Four improvisations recorded iteratively during the pandemic and assembled into this exquisitely subtle two-part composition with Eva Maria Houben's piano & organ recorded in Berlin in 2020, Guilherme Rodrigues's cello recorded in Berlin and Ernesto Rodrigues's zither recorded in Lisbon in 2021, merged with nocturnal recordings from Carlos Santos captured in Spain & Portugal.
Format: CD Condition: New Released: 2022 Country: Portugal Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold Eva Maria Houben's piano and organ recorded in Berlin, December 2020. Guilherme Rodrigues's cello recorded in Berlin, March 2021. Ernesto Rodrigues's zither recorded in Lisbon, April 2021. Carlos Santos's field recordings recorded in Gerez (Portugal) in September 2018, Geophone and piezo recordings in Ayamonte (Spain), August 2019 and Lisbon (Portugal) 2020.
"[...] Four musicians prepared separate soundtracks at different times and spaces, and the fourth of them from the galaxy of electroacoustic varieties weaved together two extensive narratives. He called, as he called, but before us the quartet: Eva Maria Houben (piano and organ, Berlin, December 2020), Guilherme Rodrigues (cello, Berlin, March 2021), Ernesto Rodrigues (zither, Lisbon, April 2021), Carlos Santos (field recordings, Gerez, September 2018, geophone and piezo recordings, Ayamonte, August 2019 and Lisbon, 2020, finally mix and mastering). The entire recording is 79 minutes and a few seconds.Before us is an electro-acoustic symphony of minimalism, creative omission and the tedious building of a multi-threaded narrative, which is generally closer to dense silence than to any layers of noise. At the start, we have the impression that we can hear the whistling of the air. A single piano key, an echo, incidental tugging on the strings and a deaf, undefined, dark space in which scraps of sound are born. The story forms drones over time, but their lifespans aren't that long. Here's a stand by narrative that drags sounds through tightly pressed lips. Only the sounds of the surroundings, the sounds of birds and domestic animals testify to the existence of a living world around. It seems that the lazily passing time is also an element of building the drama. During this almost 40-minute part, slightly longer string phrases appear, which sound extremely painful. In the background, in the far backgroun, something thunders, but it has a definitively unreal dimension.
The second story takes place in an even darker aura. We forget about the sounds of living matter, rather we find ourselves in the bottomless space of a dead cosmos. There is post-industrial ambient all around, someone squeezes live strings, an organ drone and more delicate string sounds smolder at the bottom. The latter is probably the sound of a zither, or maybe it is the effect of activities in the inside piano mode. The narrative itself is saturated with more fluid, slightly longer phrases, less silence and omission. Synthetic phonies roar from time to time, and the acoustic ones seem to be deeply on the defensive. The multi-threaded, electro-acoustic drone is decorated with single, prepared string sounds. The next 40 minutes pass very slowly, and the very ending gives us some additional acoustic sounds, reminding us that we are slowly returning to the real world."-Andrzej Nowak, Tribune of Spontaneous Music (translated by Google)