blaast
Lali Barrière : synthesizer
Alfredo Costa Monteiro : synthesizer
Duo formed in Barcelona in 2013, which music is based on continuous and overlapping sounds that evolve slowly, eventually forming an intense sonic mass, which insistence seems to stretch time; a resonant magma, rich in harmonics, which in turn transforms the listener’s perception according to their location in space and leads to a feeling of loss of sense of time.
As if one could feel the length itself, rather than its measure, each piece could be the continuation of the previous one, as an endlessly restarted fluctuation, the music of the duo resembling a journey out of time.
releases:
from one coordinate to uncoordination | caduc records 2015 – cd
300 basses
Jonas Kocher: accordion
Luca Venitucci: accordion, objects
Alfredo Costa Monteiro : accordion, objects
300 basses is a rustle, a whirr, a background noise arising from our perception, a sound whose source is no longer that instrument, nearly 5000 years old in its most primitive form, but the same instrument recomposed, revisited in configurations that move it away from what it is today: a box with bellows and buttons. The box was for the resonance, the bellows for vibration and the buttons for building a sonic identity that has remained virtually frozen for centuries.
But what would happen if the buttons began to vibrate, the bellows would resonate and the box should start to deconstruct this identity?
300 basses is one example among many others of how music surrenders to sound, beyond commands and expectations, to finally fit into a space where nothing that should be really is and where nothing that should sound really sounds.
Excerpts from a residency at gmea, albi, march 2017.
Excerpt from a concert at labor sonor, berlin, december 2012.
releases:
tria atoma | moving furniture records, 2015
sei ritornelli | potlatch, 2012
cremaster
Ferran Fages : feedback mixing board, pick-ups
Alfredo Costa Monteiro : objects on electric guitar
Electro-acoustic duo of improvised music, formed in 2000. Moving from not-real-silence to noise. Someone said somewhere that they are the punk-rock version of the Rowe-Nakamura duo.
The truth is that it’s a direct, raw and physical approach to sound.
This music leaves a mark, even in those almost silent moments where you’re not at ease anyway because you KNOW something’s lurking around the corner…
Cremaster are the current leaders in the “Audiometrics” field… and otorhinolaryngologists be damned”
Massimo Ricci
Cremaster performing at Modern Art Oxford as part of the closing event of the 2012 Audiograft Festival.
releases:
oompfsquawk | auto-edition, 2001
flysch | g3g records, 2002
infra | antifrost, 2003
-/-hz in void (compilation) | antifrost, 2003
34.41 n/m2 | absurd, 2003
23 november 2002 | sound 323, 2003
noranta graus a l’esquerra | monotype records, 2009
ígneo cathnor recordings, 2011
live at audiograft | consumer waste 2012 – cd
astero
Juan Matos Capote : home made oscillators
Alfredo Costa Monteiro : electro-acoustic devices
This duo, formed in Barcelona in 2010, employs modified domestic appliances as sound sources.
Two approaches which reveal the same enigma: that of sounds shaped in the moment of their own creation, by way of the simple contact of fingers, or of electricity passing through the internal circuits of the modified devices – or perhaps the amplification of materials, rather than objects.
Inviting the most basic kinds of accident, resulting from unstable and minimal constructs, or from a more than simply intuitive handling, sometimes becoming accidents of accidents – either way you might say that the hand is the real instrument which, by way of clever tricks, vibrations, vague movements or tremors, stamps the sound with an indeterminacy which connects it directly to the organic.
live at miscelänea, barcelona 2010 (extract)
astero live at intr:muros, sevilla, 2011
releases:
nadir | agxivatein, 2012
i treni inerti
Ruth Barberán: trumpet, objects
Alfredo Costa Monteiro: accordion, objects
Duo of improvised music formed in 2001 in Barcelona by Ruth Barberán, Alfredo Costa Monteiro and Matt Davis. In 2003, it became a duo.
I treni inerti proposes a music whithout ornaments, where silence is essential, as part of an ongoing process of bringing vacuum necessary in order to achieve both minimal and ephemeral sound worlds, in an approach that focuses on harmony, vibration and acoustic resonance.
It is a continuous shift between what is audible and undetectable, what is private and what is shared, what is static and changing, silence and presence.
