“Still Important Somekind Not Normally Seen (Always Not Unfinished)” reviewed by Jade

Deux Islandais et un Australien sont dans un studio, Ils se racontent des histoires de nature, de compromis entre nature et culture, de soundscape digitaux, d’imitation du réel. Staalplaat et les Pays Bas semblent avoir joué un rôle prépondérant dans la genèse de ce projet et dans l’entremêlement de ces 3 individualités. Heimir Björgulfsson y a réalisé, dans le cadre des matérial séries des pièces fort intéressantes alors même que Pimmon et Helgi Thorsson (partie de Stilluppsteypa) réalisait des sessions Mort aux vaches en collaboration avec la VPRO. Une base commune d’intérêts rejoint par leur intérêt conjoint pour la créativité expérimentale. Cette production, la 14 ème de Cronica dénote dès le début par sa surprenante allégresse, déjà visible en promesse sur cette pochette ornée de fleurs stylisées. Still Important Somekind not Normally seen est une synthèse heureuse du savoir-faire de ces 3 musiciens, Qu’on s’attache aux courants environnementaux de Björgulfsson, à la dextérité rythmique et asymétrique de Paul Gough (Pimmon) où aux nappes sombres , spécialités de Thorsson. Et comme l’union de 3 talents donne souvent davantage que la somme de ceux-ci, ce disque possède un surcroît d’âme.

Julien Jaffré

“Still Important Somekind Not Normally Seen (Always Not Unfinished)” reviewed by Blitz

(…) Tem uma tendência lúcida subtil, longinqua na insinuação, mas que esparge disco com um humor residual. Afinal de contas, são três micro-roedores a devorarem um quadro eléctrico, com disputas frequentes por fusíveis e descargas perdidas. A tranquilidade da degustação domina, mas a devastação está lá, corrosiva. (…) É só desligar as luzes e eles aparecem, radioactivos, a roerem ritmos e indícios de melodia – embora mantendo os modos, porque a insaciabilidade não desculpa tudo. (7/10)

Sérgio Gomes da Costa

“Still Important Somekind Not Normally Seen (Always Not Unfinished)” reviewed by Touching Extremes

It takes a while to fully enjoy this recording, which is best appreciable if you listen to it on shuffle play mode: that way, the “out of tune TV” effect of this schizophrenic enigma will show its complete efficiency. A complete lack of communication is reconfigured through an apparatus of strange codes, each one looking for uncommon expressions and non conventional coupling with other weird physical manifestations. The three artists do a “catch-them-all” kind of electronic trawling, mixing silences and distortion, fragmentations and ironic looping, aleatory phases and algesic acousmatic shapes that rarely touch my heart but, for sure, stimulate my attention. Robert Hampson edited the whole show, recorded in Holland in 2002, but don’t think this could even remotely sound like a Main record.

Massimo Ricci

“Musicamorosa” reviewed by Boomkat

The Beautiful Schizophrenic is the pseudonym of sound designer Jorge Mantas, an artist who clearly has a bit of a fixation on Marcel Proust: all but two of the titles here are borrowed from lines of text from the author’s A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu – La Prisonniere. Of course it’s utterly preposterous to try and compare Proust’s monumental literary achievements to an album of drone-based microsound, but Mantas is keen to cite the links between love, melancholy and memory as a key factor in his own work, even being so bold as to pose the question: “Could this be a possible sound equivalent to the literary images of affection written by Proust in the early 20th century?” He then proceeds to answer the question with “Probably we’ll never know.” It’s hard to listen to this album without being haunted by the rather troubling sense that the composer is getting ideas above his station, but taken as a body of work on its own, detached from any delusions of grandeur, there are ample rewards to be reaped. The Basinski-style faded elegance of ‘un étourdissant réveil en musique’ is hard to resist, and the wonderful concrète cocktail ‘les oiseaux qui dorment en l’air’ is a real joy. Mantas even gets a little assistance from Cecile Schott – Colleen herself – on ‘La Lectrice’, a piece which (as the title suggests) consists of a reading, adding a more human edge to the bitcrushed orchestral passages that make up much of the disc. If you’re in search of some epic, romantic ambient electronics, you could do worse than lose some time listening to this. Lovely.

