Revered French musician, composer, and instrument builder Pierre Bastien began building his unique mechanical-based musical instruments at an early age, using metronomes, cymbals, and pulleys. In 1977, he composed music with Pascal Comelade for dance companies and in 1986 he created his own Mecanium orchestra comprised of Meccano machines. The mecanium plays various instruments such as the Chinese lute, Moroccan bendir, Javanese saron, koto, and violin. By the 1990s it consisted of up to 80 machine 'musicians'. Bastien has collaborated with e.g. Robert Wyatt, Jac Berrocal, Jaki Liebezeit, and released records on Lowlands, Rephlex, Tigersushi, and Alga Marghen.
Bassist / composer Gonçalo Almeida, originally from Portugal, has been making his mark as one of The Netherlands' most interesting bass players in the last decade. His projects involve many collaborations with the cream of the crop of the Dutch and Portuguese jazz scenes, bridging modern jazz, free jazz, jazzcore, and free improvisation.
This recording brings along their first collaboration on a informal home session, where the two musicians combine their universes of sound in seven improvisation pieces.
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Reviews:
By Stef Gijssels on Free Jazz Blog
"We're on principle open to listen to anything. This helps us to broaden our minds and to open our ears even more. Today, we have a wonderful duo with bassist Gonçalo Almeida, the Netherlands-based Portuguese musician with whom we're familiar through his solo work and his work with musically uncompromising bands such as Albatre, Spinifex, Bulliphant, The Selva, The Attic, Lama and many more. Despite this prolific activity, his collaboration with French musician and instrument builder Pierre Bastien, brings us into even more uncharted territory. Apart from being a trained trumpet player, Bastien is fascinated by musical mechanics, or automatons. He has created hundreds of machines that produce music, using anything that can be attached to something else for repetitive sound production: metronomes, cymbals, pulleys, kitchen utensils ... you name it. He even developed his own "Mecanium Orchestra", an ensemble of musical automatons constructed from meccano parts and activated by electro-motors, that are playing on acoustic instruments from all over the world. which includes the complete mechanical performance of Chinese Lute, Moroccon bendir, Javanese saron, koto and violin. I add a video below with some of his contraptions to explain all this a little clearer. Needless to say, the machines cannot but produce rhythmic sounds, but then very unusual and bizarre ones, as the result of the engines driving the different tools forward. At the same time Bastien also intervenes like a god in his creation, adding pipes, removing tools, switching on new levers ... For Almeida, this rhythmic environment gives him the possibility to go beyond rhythm and to accentuate, colour and add his bass sounds, obviously without the possibility to influence the core set-up of the machine (I assume), but luckily Bastien picks up his trumpet once in a while which makes the music even richer. On the last three tracks of the album, the real instruments take over the dominance of the machines, and the sound becomes more open-ended. The result is absolutely unique and mesmerising. The seven improvised pieces offer completely alien beats and sounds, a weird and fascinating sonic environment that defies categorisation. Since you cannot see Bastien's machines, you wonder how the music is produced (and that thought process risks to detract from the music itself), but I can only recommend the interested reader to listen to the album many times, until the sound becomes familiar and 'natural' if that word can be used. It's a little bit of a gimmick, but the production is solid enough to stand on its own."
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Spontaneousmusictribune.blogspot by Andrzej Nowak.
" We stay in the company of a Portuguese musician. This time, it is the double bass player Gonçalo Almeida, who invited the French, avant-garde musician with a lot of artistic experience, Pierre Bastien, to improvise at home (time and place, no data), who played the trumpet and used some mysterious mechanisms. The entire recording consists of seven quite precisely structured improvisations, the listening session of which takes about 48 minutes.Room Sessions is an album quite unusual for Almeida. The musician uses various techniques of playing here (a hundred-toed magician has no problem with that!), He does everything beautifully and in a thousand ways, but he focuses mainly on building a rhythmic layer, a stable basis for improvisation, and also more planned narratives of the trumpeter and its mechanisms. Whether this dictate of rhythm, or the frequently used repetition, is a procedure that proves our fear of going completely free improvisation, we cannot judge, especially since the album, for the most part, defends itself artistically without the support of the reviewers. The recording is born in a post-ambient atmosphere, which produces a double bass bow. In the background, an electroacoustic nebula rustles,… a metronome is working, and the trumpet phrases seem to constantly search for new dimensions for the sound of a simple brass instrument. A lot of interesting happens in the second movement, which consists of three or even four threads, including a repeating whistle (from a trumpet?), Which counterpoints the rhythm and improvisations from the beginning to the end of the piece. The fourth part seems especially dark. The repeated phrases of the double bass cause anxiety, and the aura around it breathes exceptionally vividly. On the other hand, in the fifth part, the musicians react to each other very well, almost in the call & response aesthetics, then the trumpet begins to sound a bit slapstick, putting the whole narrative in a bracket of non-obviousness. In the sixth movement, the musicians focus on percussion accents, but perversely they do not focus on rhythm and repetition - something is dancing on the snare drum, the double bass strings are trembling, and in the background we seem to hear a flute. The rhythm supported by a metronome returns in the last part. Bastien quickly prepares the trumpet, and a handful of mysterious sounds from the artist's mechanisms once again puts a big question mark about the source of the sound."
credits
released May 31, 2020
Gonçalo Almeida - Doublebass
Pierre Bastien - Trumpet and Mechanisms
Recorded by Pierre Bastien and Gonçalo Almeida
Mixed and mastered by Gonçalo Almeida
Photo by Pedro dos Reis
Cylinder Recordings its a DIY label runned by Portuguese double bass player Gonçalo Almeida, based in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Started in 2015, it focuses on free improvised and experimental music.
supported by 6 fans who also own “(CR018) ROOM SESSIONS”
i discovered this in a public radio show about relations between Ligeti and Jazz and had to order it right away. i love public radio and thank you Benoît Delbecq for this great work of art.
Favorite 'the loop of chicago' joe2000
supported by 5 fans who also own “(CR018) ROOM SESSIONS”
The textures! It's like a string quartet, only better. Such an achievement to get the percussive guitar & piano to engage with the strings. Andrew Webb
St Celfer returns with tracks culled from a series of live shows, each one a showcase for his inventive experimentalism. Bandcamp New & Notable Jun 26, 2023
