Albert / Day / Kreimer ‎– Mutations CD

Albert / Day / Kreimer ‎– Mutations CD

(Avant Music News) Mutations is the product of the virtual collaboration of sound artists and instrument builders Bryan Day of San Francisco and Jay Kreimer of Lincoln, Nebraska, and Marco Albert, an Italian-born musician now based on Oaxaca, Mexico. The three played together in Queretaro, Mexico, in 2018 at the Festival Internacional de Improvisación y Música Extrema, where they had the idea of continuing to work together via file sharing. For Mutations, each recorded his part at home; Albert provided the final mix. The six tracks give evidence of the trio’s fine chemistry and obvious compatibility of approaches to sound, as well as the willingness of each to build an uncluttered audio space in which the others can thrive. Consequently, Day and Kriemer’s invented instruments combine with Albert’s electronics and voice to create richly colored environments telling of unlikely sounds: imaginary objects ricocheting off of mirrors amid electronic glisses bringing news of yesterday’s vision of the future. Albert’s voice grounds several of the pieces as he whispers coded messages against a background of kalimba-like, ad hoc percussion and scraped metal, delivers a lecture on modern art and objectification to an increasingly raucous—skeptical?—Greek chorus of noise, or chants over burbling sounds recalling the reaction of baking soda with hot water. - Daniel Barbiero

(Avant Music News) There are two completely different ways this writer considered approaching the new album Mutations created by Marco Albert (from Oaxaca, Mexico), Bryan Day (from San Francisco) and Jay Kreimer (from Lincoln, Neb.): 1) find out as much information as possible about the musicians and sound-making processes, or 2) just “accept the mystery” (to borrow a quote from the Coen Brothers’ film A Serious Man). Day and Kreimer are both instrument inventors and improvisers, while Albert is a vocalist and electronics wiz, and the trio came together for a performance at the 2017 Festival Internacional de Improvisación y Música Extrema in Mexico and subsequently embarked on a long-distance collaboration involving passing around recordings that were edited and mixed together. Gleaning a few hints from video footage from the Festival—the entire 20-minute set is on YouTube—we see Day and Kreimer striking and scraping their inventions, primarily staying the realm of percussion, while Albert’s words and wordless outbursts are wild and sometimes harrowing. Kreimer seems to hit a sort of amplified hammered dulcimer-esque instrument mounted on a tripod, while Day has an entire table full of his creations, including antennas, effects processors, a wooden trapezoid and one instrument that uses five tape measures each extended to a different length. Some similar sounds seem to re-appear on Mutations, but the details are fuzzy. While the Festival performance was a live improvisation, Mutations is a carefully assembled recording, and without delving into background information, one could imagine this music being some kind of fascinating invocation for an arcane, modern ritual with physical and electronic sound-making. Eerie and sinister spell-casting is evoked from windy sounds, while metal bits are rubbed and plucked, resembling kalimba tones. Each track dwells on its own sound-realm; “Mutation 5” has an obsession with springy “boing” noises, while “Mutation 6” offers aquatic gurgling amid the impulses of synthetic calculations. Albert’s vocals are as enigmatic as the sounds, with both Spanish and English words that are sometimes distorted and sometimes whispered, suggesting secrets that are revealed without giving it all away. - Ernie Paik