Recorded in a concert setting at Ermita de San Roque in Sigüenza, Spain, pianist Agustí Fernández, bassist John Edwards and drummer Mark Sanders begin the first chapter of this disc, "Primo", with unassuming finesse: Fernández plunks along with a spacious swagger, Edwards drones in the darkest and lightest reaches of his instrument and Sanders works in subtle brush strokes, gently accenting his comrades. Soon, all three replace their delicacy with thunderous (yet graceful) force, each grabbing a frequency range and throttling until near-constriction. At the scene change — a point when many players flounder — Edwards coerces and contorts his bass with surprising demonic intent. Moving beyond mere slaps and scrapes, he rattles unusual sounds from beneath and behind the bridge, detunes strings, conjures up a twanging sitar and accomplishes all manner of otherwise exciting strangeness to impress even the most jaded fans of this scene. Reveling in this atmosphere, Fernández grinds his prepared piano with razor-sharp sizzles and wobbling strings; Sanders adds a flurry of muted cymbals and a funeral march of bass drums, and it's hard to tell where one man ends and the other begins in this primal conjugation.
And they're just getting started.
The trio maintains this sustained interest for the next three works, alternating between agile, blazing, cartoon-like speed, controlled chaotic assaults that seem beyond the capacity of six arms, an ethos of Cage-esque percussion, rearrangement of performance space (despite the absence of electronics from the set), serialism-meets-hard-bop rhythms and harmonic structures, refreshing extended techniques, displacement of monolithic roles and frequent dips into the aforementioned otherworldly possession.
At some point in the night, conversations lull; even the best of friends who haven't seen each other in years run out of things to say and either rehash something from hours ago or just call it a night. The same situation appears in improvised music: after emptying their bag of tricks, performers often resort to small talk until the next wave of inspiration hits — though this wane often sabotages the rest of the music. However, the dialog at this meeting is an exchange people hope to have once in a lifetime, one filled with common interests, healthy debate, tangents and intoxicating apologue that carry on until all parties are hoarse, exhausted and thoroughly satiated.
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