stylt

Designed “for pick ups on turntable”, “Stylt” roars into action, all enormous, ragged drones and swirling harsh noise. The amount of pure *sound* Costa Monteiro’s able to generate is staggering and, as is often the case with his work, it’s structured beautifully. It’s really interesting when such pure “noise” is so immediately acceptable as a kind of musical element; there’s very little readjustment one has to do here—it just is. It’s very curious to me why this works in some instances (at least to my ears) and fails in others when, objectively, the ingredients are fairly similar. It boils down to specific choices made and not made, I imagine, and Costa Monteiro has near perfect cacophonic pitch on “Stylt”. Unrelenting and fierce, “Stylt” is one impressive release.
Brian Olewnick, Bagatellen

In Vital Weekly 421 the previous release by Alfredo Costa Monteiro was discussed, but not by me. It was a solo accordion CD, even when that instrument was hardly to be recognized. The four pieces on this CDR release are for ‘pick ups on turntable’. That’s it as far as the description goes, so it’s a bit hard to relate to that, if one didn’t see what is exactely going on. In the first two (untitled) pieces Monteiro is interested in playing a sort of powerful drone music. Extended scraping on the surface of the turntable using pick ups, evoke a dark, noise related hum, which is nice but too uniform to hold my interest. The third piece is that respect, with its silences and changes is by far the most interesting piece of the lot.
Fran de Waard, Vital Weekly