blog.Crónica

Besides a handful of abstract and experimental musicians, Portugal based Crónica media label is a home to its founders and one of the most interesting acts, @c (pronounced “at-c”). Originally a trio, @c formed in 2000, and is currently made up of Miguel Carvalhais and Pedro Tudela. Their fourteenth (by my count) release is actually a soundtrack to a play, titled OVO, developed by the Teatro de Marionetas do Porto (a string puppet theater) in late 2011. I find it difficult to actually imagine the visual component of this performance, since the six pieces on the album, consecutively titled “98″ through “103″ feature some of the most abstract and complex compositions I have heard to date. Although the music is incredibly theoretical, it is not nevertheless that hard to digest. There are components of noise, elaborate digital manipulation, and multiple conceptual layers that at first seem to be nearly chaotic, yet the mind stays interested and focused, determined to solve the puzzle presented by @c within. The sound twists, warps, and contorts, creating a tangle of obscure themes, as if the puppets themselves are perplexed at the mangled strings attached at their members. Indeed, the published score is not a direct copy of the aural component of play, but rather a reworked portion of the soundtrack, tailored to be detached from the original context. HC

via Headphone Commute

The conceptual framework of the play OVO by the Puppet Theare of Porto (Portugal), which started from a sparkling idea by Eric De Sarria, pivots on the contemporary declension of everlasting crisis of mankind and supposedly those abstract and sometimes enticing ideas of progress or evolution that nourish collectivism or alternatively individualism till their gradual dissipation. The nihilistic premises of this play – the human collapse, the dispersion of the notion of future, the automatic reurring of the past – could maybe sound like the nubbin of many hackneyed scripts, but the thespian ploy to render such a precipitation is somehow original as the man got represented almost like a puppeteer (not a puppet!) who has to rein four different character in a so tight spot that the sole certitude is the fall itself. The soundtrack by Pedro Tudela and Miguel Carvalhais – a somewhat scary succession of almost improvised electronic aggregates – doesn’t disregard those fences and focuses on the sonic rendering of this somehow hyperbolic hyperreality: the initial magmatic cauldron where even sturdiest sonic entities got melted, unceasing maelstroms where any electric lunges and darts got pulverized, resounding cones of oblivion, where hesitant poltergeists, limp melodies and even spoken thoughts seems to fester. Every element falls into new crevices anytime it touches a bottom and blunders into a dimension whose vagueness seems to be its dungeon… Vito Camarretta

via Chain D.L.K.

These are not normal puppets, and this is not a normal soundtrack. @c‘s Ab OVO is a recreation of themes for the home listener, a condensation of ideas that were first used to augment the puppet theatre of Porto. Highly original, incredibly dense and occasionally maddening, the new score creates its own intrigue. What exactly were those puppeteers and musicians up to in the São Bento da Vitória Monastery? And do we really want to know the answer?

The nearly 66-minute work is oppressive and claustrophobic from its very first note. ”98″ gurgles and fizzes, pops and bends like the best of Zbeen, an electronic miasma with no immediately recognizable form. The sounds are industrial in nature, although without drums. These clanks and echoes are more suited to the boiler room of a factory than the main floor of a dance hall. The drone provides the constant as disparate noises lurk and lunge. As the album progresses, it continues to retreat to this sonic abyss, defying ready definition or interpretation. In its thickest moments, the album wraps the listener in a blanket of charged ions; but in its thinnest moments, the album leaves the listener cold and shivering. Whenever the drone disappears, the warmth disappears with it.

The album as a whole feels entirely alien, the work of a visiting species. On the surface, the sonics seem at times to be random, but curious patterns are embedded in the mix, including certain sounds – a swoosh, a glissando, a percussive pattern – that are separated by regular intervals. But the longer tracks (especially the 22-minute “100″) tend to meander, disappearing down a rabbit hole. One imagines the puppet becoming the puppeteer as the human holding the strings shrinks in size. Without the visual drama, the context is lost. Fortunately, there’s enough treasure to carry the album through a few desert stretches. ”101″ pairs robotic pings with electronic waves, like Wall-E at the beach. ”103″ adds drums, sampled and looped, doubling back to confront their own echoes. In the end, we’re not sure what is literal and what is metaphorical, an honest reflection of a puppeteer’s craft. (Richard Allen)

via A Closer Listen