Factor Burzaco

II

Label: AltrOck Productions Country: Italy

Buenos Aries composer Abel Gilbert's Factor Burzaco is an avant rock band known as the "Argentinian Thinking Plague", embracing rock, electronics and much more in an unusual and fascinating mix.

"Burzaco Factor Reloaded: Post Traditional Music 'Every direction is fake' -this repeats over and over again, from far away, the multi layered voice of Carolina Restuccia at the beginning of 'Inmemoriam'. And then a sax duo enters abruptly, in a most minimal section of a power trio in a hardcore frame. Is it really so? It is enough to concentrate in the above mentioned track in order to discover a compositional art which has at its core little generative cells. And they expand, they metamorphose, they re elaborate, they reproduce themselves, they get torn in fragments, they decompose, they dilute, only to be reborn inside every one of the ten tracks.

Up to a point, it is done in the manner and mannerism of the texts by Marcelo Cohen, where the order first falters and alters and then suddenly suspend for a while all semantics and syntax. It is as if this syntagm of sound and discourse were subject to the whimsical va-et-vient of a paradigm made out of blurred memories and materials always at hand. "Music thrives", "Every step at the rhythm of music": a new duplication, this time of vibraphones, envelopes a vocal delivery in a sort of inauguration of the electronic processing which is the main feature of the second half of this CD. In this unraveling of textures, from an improbable purity to a tricky electroacoustics, we find the evasive sonic universe of Abel Gilbert, rigorous composer of what is here to be listened.

Crafty, almost cunning, Abel rejoices in challenging us. We are unwary listeners, much too accustomed to stable references and crystal clear borders. Gilbert offers instead unheard of juxtapositions of exhilarating triads: woodwind trios, guitar, bass and drums, two vibraphones, and voice, with soprano, baritone, and alto sax. He baffles our received expectations in genre matters, while trespassing without apparent transitions from chamber music to the most visceral of rocks, and from Nouvelle Musique and Stravinsky-like gestures to tout court drones.

And Gilbert finds his way in disrupting the sing along of 'Progressions' into the white noise of 'Guantanabu 3'. He works through successive and complex variations, and he does so doing what comes natural and disarming deeply-seated prejudices. Once unprejudiced, we will find ourselves in a state of mind which makes of musical heritage a thesaurus of potentialities always to be actualized, without any hint of postmodern cynicism. Gilbert's stuff is quite a different thing. A direct and convincing answer to a question posited by so many contemporary composers: how is music to be and thrive after the decline and fall of traditional criteria."-Norberto Cambiasso