the muesli man |cs120

Estreia em disco do duo PRAED, do suíço Paed Conca (baixo eléctrico, clarinete e electrónica) e do libanês Raed Yassin (contrabaixo, rádio, fita magnética e electrónica). Em The Muesli Man (Creative Sources Recordings # 120) fabricação sonora a quatro mãos fornece interessantes combinações e perspectivas de entender a arte sonora no presente imediato e de perspectivar o desenho do que no futuro se pretende explorar. Musicalmente, o duo devolve-nos um olhar sofrido e irónico sobre o mundo interior e exterior (The Muesli Man…), por via de uma imagética simbólica da violência das sociedades actuais, seja ela emergente das agressões da vida urbana dos dias que correm, seja num contexto de terror e de guerra explícita (o Líbano, que também é a terra de Mazen Kerbaj e Sharif Sehnaoui, há décadas que não conhece outro ambiente), cuja brutalidade e insensatez colocam em evidência. Nessa medida, construir, desmanchar, voltar a colocar pedra sobre pedra, é um processo comum ao que se vive no dia-a-dia, no qual o que hoje parece sólido, amanhã cai por terra e tem que ser reconstruído. É dessa mesma precariedade estrutural em permanente mutação (nada se perde, nada se cria, tudo se transforma), que vive a música de Paed Conca e Raed Yassin. PRAED, termo que resulta da aglutinação dos nomes dos artistas, simboliza, em termos práticos, a convergência e a interacção entre som e imagem em directo, com particular enfoque na discussão que mantém através de práticas tradicionais na abordagem dos instrumentos e de novas formas de entender aquele relacionamento, descarnadas e desmontadas a partir de ligações restabelecidas noutros moldes a partir dos fios da memória próxima e distante.
A panorâmica beneficia de uma gestão ampla do espaço acústico, no qual os artistas vão colocando os sinais sonoros de forma dinâmica, como actores que em palco representam diferentes papéis, ora afastando-se para dar lugar ao outro, ora sobrepondo o discurso. É deste modus operandi, assente na variedade de estímulos proposta e a assertividade da sua produção em tempo real, que nasce a marca da originalidade da música do PRAED. Ela assenta numa contínua exposição das ideias entre o som natural do clarinete e do contrabaixo e a alteração por via electrónica, desconjuntado e espalhado em fragmentos de novo amalgamados com sons de televisão, rádio, ruídos esparsos com que polvilham as texturas que se vão sobrepondo. Os diversos níveis de leitura que The Muesli Man fomenta começam a tornar-se nítidos a partir da terceira audição. Eduardo Chagas (Jazz e Arredores)

(...) Ani jednego zbednego dzwieku nie zapisal natomiast na swej debiutanckiej plycie "The Muesli Man" (CS 120) libansko-szwajcarski duet Praed. Dwójka muzyków, klarnecista i gitarzysta basowy Paed Conca oraz kontrabasista Raed Yassin, otoczyla swoje mikro- i makro-improwizacje magma sampli, elektronicznych szumów i szmerów, fragmentów sciezek dzwiekowych filmów, itp., tworzac surrealistyczne (po)tworki o amorficznej formie i (ponad)dzwiekowym rozpasaniu. Wydaje mi sie, ze gdyby Laswellowskie "Basslines" ozenic z bezbitowym Muslimgauze'm, sprawiajac jednoczesnie, by calosc zadrzala w rytmicznych posadach, to rezultat nie bylby wcale bardzo odlegly od "The Muesli Man". (...) Tadeusz Kosiek (Diapazon)

An unsettling sleeve, featuring photos of terrified looks, cruel punishments and sadistic facial expressions, hides a somewhat strange album by Praed, aka Paed Conca, of Blast fame, on electric bass, clarinet and electronics and Raed Yassin, best known as a playing partner of trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj, on double bass, tapes and electronics. It's a patchy collection, hypothetically divided into two "sides" like an LP (the whole clocks in at LP length – 45 minutes – too). The schizophrenic suite "The Man Who Lost All His Friends (With Japanese Subtitles)" consists of 34 short episodes in which effective tape work and looped splinters form the nucleus of a music without respite in its continuous development. And when the illusion of repose appears, tricky manipulations, cantankerously inharmonious figurations and percussive exploitation of the strings keep the senses ever primed for action. The remaining tracks more or less follow the same pattern, with effective use of TV and radio morsels by Yassin, who incorporates popular themes and Arabic melodies into the duo's crusty disfigurations of veracity. The overall sound quality is pretty medium-fi, but you can consider that a plus, since Praed steer well clear of modishness and lacquer, wallowing in mud and dirt instead. The result is a sonic mumbo-jumbo that's relatively distinctive, if not exactly pioneering. Massimo Ricci (Paris Transatlantic)

Praed is Paed Conca on electric bass, clarinet and electronics and Raed Yassin on double bass, tapes and electronics conjuring up soundtracks to movies for your ears. The lead track "The Man Who Lost All His Friends (with japanese subtitles)", is split up into 34 (!) short pieces that sometimes dovetail together and sometimes change abruptly like the scene changes in a dream. It starts with a smash and continues with bass improvisation accompanied by gunshots, explosions and anxious vocalizing before stacking together rumbles and, in succession: slides; string bounce with electronics and hisses; clarinet notes and loops; basses and percussives; clarinet and dialogue in some unknown language; bass strumming and electronics; breathy and tube-sound; taped music looped with clarinet and hiss; scraped strings with rumbling percussives. This is all in the first 2 minutes, a dizzying collection of short scenes that continues to surprise.
The remainder of the pieces adheres to this abrupt juxtapositioning style, but the sections between changes are a bit longer and there's more development. "Bambi, Bambi" begins with a loop of middle-eastern pop music that's gradually swallowed in glitchy static, which stops for a short bass solo before whistling electronics fade in with percussive clacks and pie-tin rattling rhythms. This fades out to bass notes and distorted backwards singing. It ends with a marbles in mouth and bass coda.
These chaps manage to keep things interesting with modest means, juggling conventional instrumental sounds with more abstract sources. I listen forward to more. Jeph Jerman (The Squid's Ear)

