Three pieces of musique concrete. Unnerving and at times eerie soundscapes, a soundtrack of disquiet.
Of an entirely different nature is the music by Kiko Esseiva, of whom I hadn’t heard anything in quite some time, not since his split album with Francesco Meirino (see Vital Weekly 898). Before that a few solo albums (Vital Weekly 839, 824 and 620) and the first release I heard was with Eric Boros (Vital Weekly 607), also for 1000+1 Tilt Recordings.
Esseiva is a composer of musique concrete sound collages. Into the melting pot goes a fine blend of electronics, field recordings, recordings from around the house and a bit of instruments, of which I recognized the piano mostly. These sounds are probably processed in some way or another and layered together in a very fine way. Mostly these sounds are stretched out quite a bit and superimposed on each other; maybe Esseiva uses a bit of time stretching, maybe loops, I am not sure of either (or both) and acoustic elements are looped on top; sometimes they are cut out abruptly and something else happens. In ‘Amplitudes Des Serpents’ this is done with some delicate and excellent quality. It is a very mysterious world that he pictures in this piece of shimmering sustaining sounds versus acoustic loops. That is a great piece, but so are the other two. Here we have mild noise passages, slightly distorted organ sounds and looped field recordings. This is an excellent release, maybe his best yet? Not necessarily a very innovative sound, but very much his own approach to the genre of musique concrete. (FdW) (vital weekly)
