"...Dancing about architecture," the phrase usually attributed to Frank Zappa regarding music writing, feels more apt when describing this superb electroacoustic improv outing by three musicians who certainly know their way around a space. Besides Müller's usual toolbox of percussion, mini-discs, iPods, and electronics/processing, his foils on this session are unusual to say the least, every bit as galvanizing to say the most. Ricardo Arias trumps what is listed on the inlay as "bass-balloon kit," not exactly an "instrument" that is commonplace at these improv summit meetings; Hans Tammen shears away at "endangered guitar," probably so-nicked due to the instrument's sounding nigh on unrecognizable in this company. Regardless, the trio make mincemeat of the architectonic habitué where they were sequestered (Harvestworks, in New York City), erecting a bracing noise that comes at the listener from right angles, across fibrous surfaces, situated at reference points inhabiting countless alien cartographies.
Certainly the disc title leaves little mystery about the artist's intentions; rather, the mystery resides in how each improviser deems what is necessary to flesh out the stark sonic arithmetic inherent in the title's phraseology. Wow and flutter become vital components, particularly as the group dynamics of "A Spherical Triangle" announce themselves directly in the opening seconds. Amid Müller's synthetic buzzes and flurry of effects and his few well-parsed snare taps, Arias emits some of his own calibrated squeaks, while Tammen makes the landscape appear even more brittle thanks to the warring cries of that aberrant guitar. Actually, as the piece gains momentum and the sparks fly (figuratively and literally), it's difficult to discern who is responsible for what; in such a sound world, where the elliptical plane is never quite glimpsed because of the artist's constant blurring of the emergent, one either tries to second-guess what arises, or simply succumbs to the quicksand-like morass on display. It's a wholly immersive nexus of events that the trio build upon, as electronic burps and blips shimmer, tensions flare briefly, the shapes mimed out take hold.
The shorter "A Lune" is far more visceral, and a bit less cerebral, than its predecessor, as if Arias, Müller, and Tammen felt the burning embers and aural crackles of their ideas (some of which is wrought by Tammen's preening strings, making their presence quite tangible amidst Arias' high-pitched wheezings) became oxygenated enough before raging out of control. The finale, "The Congruence of Triangles," probes its spatial dimensions and latent geometries much like the first piece: Müller churns out some sharply edited backwards-grooves out of his mini-discs; Arias giggles his way through a thorny bed of rubbery prongs and blisters; Tammen sends shivers along his fret board to splash messily all over Müller's digital flatbeds. Electricity curls along every contour and vector the trio navigates, asymmetrically devised, brilliantly executed.
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