Without making too much of the correlation, it’s likely that the filmic involvement shared by Beirut-based bassist and electronics manipulator Raed Yassin and electric bassist and clarinetist Paed Conca from Bern – the duo Praed – combine to make The Muesli Man one of the most sonically cinematic recent releases.
Melding found and sampled sounds plus additional triggered electronic bursts and emphasized timbres from their acoustic instruments, the duo’s achievement is also notable because the CD’s aural imagery doesn’t even suggest the wide-screen story telling of cinemascope or HDTV. Instead, the split-second jump cuts, rapid editing and tincture blending that have long characterized experimental film making are expressed aurally on this notable disc.
Reminiscent of some of John Zorn’s 1980s sound collages, careful listening is recommended to pick up all the allusions and interjections incorporated into the session’s 40 short tracks. Throughout, the vector of the production changes direction so often that a new timbre often gallops onto the aural sound stage before the listener has fully grasped the pictorialist significance of the preceding one.
Yassin, associated with Lebandon’s MILL association for improvised music – whose members include trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj and guitarist Sharif Sehnaoui – is also a theatre and video artist. A decade older, Conca, who regularly composes for theatre and film productions, works in addition with the musicians such as Swiss reedist Hans Koch and British bassist John Edwards, and has also played with Kerbaj and Sehnaoui.
Cunningly the booklet graphics for The Muesli Man play with Asian and Middle Eastern stereotypes and bring into focus many of the musical inferences expressed on the disc. Along with improvised, notated, minimalist and electro-acoustic impulses, the blurry samples most consistently utilized here are evidently sourced from those areas’ most celebrated productions: Japanese action films and Arabic cinema singing. This transformation is especially obvious on “The Man who lost all his Friends (with Japanese Subtitles)”, a cut-and-paste tour de force, which takes up the CD’s first 34 (!) tracks. Its multi-faceted resonance alters in multiples of seconds – not minutes.
Nuanced and deconstructed, this sonic film begins with what sounds like a rifle shot and concludes with a locomotive whistle dissolving intro sobbing clarinet intonation – another cinematic allusion. Along the way, the polyphonic production involves such split-screen commentary as curvaceous clarinet trills balancing on top of piston-like electronic drives; reed pops and blunt bass thumps intersecting with Japanese dialogue; a sequence encompassing radio static, Arabic music and backwards running tapes; heraldic trumpet samples abutting Europeanized clarinet glissandi – and what sounds like pressurized pop bottle caps being released.
Modernism, traditionalism, primitivism and post-modernism constantly vie for aural supremacy, with triggered oscillations and muezzin-inspired chanting mated at one point; stereotypical Oriental cackling and a gentle Lebanese lullaby contrasted at another; or replicated California-style surf bass guitar runs introducing agitato reed chirps, sawing string impulses, pitch and velocity-altered soundtrack dialogue, bell pealing and abrasive buzzing timbres. Before the final fade-to-black in fact, the penultimate variations reintroduce non-sound-manipulated acoustic sequences with electronic flanges underlining a broken octave exploration between vibrating clarinet and thumping bass.
Arrayed throughout the remaining tracks are further variations on these themes. Additional studio and laptop triggered signals are mixed in with blustery and blurry shrills, electronically reworked vocal and orchestral outbursts plus shuffle-bowed and slapped string lines, faint reed slurs, and recreations of percussion ratamacues and ruffs.
“Half a Rabbit, Probably” provides the proper summation of the project. Built on spherical interplay, the fortissimo, undulating textures on the track evolve into neatly wrenched-apart drones that by its finale almost obliterate the flanged bass-string tones and single-stroke percussion that precede it. As metal abrasions meet bulky clangs, a machine-processed explosion succeeds a signal-processed wave and wraps up the interface.
If well-made indie films can have sequels, so should indie filmic CDs. Perhaps it’s now time for collective auteur Praed to create an equally stirring follow-up to The Muesli Man. Ken Waxman (JazzWord)

Paed Conca to cz?owiek, w którego muzyce zakocha?e³m sie³ na zapomnianym juz² nieco festiwalu Muzyka w Krajobrazie w 1998. od tamtego czasu zda³z²y?em sie³ z nim zaprzyjaz´nic´ i wydac´ bootleg tamtego wydawnictwa w mojej wytwórni.
co od tamtego czasu sie zmieni?o?
Paed wcia³z² uk?ada swoja³ muze³ bazuja³c na brzmieniu tego samego starego miksera jakiejs´ dziwnej w?oskiej firmy ;-), basu, klarnetu itp. Tu mamy do czynienia z nienachalnie budowana³ narracja³ pomie³dzy Conca³ a Raedem Yassinem. ma?o zbe³dnych dz´wie³ków, ogromne zgranie buduje historie bez zbytniej ilos´ci ha?asu czy sztampy. Kolejna p?yta ktora ucieka od sztampy sonorystycznych impro popisów i daje to co chyba w muzyce jest najwaz²niejsze...opowies´c´. Astipalea Records (Felthat)