By Richard Blute
“ Of course!
This is the edge of the world! This is the resistance!”
-Fred Frith, from the liner notes
With a lovely, poetic title and euphoric liner notes from guitarist Fred
Frith, this album was irresistible. The phrase “fishes that have their own
light” fills me with excitement thinking about the mysterious bioluminescent
creatures of the deep sea.But it’s the word “discovering” that
matters most to me. Improvised music for me is all about discovery,
discovering new sounds, new sonic worlds, new ways of communicating. I
wanted this music to not just be great, but to match the mood the title
stirred in me. Does it succeed? Very much so.
I discovered Katharina Weber through her beautiful piano solo album
In Márta’s Garden, based on compositions of György Kurtág. She weaves improvisations with the
classical compositions of Kurtág to build something wonderfully new. She
frequently lets individual notes linger and their decay becomes as important
as the note itself.
Paula Sanchez is an improvising cellist, using various extended techniques
including electronics and a prepared cello. Her solo album
Sólo Un Pasaje
demonstrates the many aspects of her playing. One can hear her classical
training, but then the music will veer sharply into something
unrecognizable, almost jolting. Beautiful cello notes mix with harsh scrapes
and screeches. In her liner notes to Sólo Un Pasaje, she wrote
something that applies nicely to both Sólo Un Pasaje and the
present album: “I would like to think of sound as a passage, an endless
transition. A subterranean murmur of opposite materials fragilely linked to
each other, like the places I inhabit.” Beauty and harshness, fragilely
linked together, make for a new sonic world to explore.
The album begins with rolling low notes from Weber’s piano matched by
Sanchez’s cello which at first feels like it’s exploring this deep ocean
universe that Weber is creating. As the music progresses, the cello sounds
less and less like classical cello and more its own unique voice. Are we
hearing those remarkable creatures of the title? At about the two-minute
mark, there is a sharp uptick of intensity and even as the music becomes
more and more intense, it is clear that these two musicians are
communicating on a profound level, and that remains the case for the
entirety of this wonderful album. There are quiet, peaceful places here as
well. We hear Weber’s prepared piano at one point and Sanchez vocalizing at
another. Every note, every sound is there for a reason, is there with a
desire to say something new, something beautiful and maybe a bit eerie, much
like the ocean depths of the title. This is improvised music at its very
finest. This was one of the very best albums of 2025.
Just as this review began, I’ll end it with the words of the great Fred
Frith from the liner notes:
“A play of surfaces, of formal proposals countermanded by a deep impulse
to question, to challenge, to undermine. Every echo, every pulsating
breath, every breaking away into distant reveries, all of its exquisite
tension capturing the ear and the heart and holding them fast.”