bruit |cs059

Portuguese guitarist Chambel starts with microsounds camouflaged as barely visible biotic structures but sure enough, from the second track on, hisses and hums are amplified, dissected and exploited, becoming a mirror reflecting everything that a guitar and a microphone would never want to say. Crude and naked, the electric meditations that Chambel initiates get disturbed by fiddling and scrabbling on strings and other surfaces, like if tiny animals - prisoners in a six-stringed cage - tried their best to catch the attention of the casual listener. But the most satisfying texture of the disc is indeed the progressive hypnotic pulse of the feedback drones: long moments of pre-explosion drift strain the nerves without deviating from the main course, making "Bruit" maybe the first "minimalist" release by Creative Sources, at least until the author bombards our brain with echoed distortion in the sixth movement. Massimo Ricci (Touching Extremes)

With this disc Creative Sources present a solo-work for electric guitar, by an unknown player/composer. For those who know this label it is clear that we are in the zen department of improvised music. Music that concentrates on sound in a non-rhetoric, ego-less way, often very near to silence. This is also the case for this album. Chambel makes use of unusual guitar techniques. In the case of Chambel you almost forget at moments that you are listening to a guitar. Chambel was one of the first musicians to appear on the Creative Sources label. His debut-album 'Anamnesis' (2001), also a solo-ablum for guitar, was the fourth release by this label. With 'Bruit' recorded in Lisbon (2005) Chambel presents his second work. Typical for this cd is the use of long sustained flows on the one had, and short, ever changing, little sounds on the other. The last ones make you attend for every little nuance and subtlety. In tracks 2 and 4 we find both elements combined. It didn't work for me, I must say. Compared with the album of Demand this one has more dynamic. It is a kind of electro-acoustic work because of the way Chambel makes use of microphones. The result is a very abstract music. Keith Rowe-like. All tracks start very silent. You have to become silent yourself in order to come into contact. This music works only if you want to change your listening habits. Well, may be not only these habits. Dolf Mulder (Vital)

Pedro Chambel regressa a alguns dos mais interessantes aspectos das instâncias de despojamento de linguagem sonora que usou no seu álbum de estreia (Anamnesis - CS004). Abstracção e experimentalismo continuam a ser as linhas de enquadramento da música de Chambel. Onde antes crepitavam fragmentos de ruído para-industrial, em sequências de erupções descontínuas, frequências com maior amplitude sonora e diferentes níveis de intensidade, há agora um maior investimento no silêncio e no drone eléctrico com origem no amplificador da guitarra, sobre o qual Chambel dispõe o resultado da sua meticulosa actividade com microfones. Mais maduro, despojado e incisivo que Anamnesis, em Bruit continua a reconhece-se algum parentesco estético com Keith Rowe, patente numa série de técnicas comuns de abordar o instrumento que à falta de melhor termo ainda se pode designar por guitarra eléctrica, e de onde brotam micro-sons electroacústicos e ricas texturas de ruído modulado e delicadamente integrado na corrente dronológica, reminiscente do disco anterior. Bom trabalho, este de Pedro Chambel, eventualmente mais concentrado, personalizado e comunicativo que o disco de estreia, no qual o improvisador português já deixava entrever algumas pistas de desenvolvimento para ulteriores investigações. Eduardo Chagas (Jazz e Arredores)

Pedro Chambel delivers Bruit (CS 059), the second solo guitar recording of this batch. Unlike Demand, Chambel gives himself more time to explore the guitar in these six medium length improvisations. His focus is, despite the difference of scale, on a similar range of distilled instrumental properties. On the first piece, for example, Chambel scrapes and tickles roughly prepared strings near the bridge, setting these small sounds against a backdrop of amp hum. There is an occasional thwack, twang, or input jack crackle. The second piece is a fulsome, crackling drone, and it seems to move the record in a provocative direction. The problem, however, is that the third and fourth pieces are altogether too similar, with only minor variations in the material. The fifth track, with its compelling assemblage of scrapes and rustles is far more diverting, but the disc closes with a return to the feel of the second piece. Jason Bivins (Bagatellen)

Chambel procede a um conjunto de experimentações sonoras usando como base o corpo de uma guitarra eléctrica, numa postura perante o instrumento que evoca e rememora o mítico Keith Rowe.
Denotando uma maior mestria no tratamento de drones e na sua integração com os sons que vai produzindo com o recurso a microfones, Bruit resulta num trabalho bem mais consequente e consistente que o seu letárgico predecessor. Com efeito, e apesar do recurso a uma paleta de sons bastante restrita, Chambel demonstra em Bruit novas ideias e soluções na sua abordagem, suscitando a nossa curiosidade quanto a ulteriores desenvolvimentos das suas metodologias e formulações. João Aleluia (Jazz.pt)

"Noise" is an adequate title for this solo guitar record by Portuguese musician Pedro Chambel, who has already appeared in the Creative Sources catalogue a few years ago. Not that it is extra loud (quite the opposite, actually),but it's surely based on un-musical (micro)sounds - the static feedback coming from guitar and amp, the scratching of fingers on the chords... using the guitar surface and components to produce anything but notes. Chambel is surely not breaking any new ground in the radical improvisation field, but the album has a sort of suspended feel that I quite liked - and the more physical pieces, like the feedback driven second track and the delay loops (only my guess) in the sixth one added some nice bursts of electricity. Eugenio Maggi (Chain DLK)

As the title might portend, "Bruit", from 2005, is a more rough-hewn affair. The hums are louder, more forceful, the accompanying detritus strewn with more vigor. Again, there's an eerie parallel to certain contemporaneous things involving Nakamura, like the sun-spot track from "between"--not a direct comparison but something that came to mind while listening. Things are generally pitched mid-range and below with occasional guitar-ish sounds surfacing and, as on the sixth track, some low, ringing tones that verge on the spacey. But Chambel also evinces some really fine focus, peeling off layer after layer of a given sound-area, savoring what he discovers for a few moments, then digging further. I enjoyed the earlier one more, but "Bruit" is certainly worth a listen. Bryan Olewnick (Just Outside)