(hail satan) |cs093

Piano (Magda Mayas), contrabaixo (Koen Nutters), percussão (Morten J. Olsen) e clarinete baixo (Carlos Galvez Taroncher), tocados por uma alemã, um holandês, um norueguês e um espanhol. A música de Mayas / Nutters / Olsen / Galvez, que fez sensação no festival Total Music Meeting de 2005, tem raízes na Escola Britânica de livre-improvisação pós-Spontaneous Music Ensemble (SME), de base acústica, algo que hoje em dia se ouve cada vez menos dissociado da electrónica. Tenha-se presente como ponto de referência e de partida o SME mais abstracto e vagaroso na progressão. Todas as nove peças do disco incluem idêntica participação dos membros do quarteto, o que, além de enriquecer a criação musical, coloca-a para além dos limites do vocabulário que as diferentes convenções foram sedimentando. A ideia com que se fica é que a música de On Creative Sources (Hail Satan) (cs093) tanto poderia ser composta no instante em que se executa, como penso que foi, como poderia ter sido previamente escrita, processo em linha com o da composição contemporânea. Seja como for, o que releva é que a obra testemunha a admiração do quarteto pela memória da música improvisada europeia, assim como participa de uma multiplicidade de referências musicais relacionadas com o Séc. XX, as mais emergentes das quais talvez sejam as do norte-americano Morton Feldman e a do austríaco Anton Webern, cuja presença se plasma na lentidão fragmentária com que o cortejo progride, e no ambiente soturno, enevoado e carregado de partículas de humidade que atravessa o disco do princípio ao fim. Globalmente, os quatro músicos preferem a contenção à loquacidade. Outro tipo de emoção que se adensa no olhar sobre o timbre, sem perder o fio à meada narrativa, na arte de intervalar silêncios com notas curtas, pontilhismo que preserva a concentração no equilíbrio e na proporção, sem descurar a musicalidade. Apesar de inspirada em sinais que lhe chegam de outros tempos, a obra consegue evidenciar uma poderosa radicalidade criativa, engenho artístico e confecção apurada. Eduardo Chagas (Jazz e Arredores)

[...] On (Hail Satan), a recent quartet album on Creative Sources with MoHa! drummer Morton J. Olsen, bassist Koen Nutters, and bass clarinetist Carlos Galvez Taroncher, she demonstrates a taste for extreme dynamics and an indefatigable curiosity for the piano’s unconventional possibilities. She frequently tinkers inside the instrument, scraping and thwacking its strings, and even when she just hammers on the low keys she creates a compelling tactililty, a sense of the piano as a physical object with a multitude of textures and surfaces. [...] Peter Margasak (Chicago Reader)

Good, there’s no trace of Satanism here thus if you were wishing to hear this portuguese label deranging toward dark ambient, black metal or esoterism...well you’d better leave your expectations back home. Much more than to pentagrams and upside down crosses these musicians are probably devoted to irony and in someway this could be reflected by their music too, infact if you give a listen to nine tracks of this work you’ll notice while their music is dead serious the atmosphere is never too heavy immersed in that hyper-intellectualizations that makes half of the work coming out from this circuit heavier than death. To clear up your doubts I’ll say immediately the scenario is that of electro-acoustic improvisation in someway it’s quite similar to many works from the same area, but the recording is damn good and they apply an interesting use of some sounds like hisses or percussive part. From their improvisational style I’d say they have a foot in the grave of jazz and thumbs up for it but also to the fact they’ve been alternating tracks quite smartly so you won’t get bored by this or that silence for they play, for jazz’ sake!. It’s good to hear they kept fun not just in the title but also in the way they interact and that’s why their music is not the heir of a frigid idea above all in the most animated tracks. But before closing this review I wonna show you what an unreliable reviewer I’m (c’mon who can you trust nowadays?...“disappointed a few people” like John Lydon...you can bet it!) the best song of the record is “pitch IV” which is the result of two dark minutes deeply immersed into contemporary classic music that creates an intense odd atmosphere that builds up some anxiety. Andrea Ferraris (Chain DLK)

Should we take the album's title as a pun on famous jazz editions? Just asking, because this quartet for piano (Mayas), double bass (Nutters), percussion (Olsen) and bass clarinet (Galvez) is an unambiguous look back to the origins of Ernesto Rodrigues' imprint, the years in which even the less audacious among the improvisational units were beginning to take account of the extended techniques that are considered as a given nowadays in their "impromptu repertoire", although they probably sounded fresher at that time. EAI was starting to develop its (frail) muscle, and everything from the scraped strings of a piano to the exploration of the over-acute regions of a reed instrument was saluted as innovation. I'm not telling that this album sounds dated, not at all. The four musicians regard the entire palette of their machines as a permanent source of timbral fulfilment, implying a perceptible eagerness and an attitude unmistakably defined by eloquent track titles ("Pitch", "Non Pitch", "Loose Surface", and so forth). The adjustment of a pair of ears with these sequences of well-positioned swaps - whose qualities range from oversensitive give-and-take to mildly surprising intermissions breaking quasi-hushed settings - comes pretty effortlessly. Neither a real zenith, nor new tricks to get wonderment from are to be individuated; instead, this is an unswerving action of examination of instrumental dynamics all over 38 minutes. True, we've heard numerous correlated records in the last decade, but this particular one is very good. It emanates integrity, and that's what this listener loved more than anything else. Massimo Ricci (Touching Extremes)

Les titres, non-pitch I (fast), intervals and externals (medium), intervals and externals II (fast), loose surface I (high end) etc…, ressemblent à des indications de la main d’un compositeur. Ne vous fiez pas à ce que pourraient évoquer ces titres « études » ou « exercices de style » contemporain. Sur la pochette, des chaises (en rotin de paille) évoquent des tours de chaises musicales … La musique est assurément ludique et tournoie, offrant des modes de jeu peu entendus ailleurs. Il suffit d’observer comment le centre de gravité se déplace d’un instrumentiste à l’autre en alternance avec leurs silences brefs et spontanés pour se faire une idée de la qualité de ce groupe. Peu importe que ces musiciens soient « extraordinaires » ou pas, c’est au sein de ce quartet particulier que chacun et tous à la fois révèlent une dimension rare de l’improvisation collective, vécue comme une composition en temps réel. Ils s’imposent des paramètres particuliers qui régissent leur jeu d’ensemble et son interactivité. Même s’il n’a pas la prétention de chambouler le paysage musical et d’être un groupe « important », le quartet de Magda Mayas, piano, Koen Nutters, contrebasse, Morten J. Olsen, percussion et Carlos Galvez Taroncher, clarinette basse offre ici une vision de l’improvisation musicale (ou de la musique improvisée ou de la musique tout court) aussi originale et aussi authentique que, par exemple, le Face to Face du SME de Trevor Watts et John Stevens, le trio Butcher / Durrant / Russell , groupes avec lesquels il partage un sens de la forme, un esprit similaire dans le processus de construction de la musique en temps réel. A écouter. Signalons aussi Gold, le duo rafraîchissant de Magda Mayas et de Tony Buck sur le même label Creative Sources. Jean-Michel van Schouwburg (Improjazz)