eterno retorno |cs144

At its best, a churning, scratchy mass, like being in some kind of hay-vortex. The density level varies, gradually thinning out, but the quality remains consistent, the instruments achieving a fine cohesion, the activity maybe a tad busier than my eai-self is comfortable with, but always moving forward. Nice improv record, about halfway between eai and efi, which would make it about ec/di. Brian Olewnick (Just Outside)

I really like the style of free improvisation adopted by Ernesto (viola) and Guilherme (cello) Rodrigues, the Portuguese father-son duo. On this, they form a quartet with electronician Carlos Santos and percussionist Andrew Drury. Improvisation that draws and retains your attention, its games of interplay and silence weaving a soundworld that has a lot of depth and an extremely flexible timeline. Good work from Drury, whose minute playing mimicks the strokes and scratches of the strings. Santos’ electronics are subtle and tasteful. A demanding but revelatory listen. François Couture (Monsieur Delire)

[...] The second Rodrigues related album I listened to today was recorded in the same studio by the same engineer three years later and released late 2008. The comparisons probably end there though. Eterno Retorno is a recording made by the quartet of Ernesto and Guilherme, (viola and cello as usual) alongside Carlos Santos’ electronics and Andrew Drury’s percussion. Drury is a new name to me, but a quick google shows him to be a Brooklyn based percussionist with an instrumental free improv background. Santos’ music I have heard before, most recently as part of the Twrf Neus Ciglau quintet I wrote about here. The four tracks that make up Eterno Retorno are more expansive, varied constructions than the focussed interplay of Sen. The strings are played more traditionally, still avoiding melody and tonality but with more colour than the scrapes and shudders of the earlier album. Santos’ gritty electronics buzz, hum and crackle away to one side, often difficult to separate from Drury’s percussion, which seems to consist of small flurries of small sounds, often with quite a distant presence to them, though this may just be a result of the recording or mastering processes.
I struggled to connect with this CD. There is plenty going on, perhaps too much really, and little feels solid or direct enough to really give the music character beyond the mass of different sounds. It isn’t easy listening at all, many of the sounds grate a little, and often the combination of the four musicians playing feels unnecessarily cluttered. There is little room for individual sounds to breathe, and as a result for much of the time it is hard to follow the music in a way that allows you to connect with its separate parts. There are of course good moments, but as so much comes and goes thick and fast they get a little lost along the way. The fourth track, named Many Happy Returns (that’s the most normal track title there too! Good Dog, Cookie anyone?) is by some distance my favourite. Things slow down a little here and the music is allowed a little air. The contributions from each musician here sound more considered, determined to shape the overall character of the track rather than merely pile on top of the others. Sadly though only one quarter of the disc comes across in this way.
When I take a look at my CD shelves here as I put these discs away I note that I have quite a few releases involving Ernesto and Guilherme, mostly obviously on their Creative Sources imprint. Looking across them there is quite a range of musical styles and collaborations amongst them. They have established quite some history between them now, and a considerable, often very strong body of work. The depth and variety in their catalogue is likely to be overlooked as people find it easier to pass by the CS label rather than negotiate a way through it, and that is a shame, as there is a lot here that would interest a much wider audience than they probably have now. Richard Pinnell (The Watchful Ear)

The title of this album translates to “Perpetual Return”, an apt phrase to describe how this whole free improvisation session seems to revolve around a small number of sounds. The gritting high-pressured bowing of Ernesto Rodrigues (on viola) and tick-tock bow-on-wood playing of Guilherme Rodrigues (cello) provide the album’s core, its soul, its vaguely haunted house-like atmosphere. Carlos Santos’ electronics shake things up, introducing alien sounds, unpredictable swirls, and bits of noise that attach themselves to the other instrumentalists’ work. Percussionist Andrew Drury adds scraping and brushing sounds, playing the ghost in an already ghostly machine. Eterno Retorno is a strong album with a clearly defined atmosphere and sharp interaction. It is also a very demanding record, because there is a lot happening at low volume, over long periods of time. The quartet may be a bit too faithful to their idea of what they should sound like, but “Street Food” and “Many Happy Returns” are powerfully disturbing pieces of quiet improvisation. The Rodrigueses have developed into a tightly-fused string duo, something unique in the field of free improvisation. François Couture (All Music Guide)