…The couple is venomous – but this music is delicious…
Massimo Ricci
vídeo by Enric Coromina, live at Can Felipa, 2008
releases:
ura | creative sources, 2003
aérea | creative sources, 2004
luz azul | flexion records, 2012
atolón
Ferran Fages : acoustic turntable
Ruth Barberán: trumpet, amplified objects
Alfredo Costa Monteiro: accordion
This trio is composed by some of the most active musicians in improvised music in Spain. Formed in 2003, its members share an intense experience together since 1998.
The music is strictly improvised. The approach of each instrument is made through an atypical use of the instrument itself, but also through extensions which are not especially musical.
There is indeed an apparently contemplative tendency in this music, but the sudden structural changes and frequent cuts also create moments of high tension that take the music out of this state of contemplation and bring it to where sound exists in its own abrupt and immediate presence.
…There’s something afoot on the Iberian Peninsula and it sounds damn good…
Dan Warburton
Weifur (extract) from atolón | rossbin, 2004
live at Can Felipa
sound by simon reynell
image by emanuele tiziani
recorded in 2011 at can felipa (barcelona)
releases:
atolón | rossbin, 2004
istmo | creative sources, 2005
semisferi | esquilo, 2006
concret | intonema, 2013
octante
Ruth Barberán: trumpet
Margarida Garcia: electric double-bass
Ferran Fages: oscillators, pick ups
Alfredo Costa Monteiro: accordion
«The Barcelona-based trio of Ruth Barberán, Ferran Fages, and Alfredo Costa Monteiro have created a handful of strong releases as a trio, surveying the outer timbral frontiers that can be created from trumpet, accordion, and resonant objects. They’ve also collaborated with bassist Margarida Garcia, releasing their eponymous recording six years ago on the l’Innomable label. While on the earlier release it was almost impossible to tell the sound sources of the various threads, the players are more at ease letting the intrinsic nature of their instruments come through on the two half-hour long improvisations captured here. Barberán’s trumpet can sputter or screech with a scrubbed brassiness, Costa Monteiro pushes his instrument to reedy overtones and lets its air-driven organ-like drones shake through the group, Fages’s oscillators and pickups send out skirling sine waves and buzzing groans, and Garcia’s electric double bass accentuates the dark, full tones of her instrument, using electronics to subtly extend the textures. There is a restless intensity to this music, but the performers never lose the collective thread. The second piece is a bit more open than the first, and the four let long tones and drones hang and reverberate off each other, slowly gathering force and density. The pristine recording lets every nuance come through. It’s another compelling entry from these musicians and yet another in an incredible line of winners for Another Timbre.”
Michael Rosenstein, Paris Transatlantic
releases:
octante | l’innomable, 2005
lúnula | another timbre, 2009
kamtchatka
Pau Torres: synthesiser
Alfredo Costa Monteiro: electronics
Observational method from file vol. III
release:
nature of sonographic features , cassette | circuit torçat, 2011
tellus
Pilar Subirà: percussion
Alfredo Costa Monteiro: resonant table
Duo formed in Barcelona, 2009.
Resonance is one of the elements that give meaning to the music of Tellus. With a strongly percussive focus, an economy of means and a thorough-going frugality, both musicians use resonance as the thread that links each musical stroke, stretching out time and allowing the sounds to decay into whispers which invite introspection. The other structural axis of Tellus is that of amplification, functioning as a sound-lens which heightens our awareness of the subtler frequencies. Thanks to this lens we start to discover that sounds generated with objets trouvés and those emanating from musical instruments are complementary and, indeed, imitate each other.
Without abusing any systematic doctrine, shapes emerge, only to return to silence – a silence often pregnant, but whose very expectancy dissolves all haste.
plom-a (extract) – barcelona, 2010
Olive I Costa Monteiro
Tim Olive: prepared guitar
Alfredo Costa Monteiro : electro-acoustic devices
This recent duo began with a long-distance collaboration between Barcelona and Osaka; the first live performances took place in October 2009 in Japan, followed by an Iberia tour in October 2010, with further performances planned.
The duo produces a rough, feral music with moments of surprising calm and beauty, using basic technology to blast into outer realms, dark atmospheres of varying density and great textural variety. Sharp cuts and gradual transformations carry the listener from seemingly chaotic noise to ordered spaces, pierced by shafts of light.
extract from 33 bays | 845 audio
releases:
a theory of possible utterance | zeromoon , 2011
33 bays | 845 audio, 2012
