Panos Ghikas, Jennifer Walshe: voice, viola, drums, trumpet, e-drum, software
Calling their music “unreal-time surround improv”, Ghikas and Walshe – who have been knowing themselves for over 10 years but started a bona fide synergism only in 2010 – certify that it is possible to keep the level of discerning vigilance high across prohibitively heterogeneous constructions; at the same instant, their output retains the sort of quick-witted inventiveness needed to transmute apparently misleading instrumental recipes into an almost tactile frolicsomeness. Essentially, the seven tracks are built upon fragments of fundamental material which, in subsequent phases, get reshaped and transgendered by a software via a “meta-instrument” (the e-drum). The manifest tendency to acoustic decentralization furnishes the interaction with an aura of intricate levity, intelligent succinctness helping the engrossed beholder in perceiving a substratal “to-the-point-ness” enriched by hundreds of truncated signals, throaty yelps, torn gurgles, transposed barks, grating pitches, implausible thuds and irreproducible anti-patterns. However, in an episode such as “Routing For Hydrangeas” one pictures something like a baby Jon Hassell left alone on a beach to respire through conch shells in his renowned style, perhaps the lone mildly nostalgic moment of a brilliant compendium of incisive messages.
MASSIMO RICCI. TOUCHING EXTREMES. 