By Stuart Broomer
These two recent recordings are linked by the presence of Portuguese
guitarist Abdul Moimême, but more than that,
each is a masterful work of inspired collective improvisation, each a work
of hive mind, achieving a collective synergy so close-knit, one in which
initiating impulses and successive responses are so closely interwoven —
perhaps impossible to assign — that they might be the work of a multi-armed
and multi-mouthed deity, a figure playing numerous instruments at an
initiation into the mysteries.
Dissection Room (Albert Cirera/ Abdul Moimême/
Álvaro Rosso) – Live at Penhasco (discordian records, 2025)
Dissection Room first formed in Lisbon in 2017, combining Moimême, Spanish
saxophonist Albert Cirera and Uruguayan bassist Alvaro Rosso. This is their second CD, following the
eponymous release of a 2017 concert, Creative Sources 549CD. At the root of
the trio’s mystery there is Rosso. His instrument will suggest foundation,
stability and form, even those players in the virtuosic lineage, but Rosso
is also an agent of chaos – his contribution a chain of disruptions:
claw-like plucking of multiple strings, quivering bowed harmonics, his sound
amplified or closely miked, bass grit ground out at the frog of the bow,
tones seemingly echoing backward as well as forward. Cirera’s soprano and
tenor saxophones provide strong central voices, whether or not they are
altered with various objects and insertions; at one point there is a
continuous line suspended between saxophone timbre and a violin. Moimême’s
instrument is the soul of unpredictability, frustrating even identification:
two horizontal guitars, one a radically evolved baritone of his own design,
with extensive electronics and preparations and striking devices.
Distinctive individual events from any of the three occur amidst a dense
field of quivering sound, the act of distinguishing events and individual
contributions only clouding the listener’s essential immersion in the
collective work’s unfolding, the miracle of collaboration that take place
here.
Wade Matthews, Abdul Moimême, Luz Prado– Trust
from Intimacy (scatter archive. 2025)
The trio of sound artist Matthews, Moimême and
violinist Luz Prado is a merger of two pre-existing duos, Matthews and
Moimême, Matthews and Prado. If anything, it
takes the elements of synthesis and mystery even further than Dissection
Room’s Live at Penasco, for Matthews represents the same scale of
sonic variety and invention (timbral, contrapuntal, environmental) as
Moimême. My early descriptions of Moimême’s work
included metaphors of train stations in outer space. The same qualities of
mystery. energy and inclusive terrain are even more evident here, with all
the partners contributing to the mystery, whether it’s Matthews’ wandering
sound samples (at one point documentation of a recorded voice will appear,
then move from natural timbre to Disney Duck range) or Prado’s exacting
imaginings of alien insect voices. This is not a trio but an orchestra,
operating both in the internal world of dream in collision and in imaginings
of outer space, the nervous system and the overlapping voices of distant
radio frequencies. At every turn, every dance of drama, mystery and eerie,
speculative glissando or rattle, this work moves both further in, to the
echoing songs of the subconscious, and further out, where elastic string
harmonics fade into twilight. The work’s complexity, its invocation of both
lived in spaces and/or psychic realms, both evades description or synthesis,
demanding listening.
Note: In an “Ezz-thetics” column from 2017 I recounted a 2016 Lisbon lunch
meeting with Moimême and Matthews when they were making field recordings for
Lisbon: 10 Sound Portraits (Creative Sources 421 CD):