“Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top, Bottom” reviewed by The Wire

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 composition”. (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

“Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top, Bottom” reviewed by Comunicazione Interna

Settimo disco firmato @c, duo elettro-acustico portoghese composto da Miguel Carvalhais e Pedro Tudela qui all’opera su una serie di file-recordings registrati tra il 2002 e il 2007 in giro per l’Europa, catturando performances musicali da Porto a Glasgow, da Lilla ad Helsinki, da Lisbona a Vienna, da Londra a Monaco di Baviera. Materiale questo poi rielaborato e cucito attraverso continue manipolazioni anche alimentate da una radicale componente improvvisativa, così che balbettii vocali, corde di violoncello elettrico tese allo spasimo e diafani echi di sassofono vengono inglobati all’interno del tessuto sonoro acquistando una nuova consistenza organica.

Lavoro composto da 4 brani anche se centrato sostanzialmente intorno al primo e al quarto, visto che gli episodi intermedi sono solo dei brevi bozzetti, tutto sgocciolamenti il primo, fatto di abrasioni e sfregamenti il secondo. Notevolissimo il pezzo di apertura intitolato “62”, venti minuti di secrezioni elettroniche cristallizzate in un dub minimalista, disossato e cerebrale, alle quali si aggiungono insistenti caracollamenti percussivi fatti rimbalzare su pareti metalliche e poi affondati in acquitrini ambient.

Guido Gambacorta

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

@c’s Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top, Bottom declares its unique character even before a single note is heard. There’s the unusual group name, for starters, and then there’s the album’s four tracks, two of which are under two minutes, and the others twenty and forty. Assembled using studio, live and field recordings, Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top, Bottom is, in fact, the seventh @c full-length from members Miguel Carvalhais and Pedro Tudela, and their third on Crónica. Carvalhais and Tudela are sonic alchemists who piece together elements into collages of restless, shape-shifting character. In the accompanying notes, they accurately describe themselves as sculptors, explorers, and even watchmakers with the album signifying “one more step in finding our way in music, looking for something we can’t really define.” In their constructions, Carvalhais and Tudela wrestle with the tension between the recording in its static form as a “finished” document and the improvisation strategies which they bring to the recording process as a means for liberating sound from the structural foundations of a given composition and that “finished” state.

@c’s explorative spirit is nowhere more evident than in the opening “62” whose hyperactive flow is somewhat normalized by the inclusion of Miquel Bernat’s percussion playing. Real-world elements likewise ground “71” and “72” where dog barks and amplified water are audible in the first, and the decayed grooves of Stephen Mathieu’s 78 RPM discs in the second. Not surprisingly, the album’s coup de grace is “61,” not simply on account of its length but because it integrates contributions from a huge supporting cast that includes vocalists, percussionists, and a sax player, guitarist, and electric cello player. Don’t think for a moment, however, that “61” sounds conventional for even a single second; Carvalhais and Tudela treat their guests’ sounds just as malleably as they do their own, making “61” even more uncompromising than the three pieces before it. The piece is like a huge, multi-limbed alien organism that never stops changing colour and shape while writhing relentlessly and sometimes violently for an exhausting forty minutes. Admittedly, the individual instruments do identifiably assert themselves on occasion—the cello and kalimba most audibly extricate themselves from the whole—but more often than not the contributors’ sounds are absorbed into @c’s complex web.

“Musicamorosa” reviewed by Cyclic Defrost

For this release, Jorge Mantas acts as an esthetician and a sound designer more than a composer or artist. The thematic concept around which this album orbits is one drawn from the French literary tradition, that of love lived through sadness. In particular, author Marcel Proust serves as a muse for the romantically inclined Mantas, who envisions his work as a suitable sound atmosphere to the images evoked by the formers masterpiece, In Search Of Lost Time.

From this kernel sprouts an attractive amalgam of cosmic ambition. “Un etourdissant reveil en musique” sets the bar almost impossibly high. Crystalline yet combustible, gentle yet hard, the lyrical drone of this piece is of such an evanescence that it ultimately comes to resemble a luminous plasma. Further works play more explicitly with memory and melancholy. Asides from the drone, Mantas has a fondness for natural sound collage and bruised acoustic instrumentals and he stitches them both into the fabric of numerous works. The rough textures of “Cantiques A La Gloire Du Soleil” are a suitable backdrop for manipulated voice and violin to drift across, sounding plaintively distant and ghostly as fragments of fresh sound come breaking in, wrestling one away from the stupor. In other places, these elements aid in a sensual adventure while at yet other moments they cement a simple but magical innocence or foster a sense of atmospheric aural illusion. In the sequence of these events, a strong, though admittedly threadbare, narrative is erected.

What prevents the ear from readily gulping down the sounds on display is Mantas’ occasional unwillingness to apply a critical sieve and test every note. This love of recollection is shown in a wholesome, unspoiled manner, and often in a way that is not without a certain charming candor, but all the same, the sweet perturbation of these sentiments sometimes betrays a wisp of self-importance which detracts from the effect. The album thus glows with and is itself occasionally overwhelmed by the magnanimity of its influences.

