An immersive album of understated but incredibly detailed free improvisation from the quartet of Ernesto Rodrigues on viola, Bruno Parrinha on bass clarinet, Emidio Buchinho on electric guitar and Carla Santana on electronics, performing live at Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema, in Amadora, Portugal for a four part concentration on silence through sound.
Format: CD Condition: New Released: 2022 Country: Portugal Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold Recorded live at Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema, in Amadora, Portugal, on the May 14th 2022, by Emidio Buchinho and Carla Santana.
"Then (presumably) even more recent, Ernesto Rodrigues continues to record together with clarinetist Bruno Parrinha in 2022: The provocatively titled Distilling Silence comes from this past May, i.e. prior to Definitive Bucolic (as reviewed here in July, after being recorded in June...), and turns to a different guitarist: Emidio Buchinho had recorded with Rodrigues already, back in 2016 for the trio album Fall, itself evocatively titled, very sparse and quiet music. (This was also a period when I was lamenting that many "silence"-themed albums were simply too quiet, i.e. quieter than the ambient noise of my apartment and neighborhood, i.e. too quiet to be useful....)
That album was also rounded out by electronics, and here that's accomplished by Carla Santana - new to me, but also already on the new Uranium (recorded last November) by Isotope Ensemble - to form a quartet. While "fall" (i.e. autumn) and "bucolic" suggest outdoor scenes, though, Distilling Silence evokes more in the way of the indoor and its smaller spaces: There's a sense of "lowercase," i.e. of amplifying the smallest, everyday sounds - the sounds of a quiet home (and e.g. Jeff Shurdut had already released an entire series of albums on this theme...) - i.e. of bringing (the potentially ignored) to presence, but not simply as amplified per se, rather as arising reworked by collective instrumental expression.... (In its sense of the everyday, Distilling Silence thus projects an imminent affective quality, contrasting e.g. with the transcendental-metal yearnings of the previous entry....)
One might even recall e.g. Rodrigues' A late evening in the future (noted here in June 2019), a sort of sparse urban outdoor interrogation, but pace the "absolute" orientation here, perhaps a more direct comparison comes from the quintet album Prima pratica (reviewed here in November 2019, and with no other musician in common...), more atmospheric or "outdoor" in its inspirations and perhaps more rambling too.... These covers actually seem to suggest a sequence with Nor, askew now for Distilling Silence (itself lit not unlike A late evening in the future...), another intriguing quartet album (originally discussed here in September 2015) with a frustrating tendency to vanish....
But back to Distilling Silence, a much tighter album than these earlier efforts: There's indeed a real sense of presence brought to the fore here, although one wouldn't call it a foreground, yielding a coherent "musical sweep" that's nonetheless beneath any sense of genre. (In comparison to Metaculture, then, that group employs a more conscious virtuosity or sense of expression, but both can suggest a sort of ambient vibe, rather less naturalistic than is typical for Rodrigues.... And pace notions of "anthropology music," various sounds of the environment have certainly been inspirational for "music history," but there's still a notion of human selection at work, and so specifically of human thought. (And I should also mention the intervening releases including both Rodrigues and Parrinha, the etudes-like quartet album D'Improvviso, featuring new-to-me horn player Michel Stawicki, and a strange experiment in a sort of flat or "unexpressive" virtuosity in the quintet album (with percussion) Unpoem, both including Joao Madeira on bass as well - and both actually recorded in June 2022 too, i.e. subsequent to Distilling Silence.... (The latter was also recorded in multitrack, if that's worth noting, but not HD.)))
Moreover, opening with breath, Distilling Silence develops a sort of post-Cage "sound," a sort of fluttering timbre, slightly echoing, perhaps likely to fade away, but also a sense of deep throbbing (drone?) at times too, forging an ongoing kind of (elevated?) continuity for the space... or for time (and its presencing). There's an intimacy (as canonical lowercase...), and a sort of flow, a feel for pacing... a (non-rhetorical, becoming unconscious...) repose. In short, while nothing is striking, and the album isn't sparse or particularly quiet, there's indeed a sense of Distilling Silence, i.e. of bringing "everyday silence" to presence. Moments don't stand out, expression doesn't stand out, but one's sense of situation and time are thereby slowly transformed. (And "outside" everyday sounds seem almost charming when they do return.)"-" Todd McComb, Jazz Thoughts