital nomad," says Arnold Kasar, "I like to sit in the dining car when the train leaves Berlin in the morning heading south, and my gaze falls on a landscape in the morning fog. It takes less than five minutes, and I'm in old Europe, in a different mindset. I can work very well in the dining car, but also in hotels with my mobile equipment. I have my own vocabulary of sounds that nobody else has. That makes me independent. I listened to, edited and cut my album RESONANZ completely on these endless train rides"

Arnold Kasar has commuted a lot in recent years, having recorded with legendary guys like Hans- Joachim Roedelius or Friedrich Liechtenstein. His own work took a back seat, but during the breaks he recorded impressions of the day as sound recordings, the laptop became a sketchbook.

Over the years, several hours of extremely personal piano improvisations have accumulated in this way, which Arnold Kasar processed in the act of editing the present album. In order to deepen and layer recordings, Arnold Kasar retreats again and again to his own retreat, Devil's Kitchen Studio in the Rhine Valley at the southernmost tip of the Black Forest, once again an extensive train ride away from Berlin Central.

"There is a lot of space there and I can let go," says Arnold Kasar: "There is an old piano there, and there is electricity so I can set up my mobile equipment. Sometimes it is quite good to leave the Moloch Berlin behind me."

The pieces contained on RESONANZ have all been created in the same way: The piano improvisations are all recorded and archived. Now and then Arnold Kasar picks out individual recordings and edits them beyond recognition. "I have a toolbox of portable synthesizers from which everything is created. So I can always move from piano to electronics and back to solo piano, or mix both." This process is what Arnold Kasar calls a change of media, from observation to deconstructed melody, to the somber drone and back to contemplation.