December 12, 2014

Mut Trio

MUT TRIO

“A long-standing Barcelona trio with a unique and idiosyncratic style and a repertoire that combines semi-composed themes with quirky improvisation, that somehow manages to unite elements of free jazz with more conventional stylings.” Dave Foxall, Jazz Journal (UK)

 

On the Barcelona scene (and beyond) the leaderless MUT Trio has a unique and idiosyncratic voice. It’s a voice that combines sparse structures and eloquent improvisation. A voice in which space and silence are equal partners alongside the instruments. It’s a voice that continues to evolve on this, their forth recording.

 

The MUT sound still features Miguel Fernández’s agile tone and minimal, fragmented phrasing, Albert Juan’s infinite textures and melodic refraction, and the cymbal-infused percussive landscapes of Oriol Roca… but with the addition of occasional live collaborator Masa Kamaguchi on bass, the sonic palette has broadened a little. Yet in bringing this deeper timbre, Kamaguchi is at home with the ‘less is more’ MUT philosophy and adds a variety of string-rattling subtleties without the slightest injury to MUT’s trademark mesmerising flow and cliché-free clarity.

 

MUT Trio is about melody. Often partial, splintered even; tuneful shards are repeated, turned over, given fresh response, pushed through the looking glass, creating unpredictable journeys for the listener. From the precision and pace, to the hint of the souk, or the folk-ish roots of their music… some possibilities only become apparent (or possible) once in motion, and MUT are in constant motion.

 

It’s been said before – notably by Ornette Coleman – that you cannot intellectualise music without diminishing it in some way, what really matters is the emotional response. MUT Trio’s music is primarily an emotional endeavour: curiosity, melancholy, joy (from quiet to fierce), liberty, wonder, and warmth, this is music alive with feeling.

 

MIGUEL FERNÁNDEZ: tenor and soprano saxophone
ALBERT JUAN: electric guitar
ORIOL ROCA: drums

MASA KAMAGUCHI: double bass (on last album)

 

 

“It’s the creative tension between ad libitum abstraction and an invigorating range of pithy assertion which—for all the aforementioned historical precedent—gives this striking session an ever-stronger impact each time it’s played.” Michael Tucker, Jazz Journal (UK)

 

“MUT Trio’s 2395 album is a raspberry jam, dark but sweet. It has a facile, mild and smooth surrealism; music that seems to be conceived more with extramusical ideas than with jazz templates. And, nevertheless, what we hear is jazz; a jazz in its most contemporary sense.” Germán Lázaro, Cuadernosdejazz (Spain)

ALBUMS
December 21, 2014

Piccola Orchestra Gagarin

© Joan Cortès / Tomajazz
© Nanni Angeli
© Janite Foto
© Francesco Ballestrazzi
© Richard Pomella
© Nanni Angeli
© Elena Beccati
© Totssants

PICCOLA ORCHESTRA GAGARIN

“Vostok is fearless Mediterranean fusion with a Cold War space exploration theme and an absence of unnecessary formalism. Sounds good to me… and it sounds better with each listen.” Dave Foxall, A Jazz Noise (UK)

 

We are in the 60s and there has been a mutation of Icaru’s wings made of feathers and wax into a few square meters capsule, that flying to the stars, makes real what up to a decade before seemed impossible to achieve. April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin makes history as the first human to orbit the Earth: From up here the Earth is blue! How wonderful! … Is beautiful, without borders or boundaries … “¡поехали !!!

 

The trio Piccola Orchestra Gagarin go across this adventure with the album Vostok, leaving behind the beautiful album Platos Combinados covering along a musical parable in orbits where musical genres are turned into pieces to be recycled into a compelling mosaic. The mission is secret and we are not allowed to know the route the three astronauts will follow but it certainly is a unique opportunity to savor the poetic surrealism of a trio that moves with ease among baroque music, jazz, improv and song form.

 

Dressed in fake astronaut outfits, the three musicians re-enact Gagarin’s deeds: a pretext to remind us how essential it is in music to experiment and to dare…

 

PAOLO ANGELI: prepared sardinian guitar, voice

SASHA AGRANOV: cello, voice

ORIOL ROCA: drums, percussion

 

 

“They match their international border crossing with trampling all over musical styles; there’s folk from individual traditions, avant-garde-jazz, rock, experimental improvisation, electronica… It’s all grippingly exhilarating and inspiring and very, very original. We all like that, don’t we?.” Ian Anderson, fRoots Magazine (UK)

 

