Genius Loci

CD – Creative Sources Recordings – CS 861, Lisbon 2025

1. I - 43'40''

Ernesto Rodrigues - Viola, Crackle Box

Miguel Mira - Cello

Flak - Electric Guitar

Tiago Varela - Melodica, Fan Organ

Manuel Guimarães - Piano

Recorded March 2025, Lisbon

Cover design Carlos Santos

https://ernestorodrigues.bandcamp.com/album/genius-loci

Reviews

Starting the month again with an album from Ernesto Rodrigues, Genius Loci — recorded in Lisbon just this past March — continues his post-Cage explorations, now involving a quintet featuring (instead of Carlos Santos, per recent entries...) Tiago Varela (melodica & fan organ) & Manuel Guimarães (piano) alongside frequent collaborators Miguel Mira & Flak. Varela actually made the recording, as he had L'Heure Dernière (the most recent from Rodrigues' largest ensemble, VGO...), following some releases from years ago on Creative Sources, but had also already recorded the nonet album Mimesis (on which he plays melodica, alongside Flak again...) last year: That's actually part of a "series" of quasi-Cageian albums from Rodrigues over the past year to feature piano (as Cage himself continued to do...), as alluded most recently in last month's review of A Glimpse to an end of a Cycle (the other album recorded this year to appear here so far, with electronics but not piano...), beginning from quintet album Nocturne (also featuring Mira & Flak, as recorded last February... & as already noted here in the May review of This Full Mouth, itself an album not part of this sequence...), followed by quartet album Synopsis (as noted in the review of Cobra last June). Indeed the "nocturne" label could apply to Genius Loci, especially given its slow & simmering, somewhat dark opening (per A Glimpse... as well), making it worth noting here specifically as the latest milestone in Rodrigues' quite extensive endeavors in these directions.... I've not favored the tapestries around (fixed pitch) piano, but let me survey the participation of pianists: Guimarães was actually mentioned here with the New Thing Unit tribute album For Cecil Taylor (reviewed in June 2018, also from CS), but this may be his only other participation with Rodrigues directly. Luisa Gonçalves had appeared on Nocturne & Mimesis (& elsewhere with Rodrigues, e.g. quintet album Quelque chose prie la patience des nuages, reviewed here in May 2022 as part of another significant sequence...) & André Hencleeday is on Synopsis (& elsewhere previously as well). And then Varela is on something of a keyboard here too — pace Santos elsewhere (e.g. Synopsis), or one could say he's playing the "wind" instrument for this quintet otherwise of strings.... (And later in the single track — this series of albums all being single tracks — the sound of the fan organ does become more obvious. Through much of the opening though, any sense of breath is mysterious....) Mimesis had involved senses of calls then, i.e. coming & going across a broad landscape (& so feels less Cageian, albeit ending with a sense of silence...), while Genius Loci is more akin to A Glimpse..., i.e. co-composing my local sonic space, often quiet yet sometimes rather (sneakily, even contrapuntally) active.... A sort of twittering jungle sometimes gives way to other naturalistic effects, e.g. underwater sensations — piano eventually noticeable as such at various points too — moving on again to a more psychological, unsituated context.... (So there's not an immersive feel here, more a sense of acoustics, i.e. the electric instruments interacting via the air....) And of course, Mira (cello) had most recently appeared with Rodrigues (& Santos, in this case) on The knowledge that our time is limited can inspire us (as mentioned here in the February review of La rambarde..., which also belongs to this post-Cage improv, single movement tapestry sequence...), but also last year with Nocturne & Cobra (the latter featuring Santos). Flak has become a regular contributor too, especially in the engineering realm, but his most recent (guitar) participation was already noted here, being specifically from the present sequence.... So notions of continuity (& discontinuity) do animate the sense of ensemble on Genius Loci, while its music generally tends to maintain continuities too, perhaps tenuously at times, e.g. slacking pace being a part of the "unwinding" vibe here, piano chords eventually (sometimes) becoming (quietly) repetitive, i.e. searching for a sort of stasis amid movement, a sort of restlessness working through at times as well — finally into a brief cooldown-coda that does lend a lingering mood (e.g. for ongoing creativity...). Between their deftness & delicacy then, I've been finding these sorts of quiet, affective tapestries to be especially effective & relevant for the current times. Todd McComb's Jazz Thoughts

