Unexpected Variations cs465
[…) The Rome-based trio mix and match acoustic and electronic instruments. Ginomaria Boschi, who has worked in the past with Franco Ferguson and in New Music ensembles, plays guitar and prepared guitar; Marco Bonini, who has worked with jazzers like Roberto Gatto and Ettore Fioravanti, plays laptop and live electronics; while Ermanno Baron, who plays drums and objects here, has played with everyone from David Binney to Alipio C. Neto. Considering the instrumentation and insistence on reflective group work, Baron, Boschi and Bonini could be thought of as AMM’s Roman cousins, BBB perhaps. Evolving in real time in a concert setting, the performance’s apex is reached with “Acre Part III” and “Acre Part IV”, although the tracks are so deliberately attached that a flow is established throughout. Before the climax, an underlying drone have mixed with guitar chiming, fragmented drum whaps and elevated keyboard-source glissandi to set up the creation’s parameters. And as the modulations move from near-watery, vibrated percussion clatters, slurred guitar fingering, hollow tube-like echoes and supple oscillations gradually toughen the playing motion to reach Acre Part III” and “Acre Part IV”. With a crescendo of hair-raising cries, guttural drags and buzzing laptop-sourced glissandi, the result is spacey and grounded simultaneously with string slurs and rumbling drums finally creating a climax. This climax is highlighted by cymbal reverb which diffuses into the next track, staining the tripartite affiliation with electric voltage shakes, knife-style guitar runs and drum side scrapes. “Acre Part V” is merely a coda with instrumental balance reasserted among polyphonic and miasmatic impulses, eventually distilling the tension engendered by the crescendo with a series of keyboard splashes and percussion scrapes. Ken Waxman (Jazzword)