Neumatica

Alud

Label: Creative Sources Country: Portugal

The eerie collaborative world of Pablo Rega and Alfredo Costa Monteiro derives respectively from home made electronic devices and turntable pickups. These errant devices are used in unlikely ways to generate a wide palette of sounds, tones and rhythmic environements; both avoid the chaotic, instead structuring and controlling their sounds in sculpted ways.

The three unnamed tracks build like pressurized sound chambers, from subtle progression to cantankerous and disturbing walls of sound. The dynamics of the pieces are sophisticated and complex, allowing the listener to breathe between the blasts, while consistently maintaining interest with auditory objects of indiscernible origin. It's as though you were journeying down a dark copper path inside a malfunctioning circuit board, where each component offered it's own voice in whine and static while a massive fan sometimes filtered out all senses. An unusual, engaging and mysterious set of works.

"Neumatica is Pablo Rega (homemade electronic devices) and Alfredo Costa Monteiro (pick-ups on turntable). One of the aspects of Costa Monteiro's work I've always enjoyed is how he somehow brings an inherent sense of musicality to almost anything he does, no matter how superficially abstract; there's a sense of body, an organic feel to the music. It comes across here as well, though I assume Rega (a new name to me) is at least equally responsible. In some respects, "Alud" reminded me of the better work from the late, lamented Voice Crack, a similar hardscrabble veneer, but without the overt rhythmic elements that duo tended to fall back on. Here, all the harshness, the static, the bumps cohere into wonderfully imagistic soundscapes, the type of music that has me constantly listening around corners, seeking, and usually finding, more. A beautifully realized recording."-Brian Olewnick, Bagatellen

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