Fractal Symmetry, Hum and Toot is a set of three long improvisations combining the organic and the synthetic, recorded live in the studio from the duo of Swedes Lars Bröndum & Per Gärdin. Although made by only two musicians, Bröndum and Gärdin’s sound contains multitudes, largely thanks to Bröndum’s array of modular synthesizers, Theremin, Buchla Music Easel, Sidrax organ, and miscellaneous electronics, over which Gärdin contributes contrasting, convoluted lines on soprano and alto saxophone.
Fractal Symmetry, the opening performance, begins with an electronic hum and saxophone harmonics before developing into a fluttering of soprano saxophone over a rhythmic synth pulse whose regularity is kept just beyond the reach of easy counting. The overall architecture of the piece, and of the duo’s collaboration generally, is of slowly shifting synthesized soundscapes overlaid with flurries of notes from the saxophone. Hum and Honk is notable for setting Gärdin’s extended technique on alto sax over a burbling synth background that evolves into an encroaching drone. The final track, Toot and Crackle, moves from an understated beginning of twittering synth into a more thickly textured yet still laconic electronic background over which the soprano saxophone conducts a rapidly voiced soliloquy, the conclusion to which is a harsh, synthetic mass of sound culminating in a scaled-down, dirge-like drone.
Daniel Barbiero
Bearing the name of a short book on the Anglican Church in Lisbon, Per Gärdin, Pedro Lopes & Rodrigo Pinheiro’s History of the Lisbon Chaplaincy was, appropriately enough, recorded in St. George’s Church in Lisbon in September, 2013. St. George’s figures centrally in the book, but undoubtedly it was chosen as a recording site not for its history, but for its Fincham pipe organ, played by Pinheiro. Throughout much of the long improvisation that makes up the recording, the organ acts as a kind of sonic anchor, whether as a relatively immobile foundation for Gärdin’s restless soprano and alto saxophone lines, or as a kind of eddying current running underneath the reeds and Lopes’s percussion and turntables. The music’s dramatic development largely hinges on the tension between Gärdin’s energetic expressionism and Lopes and Pinheiro’s more texturally-directed sounds; crucially, the trio plays effectively with the church’s acoustics, carefully crafting sound densities from variable-length phrases and subtly-balanced ensemble passages.
Avant Music News 