vulgaris

CD – Creative Sources Recordings – CS464, Lisbon 2017

1. I - 38'04''

OCTOPUS

Ernesto Rodrigues - Viola
Yu Lin Humm - Cello 
Paulo Curado - Flute
Ana Piosik - Trumpet
Miguel Almeida - Classical Guitar
André Hencleeday - Piano & Psalterium
Carlos Santos - Computer
Carlos Godinho - Percussion

Recorded June 2017, Lisbon

Cover design Carlos Santos

https://ernestorodrigues.bandcamp.com/album/vulgaris

Reviews

Correctly configured, the Portugese ensemble Octopus is an octet, and though named after the most common of the breed, this 8-tentacled orchestration of strings, flute, trumpet, piano, guitar, electronics and percussion, all using extended techniques, slides deftly and with incredible restraint through a large, detailed dark-water work of electroacoustic improvisation. Most of the players are Creative Sources regulars, and years of working together these musicians almost telepathically anticipate the movement of each other. Their patient development of this work is remarkable, allowing space and silence to envelop the sound as they carefully move forward, like their proverbial octopus cautiously assessing each transition in a careful slide along the ocean floor.

The attentive listener is rewarded by the sliding interactions of each tentacular motion, as it progresses and comes to a rest guided by horns and strings into deep water silence. It's beautiful collective improvisation and a great example of the work Rodrigues and company have been evolving over the last two decades, a kind of organic collective improvisation that has developed a unique and consistent voice. That they can perform this kind of improvisation live, here caught at O'culto da Ajuda in Lisbon in 2017, is a testament to the dedication of their effort, and a fitting tribute to the name of their collective. (Squidco)

Of course, Ernesto did recorded also with larger ensembles in 2017, like Suspensão (see below), or the present octet, Octopus Ensemble. "Octopus Vulgaris" was recorded at O'culto da Ayuda in Lisbon in June 2017. The octet has a very rich sound: in addition to strings there are: a trumpet, a flute, piano and psaltery, electronics and percussion. Still, the music is extremely tranquil and meditative. The Polish accent is provided by Anna Piosik, a formidable trumpet player. Maciej Lewenstein

Soon

CD – Creative Sources Recordings – CS463, Lisbon 2017

1. soon - 07'49''

2. oosn - 08'53''

3. onso - 08'11''

4. nsoo - 05'11''

5. osno - 04'29''

6. noos - 07'54''

Ernesto Rodrigues - Viola 

Nuno Torres - Alto Saxophone

Carlos Santos - Synthesizer

Ståle Liavik Solberg - Percussion

Recorded May 2017, Lisbon

Cover design Carlos Santos

https://ernestorodrigues.bandcamp.com/album/soon

Reviews

As promised last month, I want to note a few thoughts regarding Soon, another recent Creative Sources album (recorded May 2016 in Lisbon, so not a 2017 recording as some other recent releases are) featuring Ernesto Rodrigues in a quartet with frequent collaborators Nuno Torres & Carlos Santos (here on synth, and doing the mixing & mastering): On Soon the "new person" is Norwegian percussionist Ståle Liavik Solberg (b.1979). I had neglected Solberg, so this was a good opportunity to revisit his music, and indeed his creative & subtle playing is highlighted very well by the quartet on Soon. (For instance, Solberg uses fast & precise "clicking" on all of his albums: Perhaps it's a daxophone or something similar? It's a way to inject flurries of different numerical groupings into the ensemble phrasing.) One thing I quickly realized is that Solberg was the only member of the Hot Four quartet on Eye of the Moose that hadn't appeared again in this space. That was an oversight, but also partly caused by timing: I had only just discovered Creative Sources at the time — and indeed remained intimidated by Ernesto Rodrigues's massive discography, so it took longer to open that box. And I was still sorting through the even more massive output by English free improvisers as a group, and so had relatively little sense of what might interest me in that area. (Whether I have much more sense now probably remains a question, but I feel as though I made a decisive step around Whitewashed with Lines in June 2015 — a relevant comparison to Soon not only because of its stark precision & process orientation, but because of John Butcher's participation: He has a recent duo with Solberg on Clean Feed, So beautiful, it starts to rain, where one does find something of an intersection of these ideas.) Prior to that, however, Solberg had participated in what seems like a clear precedent for Eye of the Moose, namely a quartet called VCDC with Norwegian singer Stine Janvin Motland (instead of Andreas Backer), plus Frode Gjerstad & Fred Lonberg-Holm. (And Eye of the Moose was then mixed & mastered by Gjerstad.) I should have noticed this group, especially their second album Insult recorded in 2012, but I probably associated both Gjerstad & Lonberg-Holm with more rock-oriented (e.g. Chicago) music at that point: It took me a while to realize just how varied many musicians' outputs are in this field. (Moreover, revisiting some remarks around Kontakte Trio, Solberg had also recorded with Steve Beresford on a couple of albums from 2013, Three Babies & Will it Float?. Kontakte Trio has another similarity with Soon in that it leaves me listening to the environment, and also soon left me eager to hear it again. As for why I didn't notice Beresford sooner? I'm going to answer the same, timing: He released a handful of albums right before I started paying attention — and I regularly revisit questions such as this in order to work on my own attention process.) Anyway, the duo album with Butcher was recorded in 2015, so prior to Soon, and the others are from even earlier in the decade. Soon is recognizable as a Rodrigues album, particularly with its quiet precision, perhaps reminiscent of a quartet like Nor, but in a variant mode with Santos explicitly playing electronics: Beyond & reacting to the varied percussive shaping, there are high held tones, squeaks, hockets & broader polyphony, bent gong tones, even a sense of breath amid much austerity. There is a timeless yet serious sense, a mood I've sometimes figured as "epic," but here with an ambivalent sense of presence. The (short) last track is downright Scelsian in its eeriness, and some of the intervening interactions remind me of Nashaz (recorded not long prior) for their sense of dissonant lightness & reintegration. The different tracks on Soon, albeit with some overlap, present different moods & processes, with the more polyphonic second & third tracks catching my attention more, but this quartet also makes me revisit concepts of "use" for music in that I found the album to be refreshing & useful as a creative spur for my own work, not to mention as something that brings me into closer contact with the environment (perhaps paradoxically, given the "artificial" sounds). The impact of such use did fade a bit with time, but Solberg has my attention now. 3 November 2017. Todd McComb's Jazz Thoughts

Norwegian percussionist Stale Liavik Solberg (Gjerstad, VCDC, &c) joins frequent collaborators Ernesto Rodrigues (viola), Nuno Torres (saxophone), and Carlos Santos (electronics) for a studio album of often pointillistic interaction, Solberg punctuating the unusual voicing and techniques of acoustic and electronic interactions as they permute the word "soon". (Squidco)

A wonderful quartet recording with the phenomenal Norwegian drummer and percussionist, Ståle Liavik Solberg. Again the music is very quiet and minimalist,

with long repetitive tones, and very delicate percussion entries. The quartet plays 6 track, entitled with various permutations of the word "Soon". In fact, it starts with "Soon" that illustrates my theses above. "Oosn" is similarly peaceful, but maybe even more abstract.

My favorite is "Onso", notable for incredible synthesizer lines of Carlos Santos. "Nsoo" includes especially nice dialogues between the percussion and alto, while "Osno" is notable for the "strong" percussion/drums entries. This excellent album ends with "Noos", notable also for dominant percussion lines in the beginning, and the magnificent collective improvisation of everybody in the later parts. Maciej Lewenstein