The Squid's Ear Magazine


Rodrigues / Davidson / Matthews: erosions (Creative Sources)

The trio of violist and label leader Ernesto Rodrigues with acoustic guitarist Neil Davidson and sythn/field recording artist Wade Matthews in erosive, sinister and engrossing improv.
 

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product information:

Personnel:



Ernesto Rodrigues-viola

Neil Davidson-acoustic guitar

Wade Matthews-digital synthesis and manipulated field recordings


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UPC: 5609063401721

Label: Creative Sources
Catalog ID: cs172
Squidco Product Code: 13629

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2010
Country: Portugal
Packaging: Jewel Tray
Recorded on March 9th, 2010 at Smiling Cow StUdio, Madrid

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

The trio of violist and label leader Ernesto Rodrigues with acoustic guitarist Neil Davidson and sythn/field recording artist Wade Matthews in erovise, sinister and engrossing improv.



Wade Matthews, from the liner notes:

"Madrid, July 7th, very, very sunny and over 36º centigrade. Taking refuge in my studio, which is surprisingly cool, I crank up the Mac and wade through the spam to discover an e-mail from Ernesto Rodrigues. He and Neil Davidson are pleased with the music we recorded in trio in March and want to make a CD of it. Also, Bay-area poet and photographer Mary Petrosky has sent me a message intriguingly titled "Rocks I've Met," with some striking photos of... well, rocks.

One is especially beautiful in its erosion. The water that caused it is no longer visible, but the rock's surface bears witness to the process. Of course I'm not looking at the rock, but at a photograph, which in turn bears witness to the rock. Now, I'm writing about it. Writing about what? The rock? The erosion? The photo? The process of looking at the photo? The fact that I'm writing about it? Maybe it's the heat, but the whole thing seems to twist and turn around itself like the curlicue erosion of the stone itself. Rocks I've met.The music Ernesto, Neil and I made in March was also a process, and like the water long disappeared from between the eroded walls of a dry stone canyon, it, too, has left its mark.

There is something implacable about how water erodes a canyon, as there is about the endless sequence of waves with which the ocean assaults and eventually conquers even the most robust breakwater. At first glance, water seems to adapt to the form of its container, and yet, over time, the opposite occurs; it wears away its surroundings, imposing a shape derived from its own flow. In that process, the stone is scoured and polished, forced to reveal something of itself that would otherwise have remained hidden.

Does music do this? Is it as implacable as water? Does it scour? Polish? Erode? Reveal? If so, what is the subject of this erosion? What bears witness? What is revealed? Certainly not the grooves of a recording, much as they may resemble a miniature canyon. Perhaps the CD is like the photo, bearing witness to the rock but not actually subject to the erosion it indirectly reflects.

Water is implacable because it has no will. It merely follows physical laws, though often in very complex ways. Mathematical models of wave behavior, for example, are enormously elaborate. And in collective improvisation, the will or intentions of the improvisers interact in ways that vary constantly between synergy and its exact opposite (a sort of negative synergy in which the whole is less that the sum of the parts). An improviser can act with a particular intention, only to find that his act coincides with that of another in ways that may totally negate his initial intention. Yet that interaction may just as easily create a new level of meaning in which the outcome of both acts is somehow even more appropriate than either of the improvisers expected. So collective improvisation cannot be the continuous reflection of any given intentionality. Like water, it flows, and like waves, its exact movement almost inevitably eludes prediction.

As it flows, water erodes its container, wearing away the hardest of surfaces to reveal what is beneath. Extending our metaphor, we could say that sound flows from the actions of musicians, and among listeners. As such, it erodes both. But it also polishes both, and most of all, it reveals both.

So if this music is the water, then we, the musicians, and you, the listener, are its container, the bared stones of its canyon. Have we been eroded? Unquestionably. Polished? No doubt. But what has been revealed?"


Artist Biographies

"He has been playing the violin for 30 years and in that time has played all genres of music ranging from contemporary music to free jazz and improvised music, live and in the studio.

His main interest shifted towards contemporary improvised and composed music.

The relationship with his instruments is focused in sonic and textural elements.

Electronic music was an early influence on his approach to violin playing, which challenges traditional romantic concepts of the violin/viola through use of preparations and micro tuning.

Active in different settings on the Portuguese scene for free improvised music, both as a collaborator and in leading his own groups.

Music for Dance, Cinema, Video and Performance.

Has created the record label Creative Sources Recordings in 1999, which mainly concentrates on releasing experimental and electro-acoustic music."

-Creative Sources (http://creativesourcesrec.com/creative_artists.html)
3/25/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

Neil Davidson is a UK guitarist and improviser, known for the groups Age Of Wire And String, Aporias Trio, Dvell, Muris, Muris With Lumps, The Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra, and With Lumps. He has performed with other improvisers including Arild Vange, Frode Eggen, Fritz Welch, Ernesto Rodrigues, Guilherme Rodrigues, Hernani Faustino, George Lewis, Nick Fells, Aileen Campbell, Una MacGlone, Tatsuya Nakatani, Raymond MacDonald, Peter Nicholson, Rhodri Davies, Dimitra Lazaridou Chatzigoga, Jane Dickson, Patrick Farmer, Nicole McNeilly, and Michael Shearer.

-Neil Davidson Website + Discogs.com (http://neildavidsonevents.blogspot.com/p/by-water-by-solo-electric-guitar-c50-no.html)
3/25/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"In 1989, after completing his doctorate at Columbia University in New York, French-born American musician Wade Matthews moved to Madrid and became active on the international improv scene. Drawing on his work at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center (His doctoral dissertation was on improvisation guided by electronic sounds) he approached the bass clarinet and alto flute as "acoustic synthesizers," rethinking their sonic possibilities, phrasing, and relation to breath in a musical language based on real-time creation. When faster processors made laptop synthesis viable, Matthews gradually abandoned the woodwinds and returned to his first love, tweaking a virtual synthesizer to allow very rapid control of sound parameters for solo playing and dialog with others. In 2007, he founded INTERMEDIA 28 with photographer Adam Lubroth and guitarist Julio Camarena. There, he began to combine field recordings with electronic synthesis in a 2-computer setup that has since become his main instrument.

Matthews has presented his work on five continents, including performances at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Center for the Arts in Mexico City, the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, the Reina Sofía Museum of Contemporary Art in Madrid, The Stone, in New York; Fylkingen, in Stockholm, and concerts and festivals in London, Paris, Berlin, San Francisco, Montevideo, Barcelona, Beirut, Cape Verde, Lisbon, Dublin, Oslo, etc. Besides his concerts, Matthews is interested in sharing ideas about music and his activity as a lecturer and visiting professor has taken him to the Paris Conservatory, the University of California, San Diego; the California Art Institute, Columbia University, the Universidad de las Americas in Puebla, Mexico; the American University of Beirut, Limerick University in Ireland, and many, many others."

-Wade Matthews Website (http://www.wadematthews.info/Wade_Matthews/ABOUT.html)
3/25/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



1. 1 8:27

2. 2 3:30

3. 3 5:59

4. 4 8:10

5. 5 14:09

Related Categories of Interest:

Creative Sources

Improvised Music
Electro-Acoustic
Electro-Acoustic Improv
Field Recordings
Free Improvisation
Trio Recordings

Search for other titles on the label:
Creative Sources.


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