By Guido Montegrandi
In May 2024 Roscoe Mitchell (bass and sopranino saxophones, percussions) and Michele Rabbia (percussions, electronic) played a series of concert in Italy (here is a fragment of the concert at the Angelica Festival in Bologna
) and on the occasion, between May 9th and 11th they recorded this album.
The result is an exploration of sound in its most elemental traits – breath
and noise resonances and echoes and silence. There is something quite organic and alarming in the opening piece
A day in a Forest
as my cat (who is used to a wide range of strange and unusual sounds) was
restless and alert for the whole piece, the same atmosphere can be heard in
the counterpart piece A night in the Forest, a sort of
environmental collection of dripping noises, electronic echoes and deep
percussion. It’s a raw sound that emerges from this album and the moments in which
Mitchell plays the bass sax (Low answer as an example) seem to dive
deep into sonic substance of the world itself. In Two starts as a more traditional free jazz sax piece but then
the drumming opens a different horizon with deep drums and subtle cymbals.
All through the record, the way in which Rabbia uses electronics and
percussion perfectly draws a net of connections and disconnections (to quote
the liner notes) for the two of them to make their statements, to dialogue
or to go astray. Interaction is a powerful example of the way they think about music
– every sound matters, every breath and every move are music until it all
fades in the last second of Polyndrome (the closing piece).
in 2 is an emotional record, fragmented sounds and broken melodies and rhythmic
textures that dissolve into 39 minutes and 06 seconds of good music.