Basalto
the black rocks resulting from lava, the music is hard, organic,
ungiving, harsh and structured around a tonal center without much
variation except for the timbral shifts grinding like tectonic plates
under severe pressure, yet without any hope to get release from the
relentless tension. Ernesto Rodrigues plays octave viola and baritone
viola, Abdul Moimême is on electric guitar and Antez plays percussion,
although it is hard to identify what sounds come from which instrument
on the two long tracks. The music creates a sonic universe that is
broad and deep, giving something fundamental and strange, like the
status of our planet even before life came to be, when only rocks and
water and air and fire were fighting slowly and majestically and
unavoidably for their own space.
http://www.freejazzblog.org/2017
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Malasana
The first item’s a group coalition, featuring Antez, Mathieu Calleja,
García and Artur Vidal, calling themselves Malasaña for this outing.
Malasaña is a thriving part of Madrid which can safely claim to be as
hip as the Lower East Side, Brixton Market and Brighton’s Trafalgar
Street put together. More to the point, it has a proud history of
“unrest and civil disobedience”, going back to the time of Goya. In
this hymn to the glories of the fallen of Malasaña, two percussionists,
electronic fizz, and a saxophone are used; it’s like a slower and
colder version of AMM with added digital scrunch, but the team
gradually begin to thaw out and deposit huge chunks of ice in the
frozen waters. These long and portentous groaning tones, with a lot of
metallic flavour in mix, tend to create the impression of solemn cranes
hauling bundles of stern frowning men from the cargo hold of a gigantic
container ship onto the harbourside. There’s a world shortage of
“seriousness” now; poorer countries have to import it in bulk,
conforming to international trade agreements, or even worse they must
attempt to smuggle it in.
The Sound Projector.04/05/2015