CD – Creative Sources Recordings – CS 858, Lisbon 2024
Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg - Voice
Nuno Torres - Alto Saxophone
Ernesto Rodrigues - Viola, Crackle Box
João Madeira - Double Bass
Carlos Santos - Modular Synthesizer
Recorded December 2024, Lisbon
Cover design Carlos Santos
Reviews
Ernesto Rodrigues, one of the most prolific & influential musicians in this space in recent years, was last noted here (in November) with the trio album Spleen (with Portuguese veteran free improvisers Carlos Zíngaro & Carlos Bechegas, recorded last September... with a vibe of conversational venting) alongside another trio album produced by bassist João Madeira (also with Zíngaro...), Trizmaris. Shortly before that, I'd reviewed the double trio album Whispers in the Moonlight (in October), but that was actually recorded (together with alto saxist Nuno Torres...) back in 2022.... But before that, there were consecutive reviews last May for the very current This Full Mouth (recorded that March with US percussionist Ben Bennett) & Cobra (recorded in May, the return of Lisbon String Trio, there with Carlos Santos on synth), the latter projecting a sort of coiled intensity.... After some other projects in the second half of last year that didn't resonate with me individually to the same degree — although e.g. the more recent Caesium from Isotope Ensemble (albeit quite short, recorded in November), projects real mastery, almost a cool jazz tune emerging from the large ensemble... — Rodrigues is back now with a particularly compelling & creative update within what I might well characterize as the post-Cage improvisation space: La rambarde des songes, les congruences des soupirs (recorded last December) pairs Belgian vocalist (& music critic, e.g. who reviewed Rodrigues' recent trio with Santos & Miguel Mira, The knowledge that our time is limited can inspire us, recorded in October...) Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg with Rodrigues (also on crackle box, increasingly a fixture...) & three of his most frequent (as just cited...) Portuguese collaborators, Torres & Madeira & Santos. However, these musicians aren't obvious by ear here, even Rodrigues himself, his characteristic string figures often sounding so familiar to me, his & others' sounds & interactions seemingly transformed & sculpted by Van Schouwburg's generally quiet vocalizations. (There's some whistling to open....) And Van Schouwburg (b.1955) had been reviewed here with The Bellowing Earwigs quartet & their FMR album The Perpendicular Giraffe Compartment (recorded in 2015 & reviewed in August 2020), but does have more of a discography over the years: Corps et Biens (recorded in November 2023) with Lawrence Casserley on "signal processing" had only recently appeared on Creative Sources, for instance, a non-sparse album filling textures with vocal snippets via looping, indeed a followup to the duo's first album MouthWind (recorded in 2010) — so taking almost an opposite approach to the quintet on La rambarde.... (Yet their trio adding pianist Yoko Miura, Sverdrup Balance is again rather more sparse, at least per its second album Arcturus, also released in 2020 by FMR....) It does seem then that Van Schouwburg takes on much of the sound & approach of whatever colleagues he's performing with, but in the case of La rambarde... — an album including vertigo-inducing "nautical" photos, for some reason... — the stylistic adjustments certainly go both ways. (The result is different too from my most recent "favorite" from Rodrigues with a prominent vocalist, L'âge de l'oreille with its string duo — including son Guilherme, branching out himself more lately... — around Ute Wassermann, who tends rather more to the foreground....) La rambarde... is then a relatively quiet album, open in its approach, i.e. gathering & shaping ideas toward an unknown outcome..., also featuring what I've been calling "timbral braiding," the close intertwining of extended techniques into different sounding (& in this case often breathy & ethereal...) lines & timbres. I hear it as both creative & accomplished in that regard, moreover evoking & interrogating various of the affective references (& resonances...) available from the human voice per se, but also as searching. Turning back to septet Stratus then (first reviewed here January 2019), the landmark timbral synthesis from Rodrigues illuminates various shadings of light, with Santos involved on synth there too, not often distinctly noticeable, but clarifying (& filling) spectral relations & colorings — along what seems to have been a slow road for him to occupy more of the center of a group sound complex (as consummated I suppose with Cobra, although even there often offering various support from the background...). Whereas on La rambarde..., Santos offers a real burst of "foreground synth" early in the proceedings, the most jarring moment in the whole tapestry, then proceeds again to integrate more into the overall timbral space being articulated.... (There's crackle box too, not usually discernible separately. Nor often is sax, for that matter!) The generally quiet result then sometimes involves more assertive