Continuing Rodrigues' post-Cage series of single-track acoustic improvisations, this 2025 quintet with Miguel Mira, Flak, Tiago Varela, and Manuel Guimaraes blends viola, cello, electric guitar, fan organ, melodica, and piano in an evolving tapestry of mysterious breath, subtle continuity, and fragile sonic space recorded live in Lisbon with profound delicacy and restraint. (Squidco)

Beyond the mist and the unforeseen encounters

 CD – Creative Sources Recordings – CS 863, Lisbon 2025

1. Beyond - 03'01''

2. the - 05'03''

3. mist - 03'26''

4. and - 03'40''

5. the - 07'34''

6. unforeseen - 04'02''

7. encounters - 06'09''

Ernesto Rodrigues - Viola, Crackle Box

Guilherme Rodrigues - Cello

Maximilian Glass - Percussion

Recorded October 2024, Berlin

Photo by Inês Ferreira

Cover design Carlos Santos

https://ernestorodrigues.bandcamp.com/album/beyond-the-mist-and-the-unforeseen-encounters

Reviews

An intimate, texturally rich trio session recorded in Berlin between Ernesto Rodrigues on viola & crackle box, Guilherme Rodrigues on cello, and Maximilian Glass on percussion, navigating misty lowercase atmospheres, glitch-box coloration, and finely balanced interactions that unveil subtle surprise and collective improvisation within a tight, exploratory sound world. (Squidco)

Mistika jpeg oscillations

CD – Creative Sources Recordings – CS 859, Lisbon 2025

1. Up Side Down - 42'47''

2. Want to Rotate - 07'47''

AGogol - Modified Electric Guitar, Electronics, Voice

NaabtalDeath - Amplified Tortured Zither, Electronics, Tools

Ernesto Rodrigues - Viola, Crackle Box

Guilherme Rodrigues - Cello

Recorded October 2024, Hannover

Cover design Carlos Santos

https://ernestorodrigues.bandcamp.com/album/mistika-jpeg-oscillations

Reviews

Eine ungewöhnliche Begegnung, da am 20.10.24 in Hannover: Aus Berlin Andreas Gogol mit E-Gitarre, Electronics, Stimme, sein NaabtalDeath-Buddy als Zitherquäler und Guilherme R. am Cello. Dazu Ernesto, sein Vater, mit Viola & Crackle Box aus Lisbon angereist, um mit ihm einige Gigs zu spielen – der mit Maximilian Glass am 26.10. in Berlin ist als „Beyond the mist and the unforeseen encounters“ (CS 863) eingefangen. Als ungewöhnliches 'String Quartet' entfalten die vier ein elektroakustisches Mysterientheater, indem sie, wie Baselitz seine Bilder, Kammermusik auf den Kopf stellen – 'playing the painting upside down'. Mit diskantem und wetzendem Strich, metallischem Touch, amorphem Noise, drahtiger und brummiger Widerspenstigkeit. Als Vorgänge, in denen surrealer Klingklang und absurde Vokalität mit kratziger Art Brut dennoch träumerisch fusionieren. Surrend, federnd, scharrend, pickend, quietschend gibt es eine quasi alchemistische Reaktion von Kakophonem und Sonorem. Pressend und rumorend, plonkend und glissandierend, knarzig und schrillend fusioniert Hartes mit Weichem. Abgründiges gipfelt altissimo, die Crackle Box zwitschert, bis das Schwein pfeift. Doch die zarten Momente halten stand, auch wenn bei der tickenden, pickenden Zugabe nochmal hektisch gesägt wird am Festen und Sicheren und die Fundamente bedenklich knarren. Rigobert Dittmann (Bad Alchemy)

