Originally published by Cat Of Wonders in 2014 and autonomously reissued with an additional track last year, Visitations represents a convincing illustration of the hindsight-turning-into-foresight defining Jeff Gburek’s multi-layered narrative. With violinist (and spouse) Ossowska, Gburek holds both a crucial instrumental source – to be utilized “as is”, or in a stretched/looped (dis)embodiment – and a fellow idealistic dreamer against the superficiality peddled by nondescript entities acting in neighboring territories that neither possess the vision, nor are capable of providing the rare scent of collected poignancy that can be found in this compelling, truly one-of-a-kind record.
Its major strength is the overall sense of coherent integrity, notwithstanding acoustic environments of multiple origin. Elements that might appear disconnected to a casual listener symbolize instead a thread between the various stages of sound-derived sentience: the type of implicit knowledge that no other language can bring. In that regard – quite unsurprisingly, and not a little ironically – Gburek prefers to apply a higher degree of impregnability to some of the accompanying writings, frequently to a point where finding correspondences inside the flow becomes a somewhat arduous task. Any eventual impasse vanishes by focusing on the music, which retains a considerable innerness across striking droning landscapes, beautiful bowed laments, unusual electronic codes, outlandish resonances and vivid location recordings. In a pair of relatively sunnier spots, the dialogue of guitar and violin comes closer to a bluesy inebriation of sorts (an example being “Twenty-Fifth Of June, 13”). The three movements of “Systematic Structural Instabilities” are alone worth of utmost respect; purifying prayers, that’s what I’m talking about. As we enjoy them, embedded as they are into nearly 70 minutes of equally uncontaminated ideas, the flawless proportionalities of this mesmerizing architecture shine in the light of a silent understanding.
The work, entirely informed by a creative innocence that stubbornly refuses comparisons, will feed important data to judicious human decoders. Leaving it trapped under a coat of ignorant invisibility would be a true shame.
MASSIMO RICCI. TOUCHING EXTREMES. 