The Squid's Ear Magazine


Monteiro, Alfredo Costa : Um Em Um (Monotype)

An unusual release from the accordion, Alfredo Costa Monteiro, placed microphones in a way to enhance the harmonics and all the particularities of every sound, layering slowly moving tones and their harmonic interaction, allowing unexpected details to emerge.
 

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Alfredo Costa Monteiro-objects, accordian


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UPC: 5908310927671

Label: Monotype
Catalog ID: mono090
Squidco Product Code: 21099

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2015
Country: Poland
Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold
Recorded at Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, on November 16th, 2014 .

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Um em um assembles different techniques I've been working with for many years, giving them a status of material for improvisation and composition.

The piece is deliberately contained, linear and constructed by layers, with the aim to give the possibility to the listener to converge on each of its parts, with a sense of the detail. Microphones have been placed in a way to enhance the harmonics and all the particularities of every sound.

Coming after my last accordion solo Cinq bruissements (no fun productions, 2010), where microphones were almost inside the instrument, Um em um is somehow a step backwards in terms of visualisation and appreciation of my musical direction, but not in terms of audacity (there's more to come...). I needed a less crude approach, a kind of reformation, if not a clarification of what I've been setting up for more than 15 years.Um em um, translated by "one in one", expresses the way how an idea (material in time) can fit in another idea (structure in space), with a mutual and constant feedback."- Alfredo Costa Monteiro



"Perhaps a more traditional form of improvisation is to be found on the release by Alfredo Costa Monteiro, the accordion player. In recent times an accordion player lives downstairs, so at one point I am quite fed up with the music he produces (especially when he taps his feet to keep the rhythm), but Monteiro's music is something different altogether. He plays the accordion and objects, and perhaps one could also say he plays the 'accordion with objects' and also there is some sort of amplification in place. Whatever is the case really? Overtones are something that Monteiro uses a lot actually. Everything rings and sings here; sometimes it seems to come from rubbing objects onto a surface, such as the accordion, but also when he plays the instrument itself (the mechanics, the keys, the air of the instrument) Monteiro goes for long, sustaining sounds. He easily manages to this for quite some time, but there is a constant shift in this music, changing and bowing around. It's beyond twenty minutes when Monteiro approaches more regular playing and starts playing the accordion in a more improvised manner - as in 'quick'. He ends on a more contemplative note. In the course of these thirty-three minutes Monteiro took the listener on an excellent trip, going from beautiful overtone/feedback to sparse music to improvised heaviness and a moody ending. Beautiful recording from November last year!"-Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly



"A searing set from Costa Monteiro, credited with accordion and objects but generating sounds it's hard to imagine not incorporating bows, electronic, etc., but that's how he does on his axe of choice. It starts with keening overtones arriving in harshly shimmering waves, gradually drops into "standard" accordion range/pitch (though augmented with a sputtering gargle and other noises), maintaining the drone consistency but fluctuating mightily. Not so dissimilar in basic form to the his just previously reviewed collaboration with Lali Barrière but the acoustic nature of the sound production necessarily allows for more air, particulate matter and other irregularities that help to sustain extreme interest. The long winding-down process, beginning with a fantastic bellows-like section, is expertly handled, a gradual loss of respiratory functions, settling into a thin whistle. Very strong work, one of my favorite releases from Costa Monteiro."-Brian Olewnick, Just Outside


Artist Biographies

"Alfredo Costa Monteiro was born in 1964 in Porto (Portugal)

Lives and works in Barcelona, Spain.

He studied sculpture/installation at the fine art school in Paris with Christian Boltanski.In 1992, he moved to Barcelona. Since then, his work stands somewhere between visual arts, visual poetry and sound. His installations and sound pieces, all of a low-fi character, have in common an interest for unstable processes, raw materials and gestures, where the manipulation of objects as instruments or instruments as objects has a strong phenomenological aspect.

From 1998 to 2006, he was member of espai 22a, an independent collective for contemporary art. From 2001 to 2006, he was also member of IBA col.lectiu d'improvisació

In sound poetry, he performs in solo polyglot and noise pieces ( portuguese, french and spanish), where sound establishes a different semantics.

Ongoing sound projects: Cremaster (with Ferran Fages), i treni inerti (with Ruth Barberán), Atolón (with Ferran Fages and Ruth Barberán), Astero (with Juan Matos Capote), 300 basses (with Jonas Kocher and Luca Venitucci) and duos with Pascal Battus, Tim Olive and Michel Doneda.

He has given workshops at Hangar (Barcelona, Spain), ESDI (Barcelona, Spain), Janácek Academy of Music and Performing Arts (Brno, Czech Republic), Arteleku (San Sebastián, Spain), Facultad de Bellas Artes, (Pontevedra, Spain), ESAD (Caldas da Rainha, Portugal), Crossroads during John Cage's Year, (Lublin, Poland) among others.

He has toured in Canada, Japan and Europe."

-Alfredo Costa Monteiro Website (http://www.costamonteiro.net/index.php?/bio/)
3/13/2024

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


Track Listing:



1. Um Em Um 33:21

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Electro-Acoustic
Piano & Keyboards
Organized Sound and Sample Based Music
New in Experimental & Electronic Music
Objects and Home-made Instruments
Friends of Squid

Search for other titles on the label:
Monotype.


Recommended & Related Releases:
Monteiro, Alfredo Costa
Um Em Um
(Monotype)
An unusual release from the accordion, Alfredo Costa Monteiro, placed microphones in a way to enhance the harmonics and all the particularities of every sound, layering slowly moving tones and their harmonic interaction, allowing unexpected details to emerge.
Monteiro, Alfredo Costa
Um Em Um
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An unusual release from the accordion, Alfredo Costa Monteiro, placed microphones in a way to enhance the harmonics and all the particularities of every sound, layering slowly moving tones and their harmonic interaction, allowing unexpected details to emerge.
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