“Musicamorosa” reviewed by Cyclic Defrost

For this release, Jorge Mantas acts as an esthetician and a sound designer more than a composer or artist. The thematic concept around which this album orbits is one drawn from the French literary tradition, that of love lived through sadness. In particular, author Marcel Proust serves as a muse for the romantically inclined Mantas, …

“Täuschung” reviewed by Music Club

Il compositore austriaco Davor Mikan realizza con questo “Tauschung” un concept esteso sulla memoria e sul ricordo, compilando trentuno microtracce elettroacustiche dove a prendere il sopravvento è la dimensione noise del suono. La suddivisione in titoli è onestamente arbitraria: tutti i pezzi – composti e rielaborati nel corso degli ultimi quattro anni – sono minimi …

“Täuschung” reviewed by Bad Alchemy

Mikan lebt und arbeitet in Wien, kommt aber wie aus dem Nichts. Sein Debut (?) komprimiert 31 Miniaturen auf 37 Minuten, noisiges, teils schroffes, manchmal aber nicht unwitziges Gekritzel, meist offenbar algorithmisch, teilweise auch von Hand generiert mit “generative graphic-tools togehter with granular synthesis”, was auch immer das heißen mag. Es hört sich stellenweise wie …

“Täuschung” reviewed by Loop

This is the obtuse and abstract music of Viennese artist Davor Mikan who makes his debut on Portuguese’s Crónica Electronica label always pushing the boundaries of experimental electronic music. ‘Täuschung’ comprised 31 short tracks that collect sketched ideas of microscopic and sharp digital sounds. The music forms the most unpredictable shapes and mathematics angles. This …

“Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top, Bottom” reviewed by The Sound Projector

Candidate for ‘puzzler of the week’ is a curious recording by Miguel Carvalhais and Pedro Tudela, here trading under the name of @c. Their Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top, Bottom (CRÓNICA 031) takes the practice of sampling into a strange and hermetic dimension. About 11 musicians were recorded over a five year period, only to …

“Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top, Bottom” reviewed by France Musique, Tapage Nocturne

C’est sous le pseudonyme d’@c que les portugais Miguel Carvalhais et Pedro Tudela viennent d’éditer leur 7ème album et leur troisième collaboration au catalogue du label Crónica basé à Porto. Miguel Carvalhais et Pedro Tudela sont des compositeurs chevronnés de musique concrète, ils utilisent des prises de sons réalisées en studio, sur scène ou en extérieur …

“Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top, Bottom” reviewed by Loop

This is the seventh instalment – and the third for Crónica – of Porto based duo Pedro Tudela and Miguel Carvalhais. This CD took to Miguel and Pedro two years of production and comprised five years of live, studio and field recordings, work inspired from several artists that in this album found their contributions by …

“Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top, Bottom” reviewed by Le Son Du Grisli

Les Portugais Miguel Carvalhais et Pedro Tudela, ou @c, travaillent à une musique électroacoustique en passe de perdre son acoustique mais convaincante quand même. Sur Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top, Bottom, trouver quelques combinaisons malignes : de field recordings européens et de reverses velléitaires, de souffles effacés par le mouvement soudain d’un archet sur violoncelle, …

“Musicamorosa” reviewed by Textura

Can one possibly distill the poetic depths and labyrinthine sentences of Marcel Proust’s Á la recherche du temps perdu (published in English as Remembrance of Things Past and, in recent translations, In Search of Lost Time) into musical form, and capture the bittersweet ennui that suffuses the epic’s three thousand pages? Should one incorporate actual …

“Musicamorosa” reviewed by Touching Extremes

Influenced by a lot of names “to be found outside the music field”, which include Proust, Poe, Alighieri, Friedrich, Waterhouse and so on, up to director Sofia Coppola and erotic photographers Guido Argentini and Roy Stuart, Portuguese Jorge Mantas wants us to call him a “sound designer”, not a “composer”. He also hates those who …