The somewhat stable trio composed by the Rodrigueses (as usual, Ernesto on viola and Guilherme on cello) and electronic wizard Santos is joined by percussionist Drury in this recording dated October 2007. The first track “Street Food” begins with an almost silent interchange of plucking, scraping and clicking activities, soon evolving in a growingly powerful amassment of rattles, roars and growls that express a sort of extremely nervous joie de vivre. Initialy, “Good Dog, Cookie” – great title, by the way – privileges slightly perceivable string harmonics caressed by Drury’s bowed tuned instruments and pierced by Santos’ ultrasonic methods. The attractiveness of these intricacies is directly proportional to a degree of politeness, which informs the interplay even in the timbral extremities analyzed by the participants. The subsequent shift to mutable soundscapes characterized by unquiet stasis and involuntary mesmerism appears as a natural development.
“Adamant Distances” features a splendidly evocative juxtaposition of distantly fragile glissandos, a seesaw of perturbed melancholy and profanation of silence sounding like the scattered remnants of an orchestra whose members have been engaging in a battle for survival, this time won by the deepest, not by the smartest individuals. The “minimalist” pattern rising around the fourth minute onwards seem to mock Michael Nyman but is immediately replaced by a cross-pollination of droning arco and irrepressible uproar, the improvisation landing in the unfathomable enthralment generated by the chiselling of unusual tones. “Many Happy Returns” ends the display with a gathering of whispers, murmurs and infinitesimal pecking, forgetting pitch in favour of something more akin to rain drops in a quiet forest, subsequently substituted by handfuls of atomic tremolos and zippy cracklings, the whole secluded in rasping-and-whirring remoteness.
Once again, the art of unrehearsed spontaneity gives birth to a refined object for the merriment of ears that don’t grow tired of listening to musicians who, despite lots of unwarranted criticism (mostly aimed at the appropriation of the market chunk occupied by their releases), are still unafraid of showing what they’re made of, including weaknesses and - above all - strengths. The somewhat stable trio composed by the Rodrigueses (as usual, Ernesto on viola and Guilherme on cello) and electronic wizard Santos is joined by percussionist Drury in this recording dated October 2007. The first track “Street Food” begins with an almost silent interchange of plucking, scraping and clicking activities, soon evolving in a growingly powerful amassment of rattles, roars and growls that express a sort of extremely nervous joie de vivre. Initialy, “Good Dog, Cookie” – great title, by the way – privileges slightly perceivable string harmonics caressed by Drury’s bowed tuned instruments and pierced by Santos’ ultrasonic methods. The attractiveness of these intricacies is directly proportional to a degree of politeness, which informs the interplay even in the timbral extremities analyzed by the participants. The subsequent shift to mutable soundscapes characterized by unquiet stasis and involuntary mesmerism appears as a natural development.
“Adamant Distances” features a splendidly evocative juxtaposition of distantly fragile glissandos, a seesaw of perturbed melancholy and profanation of silence sounding like the scattered remnants of an orchestra whose members have been engaging in a battle for survival, this time won by the deepest, not by the smartest individuals. The “minimalist” pattern rising around the fourth minute onwards seem to mock Michael Nyman but is immediately replaced by a cross-pollination of droning arco and irrepressible uproar, the improvisation landing in the unfathomable enthralment generated by the chiselling of unusual tones. “Many Happy Returns” ends the display with a gathering of whispers, murmurs and infinitesimal pecking, forgetting pitch in favour of something more akin to rain drops in a quiet forest, subsequently substituted by handfuls of atomic tremolos and zippy cracklings, the whole secluded in rasping-and-whirring remoteness.
Once again, the art of unrehearsed spontaneity gives birth to a refined object for the merriment of ears that don’t grow tired of listening to musicians who, despite lots of unwarranted criticism (mostly aimed at the appropriation of the market chunk occupied by their releases), are still unafraid of showing what they’re made of, including weaknesses and - above all - strengths. Massimo Ricci (Touching Extremes)