With Ernesto Rodrigues, as well as Guilherme Rodrigues, having been suddenly less prolific this year, I thought I'd return to perhaps their most enigmatic recent album, Mistika jpeg oscillations having appeared this past March without being noted here. That's in large part since, as I continue to frame remarks here from time to time, I didn't find much to say. As suggested, it's an enigmatic album (recorded in Hannover last October) — featuring Ernesto also on crackle box, Guilherme, plus AGogol (performing name of guitarist Andreas Gogol) & NaabtalDeath (a performing name of Eberhard Meisel). The latter two also had history as a duo — and then I was reminded of this (hybrid, string) quartet release by the more recent (also from Creative Sources) guitar trio (as in three guitars, plus objects...) album Rchtn Mtnchtn, also mostly recorded in 2024, featuring Gogol overseeing an array of sound production (there with otherwise unknown colleagues...), as he does here as well for (the more consistently textured...) Mistika jpeg oscillations — itself involving electronics & voice, plus e.g. "amplified tortured zither" from "NaabtalDeath." And then this earlier quartet does appear to seek "the negative" in sound, pace the "shadows" & "masks" of the cover... recalling perhaps the almost rustic Chiaroscuro (first reviewed here May 2022...) from the elder Rodrigues's extensive catalog, now in thoroughly post-industrial guise (so pace Traintracks...). It thus attempts to trace a technological ontology of shadows? Or more a kind of foreground-background reversal... (i.e. as sometimes termed revolution)? I didn't really know what to make of the result.... Maybe that's praise. It's certainly not (often) what would be called a wild or particularly assertive album either, although there's plenty of continuity through the main track. (Imagine an outdoor scene at night, maybe under infrared — or phone lights? Concrete & distant barking dogs, long sirens, elevated railways, gusts of wind, insectoids & chain link fences... a slow walk, shadows across shadows.) Indeed Mistika jpeg oscillations yields restrained music, as so often from Rodrigues (& another sort of nocturne it seems...), but with (subtly in the sonic domain...) provocative framing. So maybe there'll be more in this (haunting) direction? Rehearing now, there's already a greater sense of specificity & depth to the results. Todd McComb's Jazz Thoughts

In a surreal electroacoustic encounter recorded live in Hannover, the quartet of AGogol, NaabtalDeath (Jerome Noetinger), Ernesto Rodrigues, and Guilherme Rodrigues deconstructs chamber music into a visceral, alchemical performance of modified strings, electronics, and crackling noise, blending absurd vocalizations, brutal textures, and delicate atmospheres into a raw, dreamlike sound theater. (Squidco)

Avec un titre pareil, mistika jpeg oscillations, les noms des deux artistes à coucher dehors - Agogol et Naabtal Death - et la photo de pochette, le connaisseur sera un peu interloqué d’y voir le père et le fils Ernesto et Guilherme Rodrigues incarner le (saint-) esprit de la musique improvisée libre de ceux qui sont « sc…. toujours prêts » à se commettre avec quiconque joue à improviser librement sans aucune arrière-pensée esthétique ou carriériste. Ernesto et Guilherme sont deux cordistes très remarquables, « viola » et « cello » parmi les meilleurs qui se trouvent dans la scène actuelle. Ils ont récemment enregistré avec des incontournables comme Fred Lonberg Holm, Floros Floridis, Frank Gratkowski, Alex von Schlippenbach, Willi Kellers, Ute Wassermann et un nombre exponentiel de musiciens de grand talent. Il leur arrive de croiser dans une tournée des artistes issus d’un autre filière, d’un tout autre background. Agogol et Naabtal Death sont deux artistes sonores – musiciens de la scène locale d’Hannover, celle du génial Günter Christmann et de sa muse l’extrordinaire chanteuse Elke Schipper, mais aussi de l'Atelier Grammofon. Mais ce que ces deux zèbres pratiquent vient d’une autre planète que celle de l’improvisation libre historique issue du jazz libre et dela musique contemporaine. Agogol est crédité modified electric guitar, electronics, voice et son copain Naabtal Death, amplified tortured zither, electronics, tools. On pourrait penser que ce serait une session free-noise. Mais non ! Ce quartet improbable joue avec une belle sensibilité une musique improvisée radicale soignée avec un super sens de la dynamique et l’intégration réussie de pratiques différentes dans un flux sonore détaillé de 42'48'' vraiment réussi en dehors des radars et des tendances. La musique de l’instant. Vous trouverez là une série de séquences reliées les unes aux autres dans un large panorama d’approches, de sifflements oscillatoires (l’alto / viola d’Ernesto), d’irisations électroacoustiques, des vibrations étranges, de discrets bruitages, des glitch, de chocs sur la touche du violoncelle, des ambiances – drones soutenues. Cela dure d’abord quasi trois quart d’heure : 1. playing the paintings upside down – 42 :48 plus un final 2. paintings want to rotate – 07 :47. C’est un beau message d’ouverture d’esprit. Il y a une dimension cosmique et chacun se sent libre de s’exprimer pleinement en restant lui-même dans une harmonie auditive et réactive. On est tous là sur terre pour s’écouter, se comprendre et essayer de collaborer, et cette communion des sens, des actes et de l’écoute en témoigne. Je les ai rencontrés fin juillet dernier à Atelier Gramophon à Hannover et l’un deux, AGogol, un joyeux drille sérieux comme un pape, s’est joint dans notre programme pour égayer la soirée. Mémorable ! Merci à Naabtal Death pour m’avoir tendu ce très intéressant album inclassable. Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg (Orynx)

