Manuel Mota - Quartets (2004)

Lisbon-based guitarist Manuel Mota raised some interest a few years back with his solo release Leopardo on the Rossbin label. That recital on solid-body electric guitar revealed a young player searching out ways to personalize the vocabulary of solo guitar, with a particular nod to the area charted by Derek Bailey.

This new release on Mota’s Headlights label finds him in the company of three other like-minded players for a set of nine concentrated collective improvisations: trombonist Fala Mariam, bassist Margarida Garcia, and percussionist César Burago. Mota has chosen his collaborators wisely, matching his brittle, spiky lines with Mariam’s grumbling trombone smears, Garcia’s sparely placed resonant bass, and Burago’s chiming metallic counterpoint. (Though Burago is credited as playing carillon, it sounds more like a mallet instrument such as tubular bells or marimba.) The minimalist title and spare pencil drawing on the cover match the music perfectly.

Here are four players well-versed in intimate improvisation built off of linear interplay, cross-cut textures, and the careful balance of sound and space. This is music with roots firmly in the old-school spontaneous collective improvisation navigated by Bailey and company for the past four decades. Each of these players has honed their technique, concentrating on focused attack with little sustain. Jagged shard-like lines are scratched across the sound space with a clear sense of deliberation.

There is always a careful placement of notes into the collective mix, with an ear toward densities and textures rather than propulsive movement or dynamic arc. Mota’s precise finger-picked notes are sounded and damped. Garcia’s electric upright bass projects her plucked and bowed gestures stripped of any acoustic resonance. Mariam accentuates rounded smears, blats, and rumbles, judiciously using mutes to distance the aspects of breath from her horn. Burago is also careful to strike his instrument and then damp or mute the attack, placing the bell-like tones with a fastidious attention to timbre and decay of sound.

The recording balance picks up every gesture and nuance, switching a bit from cut to cut. Some of the pieces are close-miked, placing all the instruments up front in the mix. Others utilize a wetter, more spatial sound, which places the instruments a bit further back in the sonic plane, allowing the sound of the room to enter into the mix a bit more. Though there is a certain sameness that pervades the recording from piece to piece, the clarity of intent and vision is always evident and ultimately prevails. Michael Rosenstein

1. Shield

2. Mean Dry Land

3. Flame Street

4. Downstairs

5. Good Eve

6. Deep in Your Face

7. A Blue Cross

8. Quad

9. Closer

Manuel Mota - electric guitar

Fala Mariam - alto trombone with fh mute

Margarida Garcia - electric upright bass

César Burago - carillon

Recorded 23/06/2003.

Arranged and produced by Sei Miguel.

Released in 2004 by Headlights.

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Sei Miguel - The Tone Gardens (2006)

"For Chet and Cage” runs the dedication to Sei Miguel’s 1996 album Showtime, a clear indication as to what to expect from this elusive trumpeter/composer, arguably Portuguese New Music’s best kept secret. The fractured lyricism of his pocket trumpet playing certainly owes much to Chet Baker (and to Miles Davis, Don Cherry and Bill Dixon), but the meticulous methods with which Miguel organizes his material, positioning sound in space and silence, reveal his music to be an extension of the tradition of experimental music which Nyman defined as “a field delineated by certain compositional rules”. Indeed, if much recent New Music has chosen to associate itself with architecture – its aesthetic, imagery and vocabulary – the fact that Miguel has entitled his three extended compositions “Gardens” is significant. The dictionary definition of garden as “a fertile, well-cultivated region” applies equally well to Miguel’s music, and the beautiful, rare flowers he plants in it, be they Fala Mariam’s delicate alto trombone, Rafael Toral’s glistening sinewaves and modulated white noise, or César Burago’s delightfully unconventional percussion instruments, which include seed pod rattles and “dead radios”. Miguel’s raking over the boundary lines between foreground and background, macro and micro-form, the abstract and the figurative – is this a study in complex polyrhythm or the evocation of birds and insects? – is as deceptively simple and unfathomably complex as a shaft of sunlight breaking through the leaves. Dan Warburton, The Wire

