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

This atypical album is divided into four tracks of unusual and disparate lengths – the first lasts more than twenty minutes, the second and third are less than two minutes long, and the last stretches out to more than forty minutes. ‘Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top, Bottom’ by Miguel Carvalhais and Pedro Tudela, aka @C, is a collection of sonorities that come from many and various sources. The soundscape forms an eccentric continuum, but one that remains sensitive through the expert use of well-chosen field recordings and an agreeably calibrated overall balance. The listener is also immediately aware of the relationship between the single episodes and the whole composition. The album essentially functions as a label catalogue and is rich in “sample guests.” It also makes good use of sounds accumulated during many live performances, and takes inspiration from previous studio outtakes. Such an assortment is testament to the range of influences at play here. The album is replete with creations that have been born out of fruitful collaborations from previous years. It exhibits sequences with an intense amalgamation, and is rich in very imaginative solutions. It’s a contemporary electroacoustic album, where voices, short instrumental intermezzo, loops and more synthetic drones emerge. There are references to chromo-dynamic and unstable quark-sonic particles (following the same title inspiration, related to the quark electric charge theory). There are six varieties of “flavours” – actually there are many more, because here the abstract music becomes more pertaining to matter and the super-vivid.

Aurelio Cianciotta

“Täuschung” reviewed by Neural

Graphic tools and granular synthesis: this is Davor Mikan’s compositional horizon, with twisted, surly and abstract radical sonorities, but once more modulated to construct a narrative with strong emotional characteristics. This seems to be the result of the arrangements and their complicated structures, playing with contrasts, and finely researching juxtapositions of different elements. Drones and patterns in perennial relationship are moving in a continuos flow among surrounding electronic tensions, noises and electroacoustic improvisations. These compositions were made in the last four years, summing up a mixture of algorithms and personal experiments, and catalysing the listener to accomplish an aural saturation (using microphones and minimal scores). The Austrian-Bosnian composer draws soundscapes that are often uncomfortable, but still somehow familiar, outcome of purely human feelings, of a chaotic energy, and of some reckless traits that are still enhancing our own condition.

Aurelio Cianciotta

“Täuschung” reviewed by Touching Extremes

Based in Vienna, Davor Mikan “creates music about failure, beauty, lust and delusion in the context of psychoacoustic effects and in a personal sense (self-delusion).” Translation: this is a 37-minute CD with 31 very short tracks, which the author developed in the last four years. His procedures include algorithms, handmade music (meaning what?), generative graphic tools and granular synthesis. These descriptions give only a faint idea of how the record appears, although understanding is not difficult given the label we’re dealing with: “fragmentariness” is indeed the necessary password. There’s no chance to get used to something, because that something is not even there. Glimpses of ideas appear then crumble and break, disfigured by the studio treatment; sheer noise accompanies the subsequent disillusion. Milliseconds of silence, then a graceful looped melody sounds as if termites were munching its core. Flint-hearted noises and ultra-distorted rejects form bodies whose shape and colour is nevertheless accepted and, in a way, loved like an ugly sister. The canon is more or less the same throughout the duration of the disc, which is a realistic example of manipulation of sonic snippets that sounds good without being historic. Still, this is a stayer, made with extreme care and respect for the overall artistic concept, whatever that be.

“Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top, Bottom” reviewed by De:Bug

Miguel Carvalhais and Pedro Tudela haben sich durch Fieldrecordings, Liveaufnahmen und Studiosessions allein oder mit Gastmusikern in den letzten fünf Jahren eine Menge Basismaterial fuer ihr neues Album erarbeitet. Aus diesem Fundus konstruierten die beiden vier spannende Musique Concrète-Studiokompositionen, die die unterschiedlichsten Klang- und Geräuschquellen kombinieren und nie langweilig werden.

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

A quite brilliant offering from @c, who are Crónica label bosses Pedro Tudela and Miguel Carvalhais, with third member Lia contributing live visuals and sleeve art. The music here is by turns witty, dark and ravishing, with acoustic instrumentation, particularly percussion, woven into the dense digital fabric of the sound with great flair and precision. Though pieced together from a wide array of sources, chiefly live recordings, the emphasis is on heightened moments rather than any kind of overarching structure, with the duo resisting what they term “idealised composition”. (This deliberate fragmentation, one assumes, explains the title, which relates to categories of quarks in particle physics.) This looseness never sounds slack, however; throughout they evince both the stern alertness and imaginative flexibility required to drive successful improvisation. It’s a music that shifts and mutates in surprising and often delightful ways, plus it’s beautifully recorded — real widescreen stuff.

Keith Moliné

“Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top, Bottom” reviewed by Comunicazione Interna

Settimo disco firmato @c, duo elettro-acustico portoghese composto da Miguel Carvalhais e Pedro Tudela qui all’opera su una serie di file-recordings registrati tra il 2002 e il 2007 in giro per l’Europa, catturando performances musicali da Porto a Glasgow, da Lilla ad Helsinki, da Lisbona a Vienna, da Londra a Monaco di Baviera. Materiale questo poi rielaborato e cucito attraverso continue manipolazioni anche alimentate da una radicale componente improvvisativa, così che balbettii vocali, corde di violoncello elettrico tese allo spasimo e diafani echi di sassofono vengono inglobati all’interno del tessuto sonoro acquistando una nuova consistenza organica.