“A pure post modern crossover, absolutely powerful: no tension’s drops for all 45 minutes. A unique musical flow that moves between free jazz, contemporary, improvisation, popular Sardinian music, Spanish, Russian and arabesque music. Perfect symbiosis, perfect interplay. Never a blush, never a fall of style.” Andrea Aguzzi, Neuguitars Magazine (Italy)

 

“Avant-garde and mystery, craftsmanship and awareness are intertwined in the expressive world of the Piccola Orchestra Gagarin. The sensitivity of the interpreters, the strength of the ensemble, the timbre connection and mutual respect, freedom and interplay offer the overall look, the welcoming bed in which any inconsistencies are smoothed out.” Fabio Ciminiera, Jazz Convention (Italy)

 

“A trio with a high rate of creativity and telepathy. Unbridled fantasy and fireworks rule the place.” Ivo Franchi, Musicajazz (Italy)

 

“With the ability to mix rock, folk, traditional and improvised elements, there is always a tremendous energy. The music they create is dense, dancing and touching.” Gary May, Improjazz Magazine (France)

 

“The sound of the trio is something unique and special, difficult to categorize: it is folk but jazz, classic but pop, western and eastern, from the North and South of the world, ironic in nostalgia but serious in looking at possible futures.” Fabio Pozzi, Vorrei (Italy)

 

“On the album Vostok, the trio produces once more a kaleidoscopic beauty jewel, with a material that is decomposed and recomposed as in the hands of a lazy juggler, with no rush, but with so much magic.” Enrico Bettinello, Blow Up Magazine (Italy)

 

“They invent a music that turns into a world where poetry, inventiveness and the pleasure of playing together are intertwined. From songs to improvisations, they send a beautiful message of mutual understanding. A trio very interesting that we would like to listen in concert.” Thierry Giard, Culturejazz (France)

 

“Vostok is great album, solid, well performed, which leaves equal space, even at the compositional level, to the three musicians who -and it is not always that obvious- also show a lot of joyfulness, especially when dressed as astronauts.” Gianluca Dessì, Blogfolk (Italy)

 

“I believe Tom Waits might like it, because the album has even a rogue point, and especially because it opens with African sounds that are then Russian to immediately become Arabs to pay tribute to the great among the greats egiptian singer, Oum Kalthoum.” Carlos Pérez Cruz, El Club de Jazz (Spain)

 

“The contamination and the energy of the trio reverberate above all in the live performance, a fascinating and engaging sound storm.” Guido Biondi, Il Fatto Quotidiano (Italy)

 

“Celestial music, in the most opaque sense of the term, deep, beautiful and frightening at the same time.” Martí Farré, Vilaweb (Spain)

 

“A journey in the form of a suite, in which musical genres are torn to shreds to be recycled into a compelling mosaic.” La Nuova Sardegna (Italy)

 

“All the way, this is a charming and fun album. We take on a journey that is exciting, challenging and vital, with the chief astronaut Angeli in great shape.” Jan Granlie, Salt Peanuts (Norway)

ALBUMS

June 29, 2020

TÀLVEG

© Roberto Domínguez
© Roberto Domínguez
© Ramon Ferrandis
© Roberto Domínguez

TàLVEG

Barcelona based TàLVEG is a collaborative trio installed in an incessant search for new textures, chasing the light behind dark atmospheres and desolate landscapes, combining a palette of super-saturated colors with lyrical passages. The music unfolds in the form of an oratory building a narrative flow from the combinatorial possibilities that they explore as a trio.

 

Tàlveg’s first long play album Arbori is a 10 piece oratorio which comes after Ses-Sens, their first 4-track EP debut. Sens-Ses is Tàlveg’s third release, the closing EP of their first trilogy (Ses-Sens/Arbori/Sens-Ses).

As It Fades is Tàlveg’s second long play album, a 6 piece oratorio released on May 14 2021 on tape and digital.

 

Tàlveg presents LIVE SERIES: a selection of the best moments of their concerts, dropped now as a digital EP. These sonic documents are and will be the live testimony of the trio’s musical research, based on the artistic freedom and the assymetries that the oratorio musical form allows them to develop. Small doses of truthful music where you will listen and appreciate the natural essence of Tàlveg’s sound.