1. First Garden (17.56)
2. Second Garden (13.40)
3. Third Garden (20.58)

Sei Miguel - pocket trumpet
Fala Mariam - alto trombone
Rafael Toral - computer sinewaves, pocket amp feedback, modulated white noise system
César Burago - small percussion, mainly seeds, fiber, tamborim, metals, dead radios

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Variable Geometry Orchestra - Stills (2007)

"The music produced by the Variable Geometry Orchestra (VGO) results from the juxtaposition of acoustic and electronic sound matter that constantly searches for detail and meaning. Its sounds contain subliminal as well as psycho-acoustic characteristics and include the possibility of complete silence. (...) The conduction is operated by balancing the sound masses that travel in the acoustic space, dictating the construction of the real-time composition, and thus revealing the organized juxtaposition of specific instruments as mobile sound groups.

This leaves space for the musicians to regain their natural rhythm and breathing, as well as their sense of random pulsation. It also allows them to listen to all the sound events that are happening at any given moment and thus to act accordingly. On the contrary, they can simply listen to what another musician has just begun. The musical space is thus filled only with the intrinsically essential elements.

Another of the outstanding aspects of the orchestra is how open it is to new participants. That is one reason why it is called 'variable'. The influx of new creative power is tempered only with a truly democratic spirit where hierarchy is reduced to a bare minimum, also permitting a very large number of combinations and permutations of smaller ensembles to be arranged on-the-spur-of-the-moment.Last but not least, the orchestra encompasses three generations of musicians who have set age aside to pursue a common contemporary language." Ernesto Rodrigues, CD Liner notes

E. Rodrigues - Conduct., Violin, Viola (all) João Castro Pinto - Computer (1,2,3,5) Adriana Sá - Digital Synth (1,2,3,4) Eduardo Chagas - Trombone (1,2,3,4) Olympia Boule - Voice (1,5) Etsuko Kimura - Organ (3) J. Silva - Cracklebox, Field Recs. (3) P. Bastiaan - ASax, Melodica, Ds (1,2,3) Fala Mariam - Alto Trombone (1, 5) A. Moimême - TenSax, El. Guitar (1,3,4,5) Ivan Fontes - Didgeridoo (2,3) Eduardo Lalá - Trombone (2) Silvia Freitas - Violin (3) Katia Santandreu - Viola (3) G. Rodrigues - Cello (1,2,3,4,5) J. Lampreia - Flute, Soprano Sax (1,3,4) Lizuarte Borges - Alto Sax (3) Nuno Moita - Sampler, Turntables (1,3,5) Plan - Turntables (1) Hernâni Faustino - Double Bass (1,2,3,4,5) A. C. Neto - Alto & Tenor Sax (2,4,5) João Oliveira - Drums (1,4,5) R. Ausar-Sahu - Double Bass (1)

Sei Miguel - Pocket Trumpet (1,4,5) Nuno Torres - Alto Sax (1,2,3,4) Rafael Toral - Modified Amp. (1,4) Nuno Rebelo - Amplified Objects A. Gonçalves - Analog Modular Synth (3) J. Krieger - Trumpet, Frech Horn (2,3,5) G. Gonçalves - Tuba, Euphonium (1,2) Marcelo Maggi - Trumpet (1, 3) M. Bernardo - Clarinet (1, 2, 3, 4) B. Parrinha-Cls., ASax, Harmonica (1,2,3) J-M Charmier-Trumpet, Euphonium(2) M. Pereira - Contrabass (3) J. Viegas - Bass Clarinet (1,3) Pedro Portugal -Trumpet (1,2) R. Pinheiro - Piano (3) Travassos-CircuitBending,Tapes (all) A. Pereira - Accordion (1,2,3,4,5) P. Castello-Lopes - Percussion (1,3,5) Jorge Oliveira - African Percussion (3) A. Chaparreiro - Electric Guitar (1,2,3,5) C. Burago - Cowbell (1, 4, 5) M. Trinité - Cymbals, Objects (2,3,4) Carlos Santos - Computer (1,2,3,4,5)

disc 1
1. The Morning Walk After The "O" Of The Clock
disc 2
2. Just As You Were Able To Talk About Nothing
3. Suddenly The Dream Became A Promise Of White
disc 3
4. Loosing The Place Where Someone Watched Over Me
5. We Almost Turned Around And Headed Home
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