CD - Creative Sources Recordings – CS882, Lisbon 2026
1. The Age of Inner Turmoil. Fragments of Being. - 36'40''
Ernesto Rodrigues - Viola
Hernâni Faustino - Double Bass
Flak - Electric Guitar
André Hencleeday - Piano
Nuno Torres - Alto Saxophone
Tiago Varela - Melodica
Carlos Santos - Electronics
Monsieur Trinité - Percussion
Recorded December 2025, Lisbon
Cover design Carlos Santos
Reviews
Then to close the year here — a difficult year for many creative musicians, I think it's fair to observe... — I want to take up another new album from Ernesto Rodrigues: The latest (with changes in personnel over the years) from an ensemble that first recorded Suspensão in 2010 (as it happens, a few months before I began this project...), Something ancient listens within us. The light has forgotten its name but will remain. was recorded earlier this month at CreativeFest XIX, its single track also carrying a two-part title, The Age of Inner Turmoil. Fragments of Being.. And although I've generally eschewed solos & duos in this space for (more "social") trios & quartets, I've also often avoided the larger groups as well, meaning I haven't necessarily noted every Suspensão album, but I do want to note now what seems to be a particularly personal response from Rodrigues in this latest volume. So after double album Suspensão, I did note at the time the second album here, Jadis la pluie était bleue (from 2015), and then e.g. Physis (in August 2018, describing its "eerie desire to interrogate the basic contours of reality, especially the equivocation of foreground & background"), followed by Rayon Blanc & Sfumato in 2019 & 2020, most recently noting Impromptu (in June 2023), but not yet what had been the ensemble's newest recordings, Teufelmuzik & Frottage (both recorded May 2023). And the latter two do include Nuno Torres, Carlos Santos & Flak from this latest release — the fourteenth Suspensão issue on Ernesto Rodrigues' Bandcamp, although early releases also numbered multiple tracks individually & cumulatively (while the latest continues the more recent norm of a single track release) — the first two involved already from the first release (also an octet, but numbers have varied over the years from six to twelve...) — with Monsieur Trinité e.g. participating as well on Caesium from Isotope Ensemble, the most recent large ensemble release from Rodrigues (there a 16-tet, from last year's CreativeFest). Hernâni Faustino & André Hencleeday have also appeared on previous Suspensão albums, although (rounding out the current octet) Tiago Varela seems to be new to the formation — while having first appeared here (also with Rodrigues) for Genius Loci (reviewed in April), indeed all seven of the members having recorded already with Rodrigues this past year (& been referenced in this space for it!). So this is a relatively close group of associates, although one could certainly name others who've recorded more albums with Rodrigues.... But this impression of closeness, of a particularly personal response, is also illustrated in an accompanying photo with the musicians performing while clustered closely. Then there's a briefly tentative musical opening, some feelings of welcome, the forging of an interactive space... and into more ominous inputs, including quasi-industrial or naturalistic-chirping, an almost carnivalesque changing of tone & timbre across a sometimes gloomy landscape. There's also a sense of continuity, of narrativity per se (perhaps per the previous entry...), an articulation of collective (& personal) feeling, continuity per se being in some real sense continuing to live, continuing to find a path, ultimately continuing to interact. A sense of transition (recalling e.g. Anthony Braxton's ZIM?) thus dominates Something ancient listens within us... but within a perspective of continuity, i.e. of human choice & expression.... So while I've previously associated Suspensão more with naturalistic depictions, per especially Porto Covo (noted here in March 2017), and naturistic evocations do recur frequently across Rodrigues' work, I cannot now help but hear this typically-octet expression as more "personal" per se. And (spectral) harmonies & their transitions are indeed handled with sophistication & (often tight) familiarity, maintaining always some kinds of connection (of suspended voicings, one might say...), not so much around background equivocation here, but as a less noticed line now ready to offer another choice.... And some passages do come off more assertively, but there're certainly no final answers, as in life, so we go on.... So does the album title offer continuity, following the track title offering fragmentation? There's perhaps a continuity of spirit specifically implied here as well, a continuity across humanity (& beyond, well beyond...), continuity now also turning against itself in sickness. And I do believe that we're all seeing now that this sickness is not only in our "environment," but also in ourselves, for we are permeable creatures. Todd McComb's Jazz Thoughts