Lavoro composto da 4 brani anche se centrato sostanzialmente intorno al primo e al quarto, visto che gli episodi intermedi sono solo dei brevi bozzetti, tutto sgocciolamenti il primo, fatto di abrasioni e sfregamenti il secondo. Notevolissimo il pezzo di apertura intitolato “62”, venti minuti di secrezioni elettroniche cristallizzate in un dub minimalista, disossato e cerebrale, alle quali si aggiungono insistenti caracollamenti percussivi fatti rimbalzare su pareti metalliche e poi affondati in acquitrini ambient.

Guido Gambacorta

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

@c’s Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top, Bottom declares its unique character even before a single note is heard. There’s the unusual group name, for starters, and then there’s the album’s four tracks, two of which are under two minutes, and the others twenty and forty. Assembled using studio, live and field recordings, Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top, Bottom is, in fact, the seventh @c full-length from members Miguel Carvalhais and Pedro Tudela, and their third on Crónica. Carvalhais and Tudela are sonic alchemists who piece together elements into collages of restless, shape-shifting character. In the accompanying notes, they accurately describe themselves as sculptors, explorers, and even watchmakers with the album signifying “one more step in finding our way in music, looking for something we can’t really define.” In their constructions, Carvalhais and Tudela wrestle with the tension between the recording in its static form as a “finished” document and the improvisation strategies which they bring to the recording process as a means for liberating sound from the structural foundations of a given composition and that “finished” state.

@c’s explorative spirit is nowhere more evident than in the opening “62” whose hyperactive flow is somewhat normalized by the inclusion of Miquel Bernat’s percussion playing. Real-world elements likewise ground “71” and “72” where dog barks and amplified water are audible in the first, and the decayed grooves of Stephen Mathieu’s 78 RPM discs in the second. Not surprisingly, the album’s coup de grace is “61,” not simply on account of its length but because it integrates contributions from a huge supporting cast that includes vocalists, percussionists, and a sax player, guitarist, and electric cello player. Don’t think for a moment, however, that “61” sounds conventional for even a single second; Carvalhais and Tudela treat their guests’ sounds just as malleably as they do their own, making “61” even more uncompromising than the three pieces before it. The piece is like a huge, multi-limbed alien organism that never stops changing colour and shape while writhing relentlessly and sometimes violently for an exhausting forty minutes. Admittedly, the individual instruments do identifiably assert themselves on occasion—the cello and kalimba most audibly extricate themselves from the whole—but more often than not the contributors’ sounds are absorbed into @c’s complex web.

“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, who envisions his work as a suitable sound atmosphere to the images evoked by the formers masterpiece, In Search Of Lost Time.

From this kernel sprouts an attractive amalgam of cosmic ambition. “Un etourdissant reveil en musique” sets the bar almost impossibly high. Crystalline yet combustible, gentle yet hard, the lyrical drone of this piece is of such an evanescence that it ultimately comes to resemble a luminous plasma. Further works play more explicitly with memory and melancholy. Asides from the drone, Mantas has a fondness for natural sound collage and bruised acoustic instrumentals and he stitches them both into the fabric of numerous works. The rough textures of “Cantiques A La Gloire Du Soleil” are a suitable backdrop for manipulated voice and violin to drift across, sounding plaintively distant and ghostly as fragments of fresh sound come breaking in, wrestling one away from the stupor. In other places, these elements aid in a sensual adventure while at yet other moments they cement a simple but magical innocence or foster a sense of atmospheric aural illusion. In the sequence of these events, a strong, though admittedly threadbare, narrative is erected.

What prevents the ear from readily gulping down the sounds on display is Mantas’ occasional unwillingness to apply a critical sieve and test every note. This love of recollection is shown in a wholesome, unspoiled manner, and often in a way that is not without a certain charming candor, but all the same, the sweet perturbation of these sentiments sometimes betrays a wisp of self-importance which detracts from the effect. The album thus glows with and is itself occasionally overwhelmed by the magnanimity of its influences.

Max Schaefer

“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 frammenti sonori realizzati principalmente attraverso graphic-tool generativi e processati con software granulari, e l’album acquista un senso nella sua globalità, nell’ascolto completo e non certo nelle peculiarità delle composizioni in sé. L’autore si accorge del limite intrinseco della cosa, ed acclude allora delle note testuali che hanno influenzato la realizzazione e ne hanno motivato lo sviluppo. Senza questa linea guida, l’album mantiene un senso compiuto? Solo parzialmente, in verità. L’aspetto interessante della cosa è che le tracce possono essere interpretate come dei sigilli di cui l’autore stesso ha dimenticato il significato originale, e che acquistano quindi contenuti nuovi nel momento in cui riaffiorano a livello subconscio. Ma questo è un fattore che assume un valore per Davor Mikan, e certamente di meno per l’ascoltatore, a cui non rimane che confrontarsi con una materia che è sì compiuta , ma che anche non aggiunge nulla ad una branca sonora – quella elettro acustica di stampo concreto – in cui è difficile innovare se si sceglie la strada autarchica di Mikan. Un lavoro transitorio, mirato agli estimatori radicali del genere, che staziona in quel limbo tra la genuina ispirazione e la dubbia utilità.

Marco Castagnetto

“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 verzerrte Musik- oder Realitätsfetzen an, wie flattrige, zirpige, kaputte Samples, meist beschleunigt, zerknittert, zerschrottet oder chaotisch durchgeschüttelt. “Ein Tag” dauert nur 3:12 und ist dennoch mit Abstand das längste Teilstück. Mikan zitiert Sloterdijk, Pessoa und Olga Neuwirth, um einem Stichworte wie Illusion & Selbstbetrug, schwarzer Schimmelpilz und “Gesten, die nirgendwohin führen” als Heringe zuzuwerfen, die man entweder fressen oder auf der Nase balancieren kann.