Un seul regard le chant pétri de beauté un mot vert  cs663

[…] Isotropy was recorded at the Small Format Materials Festival — about which I otherwise know nothing (& don't want to imply otherwise) — and so was another recent release from Rodrigues (also in March 2020), the quintet album Un seul regard le chant pétri de beauté un mot vert.... It seems like virus concerns must have been quite evident in March, but these recordings did take place, providing some sort of documentation for the time, even if no explicit reference is involved: And Un seul regard le chant pétri de beauté un mot vert is another rather subtle & wave-like album, using a process approach (presumably) to illuminate some potentially fragile relations. (And in this, it does follow the "wave" trend noted around recent albums like Setúbal & Lluvia in the prior entry....) So Un seul regard le chant pétri de beauté un mot vert involves guitarists (to continue a theme) Miguel Almeida (on acoustic, e.g. from Spiegel II as also just discussed this month, or e.g. Stratus) & André Lança (who is new to me, on electric) joining Rodrigues, Bernardo Alvares (double bass, with which he appears on long-time quartet favorite New Dynamics, as coincidentally just mentioned...) & Felice Furioso (percussion, noted here in October 2018 as part of the quartet with voice 4! on Factorial). And it begins with what sound like whistling horns, into a quiet twittering of building continuity & flow, a slow shimmering wave of expansion & contraction, with percussion almost seeming to mark the depth of dark running water... at times yielding almost a New Age vibe joined to a subtle industrial rattle. It's a relatively large ensemble, but some performers are often acting to accent a more general, otherwise murky wave — while exploring various sorts of continuity, propulsion & cresting. (Another sort of interrogation that such a performance suggests to me is between sustained tones & more fractured or percussive material: Such a basic contrast is already found in Cage, but sustained tones & different kinds of pulsation appear to be gaining a new currency of late.... One might then posit a smoothness-rupture dual particularly around notions of process.) Todd McComb's Jazz Thoughts

Acoustic and sublime minimal acoustic improvisation with an emphasis on strings from the Portuguese quintet of Ernesto Rodrigues on viola, Miguel Almeida on acoustic guitar, Andre Lanca on electric guitar, Bernardo Alvares on double bass, and Felice Furioso on percussion, performing live during the Small Format Materials Festival at Galeria Monumental, in Lisbon. (Squidco)