articulations, but maintains its sense of mystery too. As opposed to most of the albums that I review here, which tend to make a strong first impression, it also took a couple of hearings really to enter the multi-dimensional space cultivated by the quintet, and e.g. the sudden roar of my furnace can tend to obliterate it.... Yet not entirely, as I find returning to listen to La rambarde... after interruption to be satisfying too... to where I almost wish it lasted for hours. There's something of a sense of "filling time" then, the reason I raised notions of post-Cage space: Even though Cage himself rejected improvisation per se in his work, (I still think that) that had much to do with the tendency for improvisers to return to particular idioms (of comfort), something that's much less of an issue today.... But there's also that sense of quiet, of extending time itself, of a sort of sonic tapestry for life.... Cage's music lets go of ego — facilitates letting go of ego... — & that's a big part of the success of (the recorded live...) La rambarde... too, especially revolving around the human voice — here seemingly at the root of everything, yet never dominating. By its end, the music remains uncontoured (to quote my spontaneous note...), i.e. the listener's mind remains unformatted, but rather retains a receptivity instead.... And of course Rodrigues has often explored post-Cage spaces, explicitly (e.g. in the somewhat analogous Distilling Silence, also breathy & involving electronics...) or implicitly, as well as (what I've taken to be...) e.g. various nocturne formats. I might note the various naturalistic evocations (& implied settings, including urban settings...) in his work as well, but those aren't the references for La rambarde..., an album I can only describe (pace some birdsong...) as involving a psychic space, i.e. scenes of psychic desolation. As the title suggests, many of our dreams for the future are in tatters these days — or rather, restrained by aggressive rhetorical posturing that denies alternatives. Yet this isn't a space of despair — or maybe I should say one doesn't wallow in despair here, rather attempts to resolve some bearings, to continue thinking otherwise, i.e. beyond our increasingly severe (social & mental) constraints.... (It's also not an aggressive or noisy space, but doesn't turn to traditional tonal figures either: A big factor in what makes Cage's late Number Pieces compelling for me is his command of atonal figures, including microintervals in several pieces. This contrasts with much of the post-Cage space, which seems to turn often to tonal "resolutions" that — for me — short-circuit the basic project. They result in a sort of sentimentality — & even a re-naturalization of historically derived musical figures.) Long & meandering lines are more the norm here, variously intersecting, but also rebraiding, fleeting timbral combos... airy & spacious (i.e. maintaining capacity for further thought...). A sense of dreaming indeed, a sense of poetry without words, but a sense of movement too.... A sense of wandering through primordial (psychic) chaos, yet without feeling overwhelmed.... And perhaps it's more challenging than ever to relate to senses of silence these days, with anger running high, mental turbulence, impatience, a general lashing out... yet broad anger & ubiquitous prods to aroused affective states have also been the primary vector for far-right populism. Where does that leave "energy music?" (Not nowhere, but....) So emotional fatigue is palpable on an everyday basis. Perhaps most akin to the smoother Ize (released by trio HMZ during the lockdown era, itself seeming increasingly distant now...) then (i.e. in its "electric" tracks specifically, not its piano-percussive...), La rambarde... does help me to survive & transform the constant assault by (highly contagious) negative affect.... Todd McComb's Jazz Thoughts
La rambarde des songes, les congruences des soupirs (roughly translated as: The railing of dreams, the congruences of sighs) is Van Schouwburg’s first recorded meeting with Portuguese free improvisers who work frequently with prolific violist Ernesto Rodrigues (the head of the Creative Sources label that released this album) – alto sax player Nuno Torres, double bass player João Madeira, and modular synth player Carlos Santos (who recorded this album, mastered it and did the graphic design). It is a 45-minute free improvisation that was recorded live at Oficina das Artes da Ajuda in Lisbon in December 2024.
This is an almost silent and enigmatic improvisation. Its reductionist, hallucinogenic spirit radiates the poetic title and its constant but futile search for satisfying forms of statis. The five musicians are focused on a careful and patient study of minimalist, pointillistic interactions, articulated with extended bowing and breathing techniques and alien, vintage sounds, as well as how the ethereal, vulnerable timbres resonate and extend each other. But with no purpose to suggest any development or a coherent narrative. Just an illuminating suggestion about the suchness of silence and its elusive sonic expressions. Eyal Hareuveni (Percorsi Musicali)