Creative Sources is a Portuguese label largely devoted to free improvisation. Over the past decade it has released over 150 CDs, making it one of the most active labels devoted to a demanding genre. Founded by violist Ernesto Rodrigues, the label frequently documents his work, along with his regular musical partners. Eterno Retorno, recorded in Lisbon in 2007, presents a quartet with Rodrigues and two frequent collaborators—his son, cellist Guilherme Rodrigues, and electronic musician Carlos Santos, along with Brooklyn-based percussionist Andrew Drury. Drury has worked across a spectrum of avant-jazz, free improvisation and environmental and community music projects, but it's still remarkable to hear how effectively he matches up with three musicians already closely attuned to one another's processes.
The music is insistently freely improvised, form not a given but belonging instead to the ultimate realization. Close listening will usually prove sufficient to separate individual sound sources, but there are moments when the expanded vocabularies of the acoustic instruments will cross into the realm of Santos' electronics. There's a certain assumption that much improvised music sounds and operates in the same way, but this quartet suggests something almost diametrically opposed. Each genuine encounter provides an opportunity to listen in a new way. The four musicians work through dynamics of familiarity and difference, each testing known relationships between sounds and patterns with new elements. While each of the four will sometimes focus determinedly on a particular element, there is rarely any effort to mimic or accompany another.

Without imitation of parts or conventional concordance of harmony or rhythm, the closeness consists instead of a certain working through of relationships between both space and density, which exist here on a scale that can suggest very large traditional orchestras. Moments of convergence between strings and percussion suggest both close relationship and tremendous space, enough space to allow the parts to coexist and interact without establishing a traditionally coded musical language. The animated electronics and percussion at the conclusion of "Adamant Distances" are genuinely exciting, a highlight of music that is an adventure for the musicians and listeners alike. Stuart Broomer (All About Jazz)

Eterno Retorno, c'est Ernesto Rodrigues toujours à l'alto, avec son fils Guilherme au violoncelle, le fidèle Carlos Santos à l'électronique, et Andrew Drury aux percussions. Etrange référence à Nietzsche, car pour une fois, la musique de ce quartet est presque pulsée, du fait des percussions d'un côté, mais également de notes répétées frénétiquement aux cordes. Les quatre improvisations qui forment Eterno Retorno sont, contre toute attente, placées sous le signe d'une pulsation sous-jacente et implicite contrairement aux improvisations beaucoup plus texturales auxquelles nous ont habitués ce collectif d'improvisateurs, portugais pour la plupart.

Street Food, la pièce qui ouvre le bal, nous plonge directement dans un territoire agressif et énergique. Cordes et peaux sont frottées avec virulence, quand elles ne sont pas violemment percutées, et Carlos Santos n'hésite pas à en rajouter une couche avec des envolées analogiques intenses. Une improvisation extrêmement énergique, basée sur une intensité constamment soutenue et une atmosphère saturée, une ambiance d'une violence plus proche de la noise que de l'improvisation électroacoustique. Superbe. C'est ensuite que les choses se gâtent, l'espace se fait plus aéré, les interventions sont plus discrètes et plus douces. Il y a une bonne écoute entre les musiciens certes, mais le manque de relief et d'intensité, cette linéarité, produisent plus une sensation de lassitude et d'ennui que de tension. J'ai beau écouté et réécouté ce disque, pas moyen d'accrocher à toutes petites interventions discrètes et délicates qui ne font pas sens. Le dialogue est équilibré et sensé entre les musiciens certes, mais aucune forme ne surgit, l'intensité reste la même, et c'est un sentiment de monotonie qui finit par prendre le dessus.

Globalement, il y a une très bonne homogénéité dans le son de groupe, chacun sait se confondre ou se plonger dans le collectif, et les réponses sont souvent justes. Le problème vient surtout d'une trop grosse linéarité qui paraît avoir du mal à s'assumer. Tout le contraire de cette première pièce incroyable, cette pièce puissante et pleine de relief, qui ne laisse pas présager cette suite décevante. Ceci-dit, il y a tout de même quelques moments de tensions réussis (notamment sur la troisième pièce: Adamant Distances), où l'intensité est assez soutenue par rapport au reste des improvisations, mais la plupart du temps, c'est quand même une trop grande linéarité qui règne. Un disque auquel je suis assez indifférent... très mitigé. hjulien (ImprovSphere)