"Starting the month again with an album from Ernesto Rodrigues, Genius Loci — recorded in Lisbon just this past March — continues his post-Cage explorations, now involving a quintet featuring (instead of Carlos Santos, per recent entries...) Tiago Varela (melodica and fan organ) and Manuel Guimaraes (piano) alongside frequent collaborators Miguel Mira and Flak.

Varela actually made the recording, as he had L'Heure Dernière (the most recent from Rodrigues' largest ensemble, VGO...), following some releases from years ago on Creative Sources, but had also already recorded the nonet album Mimesis (on which he plays melodica, alongside Flak again...) last year. That's actually part of a "series" of quasi-Cageian albums from Rodrigues over the past year to feature piano (as Cage himself continued to do...), as alluded most recently in last month's review of A Glimpse to an End of a Cycle (the other album recorded this year to appear here so far, with electronics but not piano...), beginning from quintet album Nocturne (also featuring Mira and Flak, as recorded last February... and as already noted here in the May review of This Full Mouth, itself an album not part of this sequence...), followed by quartet album Synopsis (as noted in the review of Cobra last June).

Indeed, the "nocturne" label could apply to Genius Loci, especially given its slow and simmering, somewhat dark opening (per A Glimpse... as well), making it worth noting here specifically as the latest milestone in Rodrigues' quite extensive endeavors in these directions. I've not favored the tapestries around (fixed pitch) piano, but let me survey the participation of pianists: Guimaraes was actually mentioned here with the New Thing Unit tribute album For Cecil Taylor (reviewed in June 2018, also from CS), but this may be his only other participation with Rodrigues directly.

Luisa Goncalves had appeared on Nocturne and Mimesis (and elsewhere with Rodrigues, e.g., quintet album Quelque chose prie la patience des nuages, reviewed here in May 2022 as part of another significant sequence...), and Andre Hencleeday is on Synopsis (and elsewhere previously as well). And then Varela is on something of a keyboard here too — pace Santos elsewhere (e.g., Synopsis) — or one could say he's playing the "wind" instrument for this quintet otherwise of strings. (And later in the single track — this series of albums all being single tracks — the sound of the fan organ does become more obvious. Through much of the opening though, any sense of breath is mysterious...)

Mimesis had involved senses of calls then, i.e., coming and going across a broad landscape (and so feels less Cageian, albeit ending with a sense of silence...), while Genius Loci is more akin to A Glimpse..., i.e., co-composing my local sonic space, often quiet yet sometimes rather (sneakily, even contrapuntally) active. A sort of twittering jungle sometimes gives way to other naturalistic effects, e.g., underwater sensations — piano eventually noticeable as such at various points too — moving on again to a more psychological, unsituated context. (So there's not an immersive feel here, more a sense of acoustics, i.e., the electric instruments interacting via the air...)

And of course, Mira (cello) had most recently appeared with Rodrigues (and Santos, in this case) on The Knowledge That Our Time Is Limited Can Inspire Us (as mentioned here in the February review of La Rambarde..., which also belongs to this post-Cage improv, single-movement tapestry sequence...), but also last year with Nocturne and Cobra (the latter featuring Santos). Flak has become a regular contributor too, especially in the engineering realm, but his most recent (guitar) participation was already noted here, being specifically from the present sequence.

So notions of continuity (and discontinuity) do animate the sense of ensemble on Genius Loci, while its music generally tends to maintain continuities too, perhaps tenuously at times, e.g., slacking pace being a part of the "unwinding" vibe here, piano chords eventually (sometimes) becoming (quietly) repetitive, i.e., searching for a sort of stasis amid movement, a sort of restlessness working through at times as well — finally into a brief cooldown-coda that does lend a lingering mood (e.g., for ongoing creativity...). Between their deftness and delicacy then, I've been finding these sorts of quiet, affective tapestries to be especially effective and relevant for the current times."-Todd McComb, Jazz Thoughts