 

MARCEL·LÍ BAYER: baritone sax
FERRAN FAGES: electric guitar
ORIOL ROCA: drums

 

 

 

“Tàlveg is one of the most interesting new trios on the European avant-garde scene. A must purchase for anybody interested in contemporary avant-garde.”  Maciej Lewenstein (PL)

 

“Tàlveg is about contours, about incomplete music that leaves something to the imagination. Balancing on the edge of abstraction, the musicians improvise to push boundaries, not radically but with policy. Which does not mean that musically no risks are taken. It takes a lot of guts and control to maintain the retained tension.” Gert Derkx, Opduvel.com (NL)

 

“Thinking that Arbori is their first full album as Tàlveg, the listener gets the feeling of urgency and importance.” Fotis Nikolakopoulos, The Free Jazz Collective, Freejazzblog.org (INT)

 

“These guys know exactly where they are and what they’re doing – they know the architecture and ambience they’re creating: the vast halls of silence illustrated by a single harmonic, the groaning bari-ous vistas, the flocks of cymbals across a distant sky, the brutal (dis)storms… They know exactly where they are. Their world. Their landscape. Created, filled, and offered with a yin/yang gesture of grace and ugliness.” Dave Foxall, ajazznoise.com (UK)

 

“The memories of the best years of Sonic Youth in New York rumble in our ears.”  Andrzej Nowak, Spontaneousmusictribune (PL)

 

“The depths of the guttural are explored. And finally everything is heading for an eruption.”  Ferdinand Dupuis-Panther, Jazzhalo.be (BE)

 

“The notes seem to come into existence only to live a life of torture and agony, flowing between realms as fluidly as luminiferous æther. The result is an entrancing and bewildering forty-minute experience you ought to live for yourselves!” Dæv Tremblay, Canthisevenbecalledmusic.com (USA)

 

“Tàlveg explores mysterious and unsettling, cinematic soundscapes, and often opt for sparse, implied gestures that leave enough space – literally – for breath and imagination.” Eyal Hareuveni, Salt-peanuts.eu (NO)

 

“They expand the musical palette without detracting from the trio’s signature sound. Because of the often restrained tension, the listening experience is an exciting one. Beautiful album.” Gert Derkx, Opduvel.com (NL)

 

“On préfère vous prévenir que les 3 musiciens sus-cités ne dessinent ni n’installent de tracés ou de chemins dans leur musique. Ils explorent, défrichent, parfois même déboisent à coups de cris, de frottements, de grattements. Libre à vous de vous frayer un passage mais on vous assure que le paysage improvisé/sculpté par les 3 compères est à couper le souffle.” Le Grigri (FR)

 

 

Contact: talvegmusic@gmail.com

talvegmusic.bandcamp.com


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ALBUMS
December 12, 2014

Giovanni Di Domenico & Oriol Roca

© ACN
© Silvano Magnione
© Joan Cortès
© Joan Cortès

GIOVANNI DI DOMENICO & ORIOL ROCA

Italian piano player Giovanni Di Domenico (Akira Sakata, Nate Wooley, Arve Henriksen, Jim O’Rourke) and Spanish drummer Oriol Roca started playing together twenty years ago. It’s not only friendship what kept them playing through the years in so many different musical situations in the french, belgian and italian jazz improv scene next to Jeroen van Herzeele, Brice Soniano, Manolo Cabras or Alexandra Grimal. They understand music in a very similar way.

 

An incessant search for new sounds, the joy for exploration combined with an unorthodox musical background brought them together as a duo on 2010, digging into the sound possibilities of their acoustic instruments, density and space, a kind of “live research” on new textures and colors through what it’s mostly improvised music.

 

Now, after the studio album “Sounds Good” (Spocus, 2012) and the live one “Live in Centelles” (Whataboutmusic, 2015) they bring you Ater, their 2° studio album together. In this new album they focused on minimal touches and slow unfolding structures, fluxes of psychedelic layers superimposed on a mesmerizing drums and cymbals forest.

 

 

GIOVANNI DI DOMENICO: piano, fender rhodes, electronics
ORIOL ROCA: drums & percussion

 

 

“Frenetic rhythms, spastic melodies, yet oddly tuneful. I’ve been poking around drummer Oriol Roca‘s music for a couple years now, and he always finds a way to gain interest, and pianist Giovanni di Domenico is an excellent foil for Roca on this recording.” Bird Is The Worm (USA)

 

“Oriol and Giovanni are among those who explore divergence, without forgetting the elements that are typical of the canon and that can be complemented in absolute harmony with them. They do not go on stage with a period costume, but they make music of their time. They are free and have the discipline to be so. They fell on their feet and made us jump. Athletes of the soul.” Carlos Pérez Cruz, El Club de Jazz (Spain)

 

“Improvisation or composition? Surely a little of both – some stop/go moments are simply too well coordinated to be freely improvised. Pieces are short, delicate, often melancholic without getting sappy. Sounds Good is an unpretentious and quite convincing meeting.” François Couture, Monsieur Délire (Canada)

ALBUMS

April 23, 2019

VRAK TRIO

VRAK TRIO

“We will have to keep an eye on this trio, they share the same freedom that Henri Threadgill had during the 70s and 80s.” Candido Querol, B-Ritmos (Spain)

 

Vrak is a French-Catalan trio (first prize in Concurs de Jazz de Barcelona 2007) leaded by french flute player Etienne Lecomte. Together since 2006, Vrak Trio has developed a very personal universe combining 20th century written and oral music with influences of avant-garde, European jazz improv, electronics, contemporary and traditional music.

