Wounds of Light

CD – Creative Sources Recordings – CS178, Lisbon 2010

Light? There’s never been any lightness to the Rodrigueses’ playing. Physically, there’s often a lot of pressure applied with the bow; intellectually, their music is consistently ripe with thought and pregnant with meaning – aerial perhaps, but light, never. Yes, I know, it’s not lightness this title is about. It’s illumination, brilliance, luminance – all words aptly describing (in reverse order) the father-son duo’s music, this particular quartet session, and the result of experiencing both. Thought, focus, the resonance of each musician’s soul with his instrument and his colleagues: all these factors are enlightening, casting – yes – a light on the music at hand. But they don’t explain everything. How could they? How could one truly explain the magic of genuine collective improvisation? The act of performing as one yet as separate personalities? The feat of achieving cohesion without resorting to predictability? The incredible level of “telepathy/synergy/complementarity” between Ernesto, Guilherme, David, and Nuno? The uncanny way this quartet lays out and articulates sounds so that the listener may feel like a participant, someone as accountable for the success of the recording as the musicians involved? In following the Rodrigueses’ adventures through the catalogue of the Creative Sources label, I have often tried to explain all this and know that I am doomed to fail, always. Light, therefore. There shall be light as you listen to this CD. But the music itself is far from sunny. It has its dark corners, its shadows, its pitch-black Lovecraftian recesses – moreso than most of the recordings involving the Rodrigueses, and especially in the second piece, where a sense of impending doom (un)resolves in a very strange way. An ironic use of the word “light”, then? Perhaps, although in this case, that which is absent (light) could hurt your eyes if it were used maliciously. Speaking of maliciousness, David Stackenäs – the X factor in this aligment – is maliciously playing the agent provocateur part; his acoustic guitar work, gritty, grating, highly experimental and unique, sits wonderfully well between the tensed-up textures of the Rodrigueses’ stringwork and the quiet, inner-reaching tones from Nuno Torres’ saxophone. But does it hurt, this wound? Revelations always hurt – at least a bit – our preconceived ideas, if nothing else. And that might happen to you, especially around the nine-minute mark in the third piece, when Stackenäs chooses the path of most resistance, triggering the most unruly moment of the album. That’s when a lightbulb might come on in the heads of the most blasé of listeners: “Oh my, they’re having fun too!” If you’re all stuck up about non-idiomatic improvisation, that kind of enlightenment could leave a mark! François Couture

1. 12’47’’ – 12’47’’

2. 11’29’’ – 11’29’’

3. 14’28’’ – 14’28’’

Ernesto Rodrigues – Viola

Guilherme Rodrigues – Cello

Nuno Torres – Alto Saxophone

David Stackenäs - Acoustic Guitar

Recorded in October 2008, Lisbon
Cover design Carlos Santos
Photography Daria Gabriel

https://ernestorodrigues.bandcamp.com/album/wounds-of-light


Reviews
[...] Por sua vez, "Wounds of light" tem em David Stackenas o "joker" com a missao de manter instaveis os equillbrios que se vao construindo, abrindo feridas na superfície do silencio e lançando sombras sobre o que se ilumina. Rui Eduardo Paes (Jazz.pt)
I haven’t written about this CD when it came out, because I had been asked to write liner notes for it. But why shoudln’t I praise its ultra-quiet and surgically-precise form of free improvisation, with subtle yet gritty plays of textures? The Rodrigues father-and-son team delivers another bewitching performance. François Couture (Monsieur Délire)
For some mysterious reason, the first six minutes of this recording call those unwelcome awakenings begun with vexing headaches or those terribly sickening hangovers to mind and you could imagine why all the following mental images by such a listening could have been influenced by this first impression so that I could link the six minutes left over to nothing but the effect of an analgesic pill! ...and you'll understand why the harsch viola by Ernesto Rodrigues, that sort of gumbling and snoring by other sonic objects, the metallic scratching and the obstinate sawing by Guilherme Rodrigues' cello, the steady reverberating by David Stackenas'e-bows and Nuno Torres' alto saxophone of the second track could be linked to the interference in such an anguishing state of mind by some coercive "needs" as well as the third 15-minutes lasting track could be considered as the difficult attempt of rebalancing or recovering from such a condition or maybe it could just be the attempt of finding some relief out...finally! The description of an ordinary day which isn't deserving of some lines in a personal diary at all. I could be more assertive and even show off some learning by trying a comparison of the title of this improvisational issue with the notorious sentence by William Blake according to which "colours are wounds of light", but I prefer to keep my feet on the ground today! Just enjoy this listening in accorrdance of your situation or your speculative knowledge...it's up to you! Vito Camarretta (Chain DLK)

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La combinaison instrumentale exploitée par cette formation, enregistrée en octobre 2008, est d’une élégante richesse : en une quarantaine de minutes et comme dans un atelier, la belle ingénierie (guitare, alto, violoncelle, saxophone alto) met en branle longerons, rabots, scies lentes, avec une vraie science des dosages et du brouillage des sources – qui peut évoquer, mutatis mutandis, certains travaux de Polwechsel. Un confort rêche, avec ce qu’il faut d’échardes pour rester sur le qui-vive… Guillaume Tarche (Le Son du Grisli)

Publiée il y a environ deux ans, Wounds of Light est une série de trois improvisations pour instruments acoustiques. On y retrouve Ernesto Rodrigues et son fils Guilherme - respectivement à l'alto et au violoncelle, ainsi que Nuno Torres au saxophone alto et le guitariste suédois David Stackenäs. Comme le dit déjà François Couture dans les notes, cet album ravira certainement beaucoup des amateurs d'improvisation non-idiomatique. Car il s'agit ici avant tout d'improvisations abstraites et principalement concentrées sur le son lui-même. Le quartet s'évertue et s'amuse à multiplier des strates sonores indiscernables à partir de cordes longuement frottées et de notes statiques. Il ne s'agit pas non plus d'une forme de drone acoustique, car des milliers de micro-évolutions parcourent les strates. Des évènements parfois microscopiques fourmillent. Des micro-évènements qui forment des angles, donnent de la forme et du relief aux longues plages sonores abrasives. Servies par quatre instrumentistes virtuoses, ces trois improvisations plongent l'auditeur dans des territoires sonores abstraits, singuliers et créatifs. Un univers où bois et cordes sont raclés, durement frottés et avec lenteur; des sons qui crispent parfois mais qui ne sont pas vraiment désagréable tant la forme et l'interaction entre les musiciens semblent magiques et inventives. Trois plongées sonores dans l'univers du timbre et des micro-évolutions, trois plongées qui progressent avec calme et nous entraînent dans des atmosphères hors du commun, méticuleusement interprétées. Julien Héraud (ImprovSphere)

Tense textures and shadowy interplay brought to 'light' from the quartet of father/son Rodrigues, guitarist David Stackenas, and saxophonist Nuno Torres; remarkably subtle sonic improvisation. (Squidco)