Volume 29 Issue 1 | September 2023

utalovechamp
Brandon Seabrook
Pyroclastic Records PR27 (store.
pyroclasticrecords.com)
! Brandon
Seabrook is known
to be a composer
who eschews both
sonic norms and
overheated emotion.
But on brutalovechamp
he seems to
tear up that musical
playbook, to turn his own insides out and
even bare his soul. These are works, seemingly
like musical shards of raw emotion. You
don’t really need to unscramble the threeword
mash-up of the title or reach the end
of the booklet to discover that Seabrook was
gutted by the loss of man’s best friend, his
dog Champ.
Seabrook creates dizzying layering-on of
tonal cadences, mixing guitar, mandolin and
banjo, into the low instrumentation of bass
recorder, alto, B-flat and contrabass clarinets
and two contrabasses. Into this he has a
cellist pour liquid notes, while the ensemble
glimmers, redolent of a myriad of percussion
instruments. This unusual collision of timbre
creates a musical feast for the senses.
If Seabrook means for you to feel the
evocations of his pain at losing his beloved
dog, then this you certainly do up close and
personal on brutalovechamp. This is all
inward-looking music, raw in a Jean-Paul
Sartre-esque, existential sort of way. And
although Seabrook may be averse to labels,
some works cannot escape sonic allusions
to the symbolists like Arthur Rimbaud, in
for instance, Gutbucket Asylum. But make
no mistake, every piece of music on this
recording bears the authentic imprint of
Seabrook’s feral sound palette.
Raul da Gama
Something in the Air
The Struggle for Democracy in Portugal
and the Growth of Innovative Music
KEN WAXMAN
For Portugal, a country that was still struggling to solidify its
democracy in the 1980s following nearly 50 years of outright
dictatorship, one unexpected byproduct of that struggle has been
a burgeoning free music scene. Resourceful, the scene nurtured by the
struggle for the country’s expanding freedoms now includes
internationally known veterans like violinist Carlos Zingaro, younger
local experimenters and has started to attract improvisers from
elsewhere.
One experienced player is Paris-born pocket
trumpeter Sei Miguel, who has lived in
Portugal since 1986 and has propagated local
free music since then. Road Music (Clean Feed
CF 621 CD cleanfeedrecords.com/album/
road-music) features ten tracks by his Unit
Core recorded between 2016 and 2021. Most
position Miguel’s smeared brass timbres
in microtonal cohabitation with plunger
tones from Fala Mariam’s alto trombone and Bruno Silva’s guitar clips
and twangs with Pedro Castello Lopes adding rhythms from percussion
instruments. These understated pulses are particularly effective on
Sentinela and Canção, with triangle clinks decorating broken octave and
unison short brass bites. Not only do the woody clave smacks provide
a distinctive backing when joined with guitar strums on Canção, but
Mariam’s contrapuntal designations take up as much space as the
trumpet lines. Silva’s percussive string picking is featured on Sentinela
#2 which provides a rare instance of the trumpeter moving past his usual
breathy sighs to a sequence of bugling triplets that torque the tune’s
excitement before harmonizing with the trombonist’s horizontal slurs.
Otherwise, expositions are usually slow-moving and often descend into
near stasis as dramatic bent notes and grit are favoured over unbroken
lines and half-valve expressions. Still there are enough pivots throughout
to trombone tailgate slides, trumpet squeaks and guitar twangs to feature
tonal examinations along with related continuum.
At nearly the opposite end of the sound
spectrum is Echoisms (Clean Feed CF 628
CD cleanfeedrecords.bandcamp.com/
album/echoisms) by young veteran Lisbon
guitarist Luis Lopes and his Abyss Mirrors
tentet. Featured on the seven tracks of the
harsh and turbulent title composition are
two saxes, two players using electronics,
a three-person string section, an electric
bassist and another guitarist besides Lopes. Although working
without a drummer, there are enough guitar flanges, bass thumps
and electronic pulses to anchor the angled and squeaky string glissandi
as well as the doits, honks, smears and altissimo excursions
from the reed players. Most sequences rumble along with Felipe
Zenícola’s electric bass throb and electronics signals creating linearity
until straight-ahead movement is shattered as Lopes’ and the onename
Flak’s effects pedal motions and unusual string techniques join
with dog-whistle-like screeches from saxophonists Bruno Parrinha
and Yedo Gibson to stretch the exposition to near schism until it rights
itself by the following track. By the penultimate Echoism VI however a
bagpipe-like tremolo drone from the dual saxes sets up the final track
– and the suite’s – resolution. Moving through a building crescendo
of cello, violin and viola spiccato shakes, jerky electronic whizzes and
triple-tongued enhanced reed multiphonics, the resolution slows the
narrative to single guitar licks cushioned by voltage pulsations.
Although violist Ernesto Rodrigues and guitarist Flak from Lopes’
tentet are also part of the Suspensão octet on Impromptu (Creative
Sources CS 773 CD creativesourcesrec.com/ ernesto_material/discography/disc_773.html)
the music is as hushed as Echoism is boisterous.
A single, almost 35-minute improvisation, whose 15-word title is
nearly longer than the music itself, it confirms Portuguese improvisers’
versatility. With frequent silent intervals, the evolving track
alternately connects and separates timbres that suddenly arise and
52 | September 2023 thewholenote.com