Rodrigo Pinheiro – piano | Hernani Faustino – double bass | Gabriel Ferrandini – drums and percussions
All music by Rodrigo Pinheiro, Hernani Faustino and Gabriel Ferrandini. Recorded July 30, 2012 at Canoa Studios, Torres Vedras by Nelson Silva Canoa. Mixed by Rodrigo Pinheiro, Hernani Faustino and Gabriel Ferrandini. Mastered by Arūnas Zujus at MAMAstudios. Cover illustration by Margarida Garcia. Design by Oskaras Anosovas. Produced by Pianos.pt and RED trio. Produced by Danas Mikailionis. Co-producer – Valerij Anosov.
We thank to Pedro Coelho and Hugo Freitas from Pianos.pt http://www.pianos.pt | Special thanks to Danas Mikailionis and the NoBusiness Records crew for supporting our music.
Tracklist Side A: 1. Carne 2. Para | Side B: 1. Canhão
For avant modern jazz piano trio
music at its free best, you can’t go wrong with RED Trio. And their LP on No Business (NBLP 67) is as good a place as any to start. They give us three supercharged cuts.
Hernani Faustino’s double bass cavorts, rumbles and brings in a storm from the lower depths throughout. I love his pizzicato and his arco equally and he sets up the churning excitement the band generates.
Gabriel Ferrandini has the drum dynamics covered–senses the sound colors and thrust needed at any given point and gives you the complementing sounds with subtle excitement.
Rodrigo Pinheiro plies an original and moving blend of avant garde piano that includes some bracing inside-the-piano colors and an ever-flowing note cascade that does not contain a single cliche. He and the others sense the overall mood and dynamic and follow each other collectively with near telepathic powers.
This is simply one of the best out trio dates I’ve heard in a long while. Don’t hesitate–only 400 have been pressed. The RED Trio comes through! — Gregory Edwards
Piano trios which accentuate the abstract facets
of the format have become increasingly widespread in recent years, although boasting a legacy which stretches back to the pioneering outfits of British pianist Howard Riley in the late 1960s with bassist Barry Guy. Foremost among the current roll call, which includes Frenchwoman Eve Risser, Spaniard Agusti Fernandez, and the New York City-based Dawn of Midi, stands Portugal’s RED Trio. Its fourth outing Rebento, issued as an LP containing three collectively birthed tracks totaling 47 minutes, finds a comfortable fit on the adventurous Lithuanian No Business label. While in the past guest artists have supplemented the core threesome, with saxophonist John Butcher on Empire (No Business, 2011), and trumpeter Nate Wooley on Stem (Clean Feed, 2012), this time out they revert to the unaccompanied state of their debut.
In the absence of traditional melody and rhythm, mastery of tone color, careful placement of sound, and level of responsiveness become critical. Happily each member of the triumvirate possesses these skills in abundance. Rodgrigo Pinheiro emphasizes the percussive nature of the piano through preparations, interior manipulation of the wires, and diverse other means of moderating the accustomed reverberations. Assisting him in his endeavors are the subtle but incisive partnership of bassist Hernani Faustino and drummer Gabriel Ferrandini, who not only provide momentum when needed, but also maintain an ongoing narrative of indeterminate sounds. However, perhaps their greatest strength derives from a shared syntax in which they explore the timbral possibilities inherent in their instruments to create a series of sensual and eerie moods.
“Carne” opens in a dense swirling mass of unexpected rumbles, taps and abrasion which converge into a resonant undercurrent which sweeps the piece forward. At one point Pinheiro contrasts a tolling treble with dampened low end chords, goosed by a sizzling cymbal shimmer. In fact the dialogue between piano and drums often lies at the heart of the interaction. After a nervy start, “Para” builds to a ringing climax, all the better to set up a tinkling music box piano coda which is the closest they get to a conventional solo. At just over the 20-minute mark, “Canhão” forms the most expansive number, inching from conversational interchange to near stasis, until it flowers into a wonderfully inventive drum feature in which Ferrandini marshals odd noises into the semblance of meter. It’s a measure of how successful previous sessions have been that although the guest voices are missed, what remains is nonetheless a cut above much of what passes for the norm. — John Sharpe
LP version (incl. shipment cost world-wide)
Adding...