Max Schaefer

“Täuschung” reviewed by Music Club

Il compositore austriaco Davor Mikan realizza con questo “Tauschung” un concept esteso sulla memoria e sul ricordo, compilando trentuno microtracce elettroacustiche dove a prendere il sopravvento è la dimensione noise del suono. La suddivisione in titoli è onestamente arbitraria: tutti i pezzi – composti e rielaborati nel corso degli ultimi quattro anni – sono minimi frammenti sonori realizzati principalmente attraverso graphic-tool generativi e processati con software granulari, e l’album acquista un senso nella sua globalità, nell’ascolto completo e non certo nelle peculiarità delle composizioni in sé. L’autore si accorge del limite intrinseco della cosa, ed acclude allora delle note testuali che hanno influenzato la realizzazione e ne hanno motivato lo sviluppo. Senza questa linea guida, l’album mantiene un senso compiuto? Solo parzialmente, in verità. L’aspetto interessante della cosa è che le tracce possono essere interpretate come dei sigilli di cui l’autore stesso ha dimenticato il significato originale, e che acquistano quindi contenuti nuovi nel momento in cui riaffiorano a livello subconscio. Ma questo è un fattore che assume un valore per Davor Mikan, e certamente di meno per l’ascoltatore, a cui non rimane che confrontarsi con una materia che è sì compiuta , ma che anche non aggiunge nulla ad una branca sonora – quella elettro acustica di stampo concreto – in cui è difficile innovare se si sceglie la strada autarchica di Mikan. Un lavoro transitorio, mirato agli estimatori radicali del genere, che staziona in quel limbo tra la genuina ispirazione e la dubbia utilità.

Marco Castagnetto

“Täuschung” reviewed by Bad Alchemy

Mikan lebt und arbeitet in Wien, kommt aber wie aus dem Nichts. Sein Debut (?) komprimiert 31 Miniaturen auf 37 Minuten, noisiges, teils schroffes, manchmal aber nicht unwitziges Gekritzel, meist offenbar algorithmisch, teilweise auch von Hand generiert mit “generative graphic-tools togehter with granular synthesis”, was auch immer das heißen mag. Es hört sich stellenweise wie verzerrte Musik- oder Realitätsfetzen an, wie flattrige, zirpige, kaputte Samples, meist beschleunigt, zerknittert, zerschrottet oder chaotisch durchgeschüttelt. “Ein Tag” dauert nur 3:12 und ist dennoch mit Abstand das längste Teilstück. Mikan zitiert Sloterdijk, Pessoa und Olga Neuwirth, um einem Stichworte wie Illusion & Selbstbetrug, schwarzer Schimmelpilz und “Gesten, die nirgendwohin führen” als Heringe zuzuwerfen, die man entweder fressen oder auf der Nase balancieren kann.

“Täuschung” reviewed by Loop

This is the obtuse and abstract music of Viennese artist Davor Mikan who makes his debut on Portuguese’s Crónica Electronica label always pushing the boundaries of experimental electronic music. ‘Täuschung’ comprised 31 short tracks that collect sketched ideas of microscopic and sharp digital sounds. The music forms the most unpredictable shapes and mathematics angles. This album is the perfect mood to listen a world of little stories with an array of sounds.

“Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top, Bottom” reviewed by The Sound Projector

Candidate for ‘puzzler of the week’ is a curious recording by Miguel Carvalhais and Pedro Tudela, here trading under the name of @c. Their Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top, Bottom (CRÓNICA 031) takes the practice of sampling into a strange and hermetic dimension. About 11 musicians were recorded over a five year period, only to have their distinctive contributions rendered down into this digital soup of confusion. Filled with perplexing angles and dimensions, to listen to this is like wandering in a crazy house. The title of the work I think confirms their approach to sonic architecture is somehow skewed with a perverse desire to keep turning everything sideways and upside down. Better not hire these two guys when you’re moving house!

“Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top, Bottom” reviewed by France Musique, Tapage Nocturne

C’est sous le pseudonyme d’@c que les portugais Miguel Carvalhais et Pedro Tudela viennent d’éditer leur 7ème album et leur troisième collaboration au catalogue du label Crónica basé à Porto. Miguel Carvalhais et Pedro Tudela sont des compositeurs chevronnés de musique concrète, ils utilisent des prises de sons réalisées en studio, sur scène ou en extérieur qu’ils mêlent avec beaucoup de dextérité et de complexité pour créer un univers sonore électronique et acoustique. Le titre de l’album utilise d’ailleurs les six noms de Up, Down, Charm, Strange, Top et Bottom, noms que les physiciens attribuent aux quarks, ces particules les plus élémentaires que nous connaissons, qu”elles soient naturelles (à l’image des sonorités acoustiques) ou synthétiques c’est à dire produite à l’intérieur d”un accélérateur de particules comme ces sonorités créées par les manipulations électroniques de cet ingénieux duo.

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

This is the seventh instalment – and the third for Crónica – of Porto based duo Pedro Tudela and Miguel Carvalhais. This CD took to Miguel and Pedro two years of production and comprised five years of live, studio and field recordings, work inspired from several artists that in this album found their contributions by ‘sample guests’ in the likes of Stephan Mathieu with its 78RPM recordings, an ongoing collaboration with the Drumming Percussion Ensemble in the 62 track. Number 71 are field recordings of Californian dog barking and track 61 includes bits of sound recorded with Cheny Gune (voice), Gustavo Costa, (percussion), Jonathan Uliel (percussion), Kenji Siratori (voice), Matchume Zango (percussion), Miquel Bernat (percussion), Neil Davidson (guitar), Raymond MacDonald (saxophone), Rita Azevedo Pinto (voice), Tinoca Zimba (percussion), Ulrich Mitzlaff (electric cello).

This is an amazing production by the duo since the edition of distorted voices, electroacoustic and concrete sounds, claterring percusion go perfectly into the mix.