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 compositionâ€. (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