“Musicamorosa” reviewed by Igloo

It caresses the mind and careens forward, this Beautiful Schizophonic (Jorge Mantas). Musicamorosa is a selection of passages, deep and full-bodied in passionate drone. Music for the awakening of the soul, no doubt. Much of this was influenced by the romantic sense of time, and losing it, in the literary work of the great Proust (Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust). The disc is most cavernous at times (“Du Fond Du Sommeil Elle Remontait Les Derniers Degrés De L’escalier Des Songes”), taking a surging river ride at others (“Les Oiseaux Qui Dorment En L’air”). On “La Lectrice” (The Reader) he employs multi-instrumentalist and composer Colleen (Cécile Schott) reading without accompaniment from Proust while in Paris. It causes for a linguistic pause before once again floating amid the luminous “L’amour, C’est L’espace Et Le Temps Rendus Sensibles Au Coeur.” Chambers of translucent whispers and the elongated echo of whistling carry the sense purported on “L’éternel Matin”. What Mantas, who fancies himself a sound designer rather than a composer, ends up harvesting here is randomly conceptual as a long player. It works in sections, but perhaps it may be best left alone, to simply bathe into the entirety of its length. And in conclusion, it does with the thirteen minute gem “Soixante-Quatre (@C Pour T.B.S.)” which combines all that is grande about electronica today, a glint of minimalism and the subliminal power of the soundtrack. And while pre-empted by hushed, fidgety goings-on the end straddles those moments in-between, that time actually forgot. Which is to say the subtleties of Musicamorosa will carry its secrets into the air like a swarm of bees, vying on extinction, on a particularly humid day.

TJ Norris

“Musicamorosa” reviewed by De-Bug

Sehr Konzept-bezogen und doch so schön. Jorge Mantas liest Proust und schon gibt es Tracktitel. Und auch die Musik ist von dem Literaten inspiriert, wie das funktioniert, muss man hier nicht ausbreiten. Viel wichtiger der Klang, und wenn man unbedingt Vergleiche ziehen will, dann ist dieses Album die definitive Mischung aus Marsen Jules, Gas und dem Teil abseitigen Experiments, das für Laptopper einfach unvermeidlich scheint. Mantas ist immer auf dem Punkt, immer gut, wenn das Experiment den Wohlklang unterstützt, die Drones in freundlichen Harmonien an uns vorbeiwehen. Das Album hat einige solcher Tracks. Und die sind dann auch gleich richtig gut.

Thaddi

“Musicamorosa” reviewed by Foutraque

Décidément cette rentrée musicale est, pour ma part, placée sous le signe des disques en marge. Ceux hors normes, difficiles d’accès lors de la première écoute mais qui au final se relèvent merveilleusement beaux. Le premier album Musicamorosa de The Beautiful Schizophonic en fait partie ; distillant ses charmes envoûtants au fil des écoutes successives.

Composé autour de l’œuvre de Marcel Proust, Musicamorosa est un album de “done music”. Une musique composée à base d’instruments classiques (claviers et guitares) et d’habillages électroniques le tout fondu en un amas sonore compact formant une masse musicale dont les lentes variations s’égrènent délicatement au fil des minutes. En résulte un subtil mélange entre bruits/bourdonnements et ambiances electronica (la rythmique en moins) formant d’abstraites plages sonores. Prenant pour titre un extrait de l’œuvre de l’écrivain français, chacune des compositions de The Beautiful Schizophonic soustrait aux mots leur grammaire musicale alternant silence, chuintements à peine audibles ou volubilité atmosphérique. Un parallélisme entre sons et mots mis en exergue sur le morceau “La Lectrice” ou Colleen, seule, lit à haute voix un extrait d’écrits de Proust avec pour seul décor la musicalité de sa voix et des mots.

