When I started to play this tape, I first assumed it was blank; it took quite some time before there was any music to hear, even when the volume was turned up quite a bit. This is a split cassette but there is also something that makes that both sides belong together. Latorre and Comelles worked together on a project in 2016 and Comelles did some recordings of Latorre’s accordion. Comelles asked Latorre to play a piece by Pauline Oliveros for a festival he was curating and during the preparation Oliveros passed away (November 2016) and so the concert became a tribute. That recording is on the first side here, as said, starting out very quiet. But slowly the sound becomes audible and we arrive at something that indeed sounds very Pauline Oliveros.
The music is meandering about, the accordion expanded by electronics, creating richly textured music but also with a firm foothold in the world of improvised music, sometimes hectic bouncing all over the places and in the end section Latorre also adds her voice. On the other side we find Edu Comelles with a piece that is a combination of shruti box and samples from Latorre’s accordion. This piece is a more controlled environment in which computer generated sampled play drones along with those with a more manual touch. These drones have a slightly eastern feel to it, I think, and despite the fact that some of these sound perhaps digital, there is overall a warm feel to this piece. A mournful tone in what is surely an excellent threnody. Spacious, endless, sustaining and yet also seemingly always with minor changes. (FdW)
via Vital Weekly