sen |cs033

While Ernesto and Guilherme Rodrigues are featured on their customary instruments (viola, cello and pocket trumpet) Toshihiro Koike - whose playing I meet for the first time - is a trombonist, here strategically placed at the centre of the stereo field in the mix, with father and son sharing the left and right channels. "Sen" is one of those episodes in which the sum of the parts gives exactly what expected; starting from pretty disciplined arco dragging, we walk across a series of sonic circumstances ranging from the über-shrilling to the acceptably dissonant, with the strings working as producers of feeble harmonics, metallic caressing and snapping bounces while Koike alternates various kinds of techniques to produce sounds that are influenced both by the gurgling liquids of the mouth and the belching, droning rumble of air pressure into the instrument's tubes. These timbral associations are not exactly new in terms of surprising results but give a pretty defined idea about the places the artists decide to stop in, their interest in combinations and parallelisms of harshness and malleability ever informed by their reciprocal listening capabilities. A little colder than other collectives involving the Rodrigueses, these two improvisations must be taken for what they are: experiments without any pretence of philosophical or ideological interpretation, much less aesthetic meaning - even if they do express an aesthetic of sorts. Massimo Ricci (Touching Extremes)

The context is still that of electro-acoustic improvisation, the language is quite mature, I really like the way it all sounds, it's tight and soft but above all it's slow if you're confidential with this kind of music, let's say they barely play. While wondering if in contemporary improvisation there's a sort of unsaid fear of sounding "melodic" some of these radical sketches this trio draws while improvising, become almost expressive: it means while giving a sounds to the unspoken voice of their instruments they do it keeping in mind a voice is generally meant to articulate a sort of communication or a proper dialogue. While the recording is not completely clean since you have that sort of ambiental buzz typical of live recordings (but this a studio one), it fits really well with the sound of this trio since it has a good definition and at the same time is incredibly warm. While the first of these two suites is more quiet, the second one starts more incisively and pictures the players involved in a most vigorous way of playing, but don't worry it doesn't imply they become neither aggressive nor free (meant in a way jazz solos/jams are meant). This cd follows the philosophy of a few sound floating in the air for a suitable amount of time, I mean you won't hear your usual short acoustical strikes as if there was an earthquake going on in the middle of the studio. Sometimes I've caught myself thinking they could have reduced these two long tracks in a number of minor episodes, but I think they wanted to freeze the whole momentum/experience of the recording session and if that's the reason, no one can blame them for this choice. Andrea Ferraris (Chain DLK)