Empruntant à Proust son élégance et son romantisme littéraire, The Beautiful Schizophonic (de son vrai nom Jorge Mantas) compose ici un album aux charmes alambiqués ou alchimie des mots et ambiances sonores s’entremêlent étroitement laissant planer la préciosité de quelques autres grands noms comme celui d’Eric Rohmer, d’Edgar Allan Poe ou de Wong Kar Wai….

“Musicamorosa” reviewed by Westzeit

Neu auf Crónica ist “MUSICAMOROSA”, das Debut von THE BEAUTIFUL SCHIZOPHONIC, der sich von romantischen Malern und düsteren Dichtern (Poe, Dante) beeinflusst sieht und seine Drone-Schichtungen aus vielfach verloopten Streichern und diversen anderen electronischen Zutaten mit Titeln aus Prousts “Suche nach der verlorenen Zeit” schmückt. So richtig zwingend ist das nicht, zum Chill-out im Avantgardeclub aber sicher brauchbar.

“Musicamorosa” reviewed by Chain D.L.K.

Last time I heard from Jorge Mantas was with his cdr on Mystery Sea. I had shared a cd with him on Thisco, and I really liked his dark, concise, sometimes lo-fi approach to digital drones. I’ve lost traces of him for a while and now I discover he’s mellowed out: pink layout, Proust quotes everywhere… what the hell… No, really… This is undoubtedly a new course for Mantas, but it’s a great one, and his musical ability has improved dramatically. His drones have turned melodic and moody, and beneath the sugar-coated layout they have maintained an edge that prevents them from becoming dull or nauseous (with the darker “L’amour, c’est l’espace et le temps rendus sensibles au coeur” reminding of his previous production). With its 13 tracks and 65 minutes, it’s a quite lengthy work, and my loveless heart forces me to take a break now and then – but the quality is high throughout. Guests like José Luís Merca (Matéria Prima, at electric guitar), Tobias Strahl (Dies Natalis, at acoustic guitar) and Cécile Schott (Colleen, reading Proust, obviously), help make some tracks more varied, and Mantas knows how to dose their contribution. @c closes the album with a glitchy, more upbeat remix, which is ok but maybe a bit redundant. I would recommend this disc to anybody into Dead Texan, latest Beequeen or Stephan Mathieu, and melancholic electronica in general – it hardly gets any better than this, me thinks.

Eugenio Maggi

“Musicamorosa” reviewed by Rumore

“Uno stordente sogno in musica”, “gli uccelli che dormono nell’aria”, “un giardino ancora silenzioso prima del levarsi del giorno”, sono alcuni dei titoli prelevati dal corpo della “Recherche” di Proust che la musica del portoghese Jorge Mantas alias TBS anela ad evocare. Scaturito nel 2003 da esperimenti personali con computer e minidisc, il progetto trae ispirazione da una varietà di stimoli culturali, dalla pittura di Dante Gabriel Rossetti al cinema di Eric Rohmer, mantenendosi sul filo di un intimismo introspettivo dai risvolti romantici. Con l’aiuto di alcuni ospiti alla chitarra più un intermezzo di passi proustiani letti in francese da Cécile Schott, l’autore si muove su un terreno in cui è facile scivolare nell’estetismo fine a se stesso. L’attenzione di Mantas si focalizza quindi, con esiti discreti ma non essantanti, sulla capacità dei suoi atmosferici soundscape e ambient drone melodici — assemblati al laptop come uno scrittore davanti alla sua macchina da scrivere — di comunicare genuine emozioni con languida e sensuale malinconia. Per citare un altro titolo, “una prova dell’esistenza irriducibilmente individuale dell’anima”.

Vittore Baroni