Relative Pitch
“This is a very intimate record; the recording makes it so. Recorded and mixed by Andy Taub, mastered by Weasel Walter, no less. Closely miked sax, Laubrock’s slightly hollow, dry tone, even austere, on the way to haunting. What you hear is breath, space, muted tonguing, a hint of the room echo, a squawk here, a gently laid tone there, a very personal saxophone. Rainey’s brushes are sweet, just enough, not too much. His cymbal touches and rim hits are measured, chasing after Laubrock, occasionally...
“The best free improvisation ensembles generally carry three characteristics: tremendous mastery by the individual instrumentalists, sympathetic listening, and instinctual timing. This quartet displays all three on this fantastic recording released by Relative Pitch. The group is comprised of Brandon Lopez (Brandon Lopez Trio, Xivaros, The Mess, Nate Wooley Quartet) on Contrabass, Matt Nelson (Battle Trance, GRID, tUnE-yArDs) on Tenor Saxophone, Andria Nicodemou (Leap of Faith, London Improvisers...
Clara Weil : vocals
Olivia Scemama : bass
Tom Malmendier : drums
“Vocals, bass, drums, Masked Pickle is three singular "voices" who express their ideas in a unique way, follow their flow but also like to break it, deconstruct the easy path of the sound by yelling, whispering, blowing, bawling, roaring, scraping, declaiming, knocking.”
The album, recorded in 2001 in Cologne, Germany, is a tremendous soundscape that focuses on the micro: dings of the glockenspiel, muted thud of prepared piano, hiss of electronics, and scrapes of percussion, played in service to the macro musical arch.
The cast is an eye-catcher: Sylvie Courvoisier on piano, prepared piano, Tony Oxley providing percussion, Bill Laswell on bass, field recordings, electronics, Miroslav Tadic on guitars, Pat Thomas on cassette player, electronics, electric keyboard....
“'Triplicates' is a series of improvisations between Zeena, playing her singular electric harp, and Jon Leideker, aka Wobbly, performing on mobile phones, tablets, booper, and mixer. Their outputs are routed to a series of simple listening devices, machines designed to sing along with the melodies they believe themselves to hearing, although they are often fascinatingly wrong.
It quickly becomes difficult to determine the boundaries of each participant’s contribution: acoustic source, electronic....