Joep Beving’s Solipsism Redux (2025): A Timeless Rebirth

Joep Beving’s Solipsism Redux is out today — a complete re-recording of his 2015 debut album Solipsism. I’ve been listening through it this morning, and from the very first notes, it’s clear this isn’t just a technical refresh. It’s a reinterpretation. One that feels deeply considered, patient, and alive.

If you know the original, you’ll notice the difference immediately: the pacing here is slower, more unhurried. Beving lets the music breathe. He sinks into each note, allowing silence to stretch just long enough to create space. Space for resonance, space for reflection, and space for us, the listeners, to really hear. His touch feels softer, yet somehow more deliberate, drawing out the subtlety that was always there but now fully illuminated.

These pieces have always stirred something deep in me. They did when I first heard them years ago, and they still do now. But this time they feel different. Matured, like a conversation revisited with the benefit of time and distance. Music grows as people grow, and Redux captures that growth beautifully. It’s not nostalgia, it’s evolution.

What strikes me most is how alive this recording feels. Every time music is performed, it’s made new again, and Beving leans into that truth. Where some artists tire of revisiting old work, he seems to have found fresh meaning in these compositions. If anything, Redux proves that he’s not simply retracing old steps — he’s rediscovering them.

The result is an album that feels timeless, yet renewed. A testament not just to Beving’s skill as a composer, but to his curiosity as a performer. His willingness to return, listen closely, and let the music breathe in a new way.

Album Spotlight: “Solo on the Side” / Paul-Marie Barbier

Spotify algorithms get a bad rap at times, though I’ve discovered (or been recommended) some really beautiful albums through the years. The most recent being Paul-Marie Barbier’s Solo on the Side.

These pieces are humble and unassuming, yet full of harmonic beauty and ear catching melodies. Some even make you want to move your body with their odd time signatures, like Suzy (in 7/8), and the Samba-like Lay Down.

He knows his craft (having studied harmony, composition and jazz theory), yet chooses to distill the essence of a piece, rather than overstuffing it with extraneous harmonic color and showy scales up and down the keyboard. Any technical complexity (like that found in L’envol and Human Leather Shoes for Crocodile Dandies) is at the service of the music.

I appreciate how he does this distillation in Aftermath. The left hand plays a simple four chord progression (Ab, Fm6, C, Cm), revolving around the root (C). Over this, the melody descends, then dances around the E-natural (in the C chord) before landing back on the minor-third.

Paul-Marie Barbier – Aftermath

He does something similar—with the minor/major transition—in Wonderland. After some rolled chords in the treble, the piece falls into a bluesy B-minor progression (Bm, Em, G, A). Then seemingly out of nowhere he slips in a D# (momentarily changing the root to B-major), which adds so much color to the piece.

If you listen to the album, keep an ear out for how he incorporates chromaticism throughout. Since I haven’t been jazz trained, this hasn’t come naturally for me in my own compositions. Though this album is challenging me to broaden my creative palette a bit.

You can hear this in Lay Down, too, about halfway through where it starts to take a journey through other keys.

If you have time, give this entire album a listen. Every piece is beautiful. I think you’ll fall in love with it.

Solo on the Side, Paul-Marie Barbier – Album Cover