aspis

One could easily say that Geräuschmanufaktur is a noise label, with a love for the harsher end of things. They release mainly cassettes but here’s a lathe disc by Alfredo Costa Monteiro. Usually lathe cuts are hard plastic but this one is flexible, like a flexi disc but than of more substantial weight. It comes with six cards of visual poetry (three of each of the two poems) and this poetry thing is a side of Alfredo Costa Monteiro, which I didn’t hear before; obviously we know him from playing the accordion, solo and with others in an improvised music fashion, but him picking up the microphone and reciting poetry is new to me. These poems are in Portuguese, French, Spanish and sometimes English. It’s noisy sound poetry with Monteiro’s voice half speaking, half whispering (think Etant Donnes circa ‘Blue’), layered and cut along with some white noise blasts, which in turn reminded me of Henri Chopin. While both pieces, ‘Ecotone’ (from 2009) and ‘Biotope’ (2013) sound quite si
milar – the latter more layered, the previous more noise based – they both act as ‘songs’. While I am not too sure if I would like to hear a whole album of this, I must say that these are great pieces of poetry, even when I am totally clueless what these pieces are about, but I do know they sound great. A rather excellent surprise from someone I held in much respect already, and this beauty gains even more respect for him. Fifty copies only, so I’d say: don’t wait too long.

Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly