@C are the Porto based electronic artists Pedro Tudela and Miguel Carvalhais. Regularly utilising field recordings, samples and strange electronic sounds, over the course of three albums they have displayed a firm commitment to improvisation and deconstruction, in creating new and interesting links via their internal electronic dialogue. Their second outing on the strange and uncompromising Portuguese Cronica label, V3 is significant in that it is culled from live performances and features the duo improvising with numerous collaborators, often in the electro acoustic realm. Though all the pieces have come from their live work in 2003, they were later edited and remixed by @c. And the results are quite startling. Though the various ensembles have been shuffled throughout the disc, there are performances with guitarists, visual artists and percussionists, all of which illustrate @c’s amazing ability to craft innovative and quite challenging soundscapes with multiple partners. The sounds verge on near silent improvised jazz, gorgeous droning strums of guitar, strange jittery electro speak, high pitched waves of electronic atmospheres, to some of the most uncompromising semi industrial improvised house music around. Perhaps due to its improvised nature V3 feels incredibly freeform, yet thanks to the remixing the pieces always have a vague, thoroughly unexpected structure and always continue to develop. It’s avant experimental electronics in its purest form. Startling and genre defying.
Bob Baker Fish