“Trance is at once deeply personal and fiercely universal, a state within the self that can also be collectively attained and shared,” says Berlin composer and pianist Meredi, who named her latest album Trance inspired by the immersive experience she would feel in her city’s famed – now faded – nightclubs. “I’m inspired by the intensity and power of the music in techno raves and I wanted to express it in my own words in this album.” Meredi’s “own words” are the white and black keys of her Bechstein upright piano. With the instrument, the 29-year-old has developed a unique vocabulary by mixing meditative tones and abstract, quasi-electronic structures with a classical grounding. Her style, at once delicate and riddled with longing yet also invigoratingly modern and surprisingly intense, has awarded Meredi countless compositional prizes in Germany as well as landing her commissions in film and TV. Until recently, Meredi had also been an avid club-goer, and her music often took queues and inspiration from Berlin’s hedonistic nightlife, “The city’s nightlife gives me this freedom to be able to heighten my state of being whenever I want to, to feel as much as possible and to experience these really extreme emotions,” says Meredi, “And what does composing do to me? It gives me the opportunity to tell stories through these very intense emotions for which there are no words.” Trance is a journey through nine evocative compositions for piano and strings, simple melodies that nonetheless hit deep. “The pieces are about the longing for the here and now. The longing to lose oneself, to let go and to forget time,” says Meredi of the album. The track’s titles each tell of a specific part in the process of letting go, referencing mostly club contexts. Album opener, Welcome home for instance, alludes to the greeting that has become a staple amongst those who attend Burning Man Festival, the cult electronic music event in Nevada. The track gently lures in listeners through ambient strings and escalating piano keys on a journey within. The use of subtle repetition – an ancient mechanism for inducing states of trance – means the piece never fully “arrives”. Yet, somewhere along the journey, listeners have forgotten the destination altogether and found a place of comfort in the never-ending ascension. “Sometimes a sound opens up whole worlds within. The album represents a journey to find oneself, a kind of self-discovery through the loss of control,” explains Meredi. Title track, Trance is the piece that rings closest to the abstract compositional style of techno tunes. A fast-paced motif on the piano repeats itself with subtle changes opening up new musical patterns and directions. It’s a piece that induces surrender. The looping hypnotic piano keys are reinforced by poignant strings that pull at listeners forcefully, bringing them deep into an abstract world of pure potentials and emotions, “It deals with the limbo and trip that one achieves when one surrenders to...