Unusual approaches to string improvisation from the quartet of Ernesto Rodrigues (viola), Guilherme Rodrigues (cello), Maria da Rocha (violin), and Miguel Mira (double bass), using extended techniques in subtle yet detailed discourse yielding unexpected qualities to their instruments.
Format: CD Condition: New Released: 2016 Country: Portugal Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold Recorded 18th November 2015 by John Klima at Scratch Built Studio, Lisbon
Unusual approaches to string improvisation from the quartet of Ernesto Rodrigues (viola), Guilherme Rodrigues (cello), Maria da Rocha (violin), and Miguel Mira (double bass), using extended techniques in subtle yet detailed discourse yielding unexpected qualities to their instruments.
"Also from Portugal, but then of a totally different nature, is the Iridium String Quartet. Here there are no sudden bursts of energy, or agitated changes of nervous interaction, or big intervals between high and low registers, but two long gliding improvisations with subtle and minor changes in tone, but a wealth of timbral changes and shifts in sound color and intensity.
The quartet are Maria da Rocha on violin, Ernesto Rodrigues on viola, Guilherme Rodrigues on cello, and Miguel Mira on double bass. Despite the horizontal structure around a single tone, the music is not slow of flat, it keeps shimmering and changing in intensity, like some raw organic process taking place, and then the album's title comes to mind: Iridium is a metal that is among the most dense and difficult to work of all known substances. The titles of the two tracks refer to the boiling point (4428°C) and its melting point (2466°) and maybe that's what you hear, the slow transformation of something unwieldy into something else, into another substance by adding energy to it, adding fire to hard matter and to gradually make it change, to make it soundshift in front of your ears, to create sonic vapours out of hard compounds, to create sonic fluids out of the very foundations of our existence. It sounds like a churning cauldron of redblack turbulence. It is fascinating and as usual, beyond any known musical category. Calling it minimal or even drone would do the music injustice, because it's too rich for that. The instruments work in different layers and change constantly despite the strong tonal centre. They add, they withdraw, they deliver piercing overtones or carefully paced plucking or endless bowed murmurs.
To listeners not familiar with the work of Ernesto Rodrigues, I can only recommend them to give it a try, and to listen a lot to this album, with undivided attention. Each listen will make it richer and more lively and deeper than before."-Stef, The Free Jazz Collective