New release: Is That You?

Is That You? cover

As its 35th installment, Crónica is pleased to add to its well curated catalogue TU M’s “Is That You?”

“Is That You?” invites you to become a solo protagonist in an imaginary soundtrack. While embracing you in an ocean of orchestral delight, the delicate arrangements and the overall amplitude of the piece’s resonance carry you across a 23 minute drama full of beauty and intrigue.

Rossano Polidoro and Emiliano Romanelli’s improvised recordings stem from carefully written evocations of orchestral brass and wood colors which are later reprocessed live. TU M’s performance is yet another level of evocation, building concurrent arrays of sound flux full of instrumental warmth and vivid organics.

TU M’ are meager in words about their music, but this sparseness finds a balance in the expressivity of their music.

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“Täuschung” reviewed by Gaz-Eta

Austrian sound artist Davor Mikan is not someone I’m all too familiar with. His main purpose in the musical realm is to develop music through a series of algorithmic variables. He admits he uses generative graphic-tools along with granular synthesis in order to transform sound. The pieces on “Täuschung” were developed over the span of four years. What’s most interesting is Mikan confesses to forgetting what his original ideas were behind these pieces. Any emotions associated with this music is lost four years after they were initially made. In listening to the thirty one short tracks within this CD, one gets a sense of total chaos. Strangeness of the sounds is eerily evident everywhere. From the glitches that are incongruent through to the blasts and sudden variations in speed, timbre and tone. Blasts, spurts and extreme shifts in direction is what makes this album unpredictable. From lo-fi, harsh glitches through to imminent confusion, I can only recommend this album to the fans of hardcore noise.

Tom Sekowski

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

É uno dei più facili della copia portoghese: percussioni elettroniche sparse, flussi e tessitura che scivolano, voci che sgusciano e si ritraggono, rumori concreti (acqua che scorre da uno sciacquone, fulmini e saette, canti etno), qualche passaggio parasinfonico e qualche inserto acustico sotto forma di capionamento (sax, violoncello, altre corde non identificate). Poi finisce anche questo. Stefano I. Bianchi

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

Dieses beeindruckende Audio des offenen Klangkunst-Improv-Kollektivs wurde von Miguel Carvalhais und Pedro Tudela in Porto zu vier langen Stücken komponiert und gemastert. Die Studiobearbeitung des Materials aus dem Zeitraum von 2002 bis 2007 vergleichen die beiden bisweilen mit der Arbeit eines Mechanikers oder Uhrmachers, wo individuelle Teile in einem viel größeren und komplexeren System zusammengefügt werden. Schön gesehen, und so ganz nebenbei eine der überzeugendsten Medienmusiken der Jetztzeit.

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

Pour ce septième album – le troisième sur le label Crónica -, les plasticiens sonores Miguel Carvalhais et Pedro Tudela continuent leur interrogation de la musique en tant que forme d’art, en tant que message médiumnique davantage que médiatique susceptible d’établir un lien entre la nature extérieure et la forme intériorisée contenue dans ce cd. Alors évidemment, les quatre pièces présentées activent les notions de mobilité et de voyage. Dans la durée (deux pièces de 20 et 40 minutes, deux pièces de moins de deux minutes), dans l’espace, les field recordings servant de matière modelable et agençable ayant été saisies dans différentes villes européennes, dans le temps également puisque leur captation s’étale sur cinq ans, de 2002 à 2007. Et dans la forme bien sûr, puisque voix, résonances spatialisées de sons électroniques, bribes d’instants de vie saisis au détour d’un micro, collaborations émaillées avec divers artistes, percussionnistes notamment, se télescopent et s’interpénètrent avec cette force du document sonore vivant, du work in progress intrigant, qui caractérisent le travail poético-fantasque de ces deux manitous d’une musique concrète de traverse.

Laurent Catala

“Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top, Bottom” reviewed by Musique Machine

This bizarrely entitled album is another fevered and improvised trip into musical and sound from the minds of the @c (Miguel Carvalhais and Pedro Tudela)- it’s a dense mix of rhythmic elements, field recording, modern classical and avant jazz textures, electronic elements, noise and of course improv- having been quite taken by their De-Tour collaboration from last year with Vitor Joaquim I had high hopes for this.

Through out this mainly homes in on the more manic and dense side of their work with sadly none of the tense and almost suffocating feel of De-Tour present here. The pair layer up all manner of rhythmic matter, field recordings, electronic textures, stretched voice elements and musically side lines and it often feels quite big and cinematic in it presence. Sure it’s strange, manic and otherworldly but it feels often too dense, too over loaded in its sound make up, so as a result interesting sonic elements seemed to get drowned or brushed aside in the storm of sound. Sometimes improvised music, Musique concrete and experimental music can become too clever, too muilt-layered for it own good and that what’s happened here. The pair seem to be concentrate so much on detailing and painting up the sound layers that they just about stripped all the atmosphere, entertainment and sonic wonder from the album.

I really tried to like this as I’d been so taken by De-Tour , but sadly I just keep return to feeling that it’s just too dense and trying to be clever for it’s own good. Sure it’s impressive in its construction, depth and density of sound but emotional it just so flat and unappealing

Roger Batty

“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.