The Squid's Ear Magazine


Eubanks, Bryan & Stephane Rives: fq (Potlatch)

French soprano saxophonist Stephane Rives and US Sound artist Bryan Eubanks on oscillators and feedback synth recorded this extended improvisation after performing live together in Berlin in 2014, using twisting acoustic and electronic tones punctuated by dramatic confrontations.
 

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product information:

Personnel:



Bryan Eubanks-electronics, synthesizer

Stephane Rives-soprano saxophone


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UPC: 3491570002629

Label: Potlatch
Catalog ID: P215
Squidco Product Code: 20964

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2015
Country: France
Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold
Recorded at Studio 8, Berlin-Wedding,Germany on September 9th, 2014 by Adam Asnan.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Although they have not previously recorded together, the pairing of Bryan Eubanks and Stéphane Rives makes perfect sense. French soprano saxophonist Rives is already a long-serving Potlatch veteran, with this being his fourth release on the label, following in the wake of his 2003 solo soprano album Fibres, the ground-breaking saxophone quartet Propagations (Potlatch, 2007) and his 2011 duo with the Paris-based Japanese percussionist Seijiro Murayama, Axiom for the Duration. As with the other saxophonists on Propagations, Rives has developed a personal, exploratory approach to his instrument, making him an ideal playing partner for Eubanks.

Crucially, although he is featured here on oscillators and feedback synthesiser, Oregon-born Eubanks is an experienced soprano saxophonist himself, as he demonstrated on Anamorphosis (Sacred Realism, 2014) with his fellow Berlin residents Johnny Chang and Catherine Lamb, and on Drums Saxophone Electronics (Intonema, 2014) with Jason Kahn (and also on the YouTube clip, below.) As on that album with Kahn, the minimal, lower-case titled fq effectively blurs the boundaries between electronic tones and real saxophone sounds; when the two overlap, they are often similar enough for one to blend into the other, a fact that Eubanks and Rives exploit to good effect here.

After they had played a couple of gigs together in Berlin, fq was studio-recorded there in September 2014. Although, the album's one track contains only just over half-an-hour of playing time, it is definitely well worth the price of admission. But it does raise the question of why recordings from those live gigs were not included on fq for comparison purposes.

The track that we do have begins with a single pure tone beneath which distant but incomprehensible voices can just be heard as well as breathy sax; gradually the tone modulates and pulses, becoming more complex, creating an effect akin to Morse code. If this were the opening to a movie, the audience would already be on the edges of their seats, drawn in and wanting to know more. The track has exactly the same effect, its opening promising much and creating the craving for more.

Although the piece does not have a plot per se, it contains as much drama, detail and mystery as any movie, being just as complex and satisfying. Altogether, the soundscape is impressively rich, deep and detailed, considering only two players were responsible for it. Across its duration, the track does not contain a dull moment or wasted phrase. Curiously, it seldom seems to last thirty minutes, sometimes seeming considerably longer, other times flashing by. Either way, it is extremely satisfying, handsomely repaying repeated listening."-John Eyles, All About Jazz



This album has been reviewed on our magazine:

The Squid
The Squid's Ear!

Get additional information at All About Jazz

Artist Biographies

"Bryan Eubanks (b. 1977, US) is a musician composing electronic and acoustic works for small ensembles, solo instruments, computers, and idiosyncratic electronics; improvising in collaboration; and experimenting with spatial diffusion techniques. Publicly active since 2001, he's had numerous collaborations and presented his work internationally in a variety of settings."

-Sacred Realist (http://www.sacredrealism.org/bryaneubanks/)
3/13/2024

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

"Stéphane Rives is part of the current of an improvisation of materials and textures more than games and themes. More trivially, a fucking sound that torments the eardrum and drives the hammers into a panic, opening up gulfs in the understanding. Double simultaneous sounds, high pitch in the splendid isolation of the peaks and breath close to asthma, close to sinewave and the wind which passes in force under the door. The result is a strange almost disturbing abstraction, so much we no longer hear a saxophone but something quite different, without being able to name this something else.

Do not believe that there is a feat here, that in the end it would only be due to technique, to a power of dissimulation, that would be little in the eyes of music. In the granulations, we reach such a decomposition of what constitutes music for academies, that we are literally stunned, pierced by this sonic twist, a metal sander applied to the human ear, revolving sounds tearing shavings from our cultural foundations, uncertainty of what and how."-Michel Henritzi - Review & Corrected

-Stephane Rives Website (Translated by Google) (http://musique.stephane-rives.fr/bio.html)
3/13/2024

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


Track Listing:



1. fq (30.31)

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Free Improvisation
Electro-Acoustic
Electro-Acoustic Improv
Duo Recordings
lowercase, reductionist, micro-improv, sound improv, onkyo sound

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Potlatch.


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