Fields cs811

Getting back to my usual daily activities here, although I still have various post-move chores pending, I do want to go ahead & note some thoughts (together in one entry) concerning a couple of new Creative Sources releases: The two programs aren't very related, although cellist Guilherme Rodrigues performs on both: He's continuing to branch out & record in different combos (including without Ernesto), and so I want to note first the intriguing electroacoustic textural explorations of (the generically titled) Fields, recorded in Berlin back in March 2022. For that outing, which can be a little thin or searching in some moments, Rodrigues is joined by a recent fixture in this space, Harri Sjöström — partly as a followup to the duo album the two recorded in 2018, The Treasures Are — as well as by Lawrence Casserley & Floris Floridis to forge a quartet. It turns out that I hadn't mentioned Floridis (here on clarinets) before, but Casserley first appeared in this space with the Valid Tractors trio (with Pat Thomas & Dominic Lash) & On the Validity of Tractors (reviewed February 2019), and then most recently with Resonant Voyaging (with Viv Corringham & Martin Hackett, reviewed August 2022): His personal development of a "signal processing instrument" has made him into a unique contributor. And then the textures on Fields are indeed reminiscent of other recent Sjöström outings, e.g. with Sergio Armaroli, and given the two-horn lineup here, especially their quartet outing with Giancarlo Schiaffini & Veli Kujala (as reviewed December 2022). And obviously I'm finding these explorations around Sjöström lately to be quite fertile.... With Fields, there're also the explicit electronic manipulations of Casserley, but some similar outcomes, most appealing perhaps when they project a kind of sparkling, twittering jungle vibe... but also leading into layered feels, shearing or bending... an abstract (sometimes metallic...) spaciness. (The twisting, spectral vibe can also evoke e.g. Dense Bushes with Delicate Chirps from Udo Schindler, as reviewed here last month, but there again acoustic & less spacey per se....) There's thus a naturalism, but also a sense of fracture — projecting an underlying sort of mystery or spectrality. And Casserley does continue to be underrecorded. Todd McComb's Jazz Thoughts