THE OCTOPUS- Subzo[o]ne
Leo Records LR CD 770
Elisabeth Coudoux (Cologne), Nora Krahl (Berlin), Nathan Bontrager (Cologne/USA) and Hugues Vincent (Paris).
Recorded at Orchesterzentrum NRW Dortmund, September 2015
‘The Octopus’ is a cello quartet for free improvisation and experimental music.
Each of the fourteen tracks on the album is freely improvised and the musicians’ astonishing aptitude enables them to deliver live and entirely unrehearsed music of such elegance, sophistication and refinement that it seems to rely on a penned construction. There is at work perhaps an extraordinary trust between the four cellists suggestive of a shared perception that is encouraged into life as a consequence of any individual consciousness being subsumed by their astounding professionalism.
The four cellos are on fire, sometimes burning slowly with crackles and snaps, at others reverberating as a phantasm, a flame fanned by the wind of their improvisation.
This is a truly unusual record, full of new sounds, chemistry and graceful interaction. It is way-out, there at the front of modern music and particularly of contemporary Free Improv.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
Leo Records LR CD 770
Elisabeth Coudoux (Cologne), Nora Krahl (Berlin), Nathan Bontrager (Cologne/USA) and Hugues Vincent (Paris).
Recorded at Orchesterzentrum NRW Dortmund, September 2015
‘The Octopus’ is a cello quartet for free improvisation and experimental music.
Each of the fourteen tracks on the album is freely improvised and the musicians’ astonishing aptitude enables them to deliver live and entirely unrehearsed music of such elegance, sophistication and refinement that it seems to rely on a penned construction. There is at work perhaps an extraordinary trust between the four cellists suggestive of a shared perception that is encouraged into life as a consequence of any individual consciousness being subsumed by their astounding professionalism.
The four cellos are on fire, sometimes burning slowly with crackles and snaps, at others reverberating as a phantasm, a flame fanned by the wind of their improvisation.
This is a truly unusual record, full of new sounds, chemistry and graceful interaction. It is way-out, there at the front of modern music and particularly of contemporary Free Improv.
Reviewed by Ken Cheetham