 

Vrak Trio’s first album TLS-BCN Live (Label Manivelle 2008) was recorded live at Mandala Jazz Club (Toulouse) and at Jamboree Jazz Club (Barcelona). Two years later, new original music is recorded on the second album 37 Avril (Label Manivelle 2010).

 

Over the years, the trio has collaborated with many other musicians, visual artists and dancers in different side projects. On 2011 The Crossroad Project included Spanish guitarist Jaime Pantaleón, Polish saxophonist Radek Knop and Finish video artist Mia Makela. The album Crossroads Project (Label Manivelle 2011) was recorded live at Théâtre de la Scène Nationale de Narbonne.

 

Spanish dancer Anna Rubirola was invited to collaborate on Vrak’s project Miró Dansant, a tribute to the catalan abstract surrealist painter Joan Miró. The project explores through movement and music a series of Joan Miró’s pictures, working methods and his approach to instant creation. The album Connivence (Label Manivelle 2015) features new originals, improvised fragments and music extraits from Miró Dansant. This album also celebrates the 10th anniversary of the band.

 

On 2015 the Barcelona-based MUT Trio joins forces with Vrak Trio to revisit the legendary album by Carla Bley and Charlie Haden The Ballad of the Fallen. This protest album is based on revolutionary songs from Spain and Central America traditional songs and free jazz. This work conveys a message of hope. At the time of multiple revolutions in the world, Vrak Trio and Mut Trio gather to offer a reflection on the actual moment, offering a link with the entourage and the current situation, based on today’s popular music that evoke the same problem and the same optimism as the 1983 record.

 

On 2018 Vrak Trio started an exciting new collaboration with French guitarist and improviser Noël Akchoté (a key figure on free improvisational music, and best known by his solo work and memorable collaborations with Derek Bailey, Sam Rivers, Lol Coxhill, Fred Frith, Evan Parker, Han Bennink and many others). Original music by all members was planned to be played on Vrak and Akchoté’s first meeting, in which they recorded the album Live in Centelles (Label Manivelle 2018) during the concert at Cicle de Jazz i Músiques Improvisades de Centelles (Spain).

 

 

ETIENNE LECOMTE: flute, electronics

LAURENT GUITTON: tuba

NOËL AKCHOTÉ: electric guitar

ORIOL ROCA: drums, percussion

 

www.labelmanivelle.com

www.arcoyflecha.es

 

 

“Somewhere between avant-garde jazz and Zen philosophy.” El País (Spain)

 

“Vrak Trio flees from encumbrances and holds absolute freedom when it comes to sculpting its cathartic discourse.” Miguel Ángel Sánchez Gárate, B-Ritmos (Spain)

 

“Going from blunt and almost danceable rhythms, to dislocated fragments where the trio seems to have found a space and an eccentric language, somewhat cold and spooky, in which they navigate with absolute tranquility.” Jack Torrance, Tomajazz (Spain)

 

ALBUMS
December 12, 2014

PAOLO ANGELI & ORIOL ROCA

PAOLO ANGELI & ORIOL ROCA

 

Paolo Angeli and Oriol Roca started playing together almost ten years ago with the experimental trio Piccola Orchestra Gagarin. Through these years they have built a complicity that allows them to go anywhere they like, creating a palette of super-saturated colors and unbelievably varied textures.

 

The musical universe coming out from Angeli’s uniquely prepared Sardinian guitar make him one of the most creative musicians in our days. Collaborator of Fred Frith, Evan Parker or Hamid Drake, Angeli melts so naturally with Roca’s melodic, complex and subtly surprising approach to drums and percussion.

 

Each concert is a non planned journey in which destination is not important, the path is what matters to them. Their music is essentially a celebration of freedom.

 

 

PAOLO ANGELI: prepared sardinian guitar

ORIOL ROCA: drums, percussion

 

 

“Paolo Angeli, que je suis depuis quelques années maintenant, ici il a trouvé un complice à sa mesure: Oriol Roca est un batteur énergique et créatif.” Joël Plagier, Jazzman Magazine (FR)

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