With two members from Rotterdam's Albatre band--alto saxophonist Hugo Costa and drummer Philipp Ernsting--plus Mexican guitarist residing in Rotterdamn Josue Amador, this free jazz trio uses a diverse set of approaches that is more reflective and experimental than the jazz/punk of Albatre, yet still balances introspection and experimenation with assertive playing.
Format: CD Condition: New Released: 2018 Country: Portugal Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold Recorded at Studio SanteBoutique, in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, in 2018.
"We know the Portuguese alto saxophonist Hugo Costa and the German drummer Philipp Ernsting from the Albatre de Gonçalo Almeida, a jazzcore trio that, like this one, is based in Rotterdam. With Volcano Hour we find them in a very different context, and not only because the third element is the guitarist Josué Amador, another migrant musician, in his case coming from Mexico, who chose the Netherlands as a resident country: the coordinates of this "Anticlan" are those of freely improvised music (in Albatre, the composition - by Almeida's pen - is a determining factor).
It is true that jazz and rock continue to be key elements, with Costa and Amateur, especially them (Ernsting applies them both only in passing, preferring the development of a textural work in which it proves highly effective), to make a generous use of these idiomatic referents, but the sayings are continually deconstructed until they provide us with contemplative, abstract and moody landscaping, even in the mildest moments forging a somewhat disturbing atmosphere. The name of the group does justice to the music it proposes, because what comes in this album is the calm that precedes the exploding of a volcano. The type of approach allows the games of dynamics and the subtleties that are not possible with the intensity and the sound density of the Albatre, revealing to us still something more that is important to register: namely, the saxophonistic capacities of Hugo Costa, that stay here completely clarified and are more than many."-Rui Eduardo Paes, Jazz.PT