A Glimpse to an end of a Cycle

CD – Creative Sources Recordings – CS 860, Lisbon 2025

1. A Glimpse to an end of a Cycle - 36'44''

Ernesto Rodrigues - Viola, Crackle Box

Ana Albino - Electric Guitar, Fx

Hernâni Faustino - Double Bass

Carlos Santos - Modular Synthesizer

Recorded January 2025, Lisbon

Cover design Carlos Santos

https://ernestorodrigues.bandcamp.com/album/a-glimpse-to-an-end-of-a-cycle

Reviews

Happening to continue with the next release pairing Ernesto Rodrigues & Carlos Santos, A Glimpse to an end of a Cycle — recorded in Lisbon this January, so the first actual 2025 recording featured here — involves a similar sort of "open" feel & indeterminate electronics as La rambarde des songes, les congruences des soupirs: Versus that quintet with horn & voice, Hernâni Faustino (mainstay of the Portuguese improv scene in general...) is now the bassist, while the previously unknown Ana Albino rounds out the quartet on electric guitar/fx. (While I hadn't noted her individually, Albino has already appeared in ensemble on Caesium, also noted in the previous entry....) And although bass can be prominent in moments, the ongoing single movement tapestry here consists again more of deconstructed timbres, with no "winds" this time, but Rodrigues still on crackle box, i.e. "electronics" production remaining enigmatic across much of the quartet space.... (An apt comparison is again with the more "hybrid" quartet for Distilling Silence, i.e. with both electric guitar & clarinet — & Carla Santana on electronics instead of Santos: That album seems to explore & tease apart everyday household sounds....) A sense of mystery also plays out here in a sense of darkness, apparently starting literally with the performers (per an included photo, unless that's a digital effect I suppose...), and immediately suggests a sort of haunted landscape. There're certainly also senses of familiarity, but distended, as well as senses of continuity. Indeed, while again quiet (& able to be overwhelmed by my sometimes noisy surroundings...), it's apparently senses of continuity & anticipation that draw me into the sound world of A Glimpse to an end of a Cycle, a relatively brief album that seems sometimes to end without my noticing.... So whatever (background) "procedure" might yield the "glimpse" of the title, there can be more of a conscious sense of process at times too (again grounded in what seems to be a sort of psychic desolation... or maybe distant traffic), yielding some hocket-y counterpoint in some passages, but mostly a sense of smoothness & ongoing flow.... Per my comments on the electronics then (including previously...), there's an unknown (or inverted) sense of what I've been calling "musical economy" to proceedings such as these, or perhaps it's a matter of choosing a group based on personalities more than instrumentation...? (A synthesizer is not usually subdued....) Or of course it's the focus on relatively narrow possibilities, i.e. the flexibilities or liminalities, within what could be an instrumental combo sounding very differently.... (And again per electronics, e.g. both low hums & especially some very high twittering can be distinctive here....) In any case, A Glimpse to an end of a Cycle seems to weld Rodrigues's rather varied post-Cage investigations to his likewise frequent nocturne sojourns, yielding another understated yet highly affective (& subtly dynamic...) listening experience, sometimes more layered (than contrapuntal...), ephemeral & often wave-like. (And maybe it should be compared to Rodrigues-Santos projects from what can seem like the distant past these days, e.g. Cyclic Symmetry, reviewed here in October 2016.... Or to a growing set of offerings from various others, e.g. Nyctalopia released this month by Gaudenz Badrutt & Association Bruit....) There's also an increasing sense that these productions co-compose my own local sonic space, i.e. contextualize & sometimes dominate sounds of my surroundings (which do now sometimes feature e.g. what seem to be military helicopters, along with the familiar screaming toddlers, etc... — i.e. not always willing to be dominated). So perhaps survival in our increasingly chaotic world can come to be figured at times via softness (as it had been of course already by the Tao Te Ching...), rather than hardness — sound (at least previously, contra recording technology...) being among the most ephemeral of human artistic media. Todd McComb's Jazz Thoughts

Recorded live in Lisbon in 2025, this quietly immersive quartet session from Ernesto Rodrigues, Ana Albino, Hernani Faustino, and Carlos Santos unfolds as a single extended movement of enigmatic timbral interplay, blending modular synth, electric guitar, viola and bass in a sparse, introspective soundscape shaped by mystery, fluidity, and subtle dynamic shifts. (Squidco)