Joachim Devillé _ trumpet & fluegelhorn | Thomas Olbrechts _ alto saxophone | Stefan Prins _ live electronics
Edition number thirteen by amirani records is R E A L G A R
The Antwerp & Brussels-based Collectief reFLEXible –Joachim Devillé (trumpet, flugelhorn), Thomas Olbrechts (alto saxophone), Stefan Prins (piano, objects and live-electronics) – focuses on free improvised music (or instant composed music) often combined with other media as dance, performance, video and film. The different backgrounds of the members gives the collectief its unique sound and character.
Recorded at Q-02 workspace in Brussels, Realgar is an improvised stunning performance. Music is thrilling, exciting, more descriptive than abstract, very close to a inner matter, phisycal and molecular, fluid and dense at the same time. Elements elaboration, rarefactions and densities, then sublimation. A sort of alchemical process, finely evolving to an intimate soundscape.
Tracklist:
- _ Vacuum (excerpt)
- _ Exposed
- _ Orpiment
- _ Realgar
C R E D I T S : Music _ ReFLEXible. Recording _ Q-O2 workspace, Brussels, Belgium, september 2007. sound engineer _ Ludo Engels. mastering _ Stefan Prins. executive producer _ John Rottiers. photos _ Thomas Olbrechts, 2001. graphics _ Mirko Spino. production _ Gianni Mimmo for Amirani Records
First non-Italian band on Amirani
and from what I’ve heard it’s part of natural process of internationalization/expansion of their catalogue, I don’t think it’s up to an intentional choice, it probably just happened naturally plus from what I’ve seen Gianni Mimmo (label owner and musician) has been playing quite often up there in Belgium (reFLEXIble home country) so if I it has to be consider it a logical step. “Times are changing” and it’s interesting how beside this new release, the global atmosphere of the label has gone darker and more abstract lately, if you had any suspicion about the fact the jazz background of many musicians of the roster could restrict the range of the label, you’ll probably change your mind about it. This trio combines an alto saxophone, a trumpet/fluegelhorn and a guy on live electronics, they sail a quite calm but misty “contemporary sea”. I think they combine acoustic sound and electronics in an intelligent manner flirting with electro-acoustic music, but I’m glad this recording doesn’t present the same interchangeable variety of sounds where you hardly distinguish a guitar a piano and the nature of every sound, infact even when “lost in sound” reFLEXible develop every sentence for the sake of what ends resulting a coherent dialogue, that’s why besides playing those oddly strangulated notes they follow some logical progression or they look for stops leaving epiclesis back home.
“Realgar” belongs to the category of recordings where silence has a central function, let’s say a real role as the forth band member, silence is not just the fourth element with which the other members have to confront but weights on the whole recordings giving it its character it has. Also natural live reverb of the location in which it all had been played/recorded paints the music with a strong color and considering reFLEXible is a really measured trio, it may give a big hints of the sound of the whole work. When saying they’re measured I meant this trio belongs to that category of bands that have no rush to push every sound straight in your face and while going for sobriety you won’t have any doubt that every firm or soft sound they play is well pondered. Last and most important: if you’re looking for any traditional form of melody you’ll be disappointed since in these four long tracks they didn’t surrender to any form of traditional music…mittle european abstraction to the bone. — Andrea Ferraris, november 08
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First non-Italian band on Amirani and from what I’ve heard it’s part of natural process of internationalization/expansion of their catalogue, I don’t think it’s up to an intentional choice, it probably just happened naturally plus from what I’ve seen Gianni Mimmo (label owner and musician) has been playing quite often up there in Belgium (reFLEXIble home country) so if I it has to be consider it a logical step. “Times are changing” and it’s interesting how beside this new release, the global atmosphere of the label has gone darker and more abstract lately, if you had any suspicion about the fact the jazz background of many musicians of the roster could restrict the range of the label, you’ll probably change your mind about it. This trio combines an alto saxophone, a trumpet/fluegelhorn and a guy on live electronics, they sail a quite calm but misty “contemporary sea”. I think they combine acoustic sound and electronics in an intelligent manner flirting with electro-acoustic music, but I’m glad this recording doesn’t present the same interchangeable variety of sounds where you hardly distinguish a guitar a piano and the nature of every sound, infact even when “lost in sound” reFLEXible develop every sentence for the sake of what ends resulting a coherent dialogue, that’s why besides playing those oddly strangulated notes they follow some logical progression or they look for stops leaving epiclesis back home.
“Realgar” belongs to the category of recordings where silence has a central function, let’s say a real role as the forth band member, silence is not just the fourth element with which the other members have to confront but weights on the whole recordings giving it its character it has. Also natural live reverb of the location in which it all had been played/recorded paints the music with a strong color and considering reFLEXible is a really measured trio, it may give a big hints of the sound of the whole work. When saying they’re measured I meant this trio belongs to that category of bands that have no rush to push every sound straight in your face and while going for sobriety you won’t have any doubt that every firm or soft sound they play is well pondered. Last and most important: if you’re looking for any traditional form of melody you’ll be disappointed since in these four long tracks they didn’t surrender to any form of traditional music…mittle european abstraction to the bone.
— Andrea Ferraris, http://www.chaindlk.com november 08
ReFLEXible (thus it should be spelled) are Joachim Devillé (trumpet and flugelhorn), Thomas Olbrechts (alto sax) and Stefan Prins (live electronics), Belgium-based artists whose work I meet for the first time. The field of action is freely improvised or instantly composed music, often in collaboration with entities active in other media (dance, performance, video and film). The record is extremely variable in terms of dynamics, ranging from almost soundless segments in which tiny crumbles of hardly audible activity are perceived to abrupt explosions where timbres become literally massacred by the processing operations, stabbing frequencies and coarse noises alternated in a hard-hearted consecutiveness with more biotic-sounding hysterics and mechanical cycles. In truth, this is not an album from which an explosive originality transpires, several of these solutions having already been heard in dozens of releases from labels such as Creative Sources (for a change). The convoluted meanders of some of these elucubrations are nonetheless fascinating, the fastidious attention to the infinitesimal detail palpable, the control on the final result seemingly complete. The actual instrumental voices of Devillé and Olbrechts denote a thorough knowledge of their machines. Basically, a good excursion which only lacks a pinch of impenitence, a dose of humour that would have translated into a much welcome higher degree of unpredictability.
— Massimo Ricci, Temporary Fault, may ’09