RED Trio aren’t a piano trio per se; they just happen to be a trio with piano, bass and drums. After two albums featuring “guest” musicians John Butcher and Nate Wooley, RED Trio return to NoBusiness in their original configuration. Rebento picks up pretty much where their 2010 debut left off: huge, intense tracts of exploratory clatter that are often whittled down to an urgent, repeating pulse or theme. But like all good free improvisation, Rebento isn’t a music of stasis, and RED Trio’s methodology generates anything but predictable results.
“Carne” starts the A side with the crunch and splinter of Hernani Faustino’s bass and Gabriel Ferrandini’s drums. Soon, pianist Rodrigo Pinheiro comes careening in with a Tayloresque flurry of notes. After about five minutes, the trio gets pulled into a rapid current—an amazing, roiling feeling of movement that’s exhilarating, even if it’s hard to surmise just what it is that’s driving them along. It’s a feeling we’ve gotten from RED Trio before: this sense that, despite the classic instrumental lineup, we’re encroaching upon territory that’s beyond history or influence, cutting a path through the dense thicket of three overlapping minds, one that becomes illuminated when they put fingers to instrument.
After a blustery beginning, “Para” settles into a haunting soundscape of (what seems to be) scraped cymbals. There’s a strange, spectral doubling of sound, as though the cymbal tones are colliding around inside of the piano. With the touch of Tilbury, Pinheiro begins stringing delicate beads of notes. Soon, a crescendo: huge, open swells of piano and droning bass. It reaches a skin-tingling peak that’s overwhelming and—to use an adjective we don’t deploy often enough when describing this music—beautiful. “Canhão” spans the entirety of side B, a U-shaped piece that tumbles down its starting slope until it reaches a spacious, unsettling nadir, only to take off again on the tips of Ferrandini’s flying drumsticks.
When I think of the ground RED Trio has covered since we first encountered them in 2010, I also think of Mark Wastell, in an interview, remarking about the dangers of pinning a description to a group’s sound, and how “commentators and critics” are always 12 months behind the true flow of progress. Rebento has reached us now, at the end of 2013, but it was recorded over a year ago. It’s invigorating music from a band that continues to challenge itself. Where might RED Trio be today?
El RED Trio es una de las bandas más fascinantes de la escena portuguesa, el pianista Rodrigo Pinheiro ha encontrado en el contrabajista Hernani Faustino y el baterista Gabriel Ferrandini dos interlocutores excepcionales para evolucionar el clásico formato hacia territorios inexplorados.
Tras un brillante debut, el trío se abrió a colaboraciones con otros improvisadores de las que surgieron Empire con John Butcher y Stem con Nate Wooley, por lo que Rebento supone su regreso a la idea original. Como viene ocurriendo con algunos de mis discos favoritos de su catálogo, el sello lituano No Business ha optado por una elitista edición solo en vinilo y mp3 (no tengo nada en contra del revival del LP pero escamotear la edición en CD de una grabación de este calibre me resulta totalmente incomprensible). El mp3 incorpora como extra un tema grabado en vivo de más de media hora de duración.
El trío se inscribe en la tradición de la libre improvisación europea, en la línea de pianistas como Sten Sandell o Georg Graewe. No se trata de una música ni mucho menos amable sino poderosa y casi violenta, capaz de crear una tensión inquietante y turbadora cuya escucha puede llegar a resultar tan gratificante como agotadora. Tanto Faustino como Ferrandini, una pareja rítmica en alza, llevan sus respectivos instrumentos hasta el límite. Como ocurrió en su momento con la irrupción de Matthew Shipp, Pinheiro es un pianista difícil de encasillar que a pesar de su juventud ha depurado su estilo de forma pasmosa. Si su aportación este mismo año al trío Birthmark junto a la saxofonista danesa Lotte Anker y el propio Faustino ya resultaba apasionante, el uso de ciertos patrones repetitivos que traen a la memoria la Musica Ricercata de Ligeti o de sonoridades hipnóticas con ecos de John Cage producen en este Rebento un impacto extraordinario. Uno de mis discos del año.