You can download all Fractal Sources cds at: https://pedrochambel.bandcamp.com/

Ferran Fages / Pedro Chambel - Os passos seguem como um espelho

 

Ferran Fages & Pedro Chambel Os Passos Seguem Como Um Espelho (Fractal Sources, CDr 2022)

Reviews:

The third release by Pedro Chambel on his Fractal Sources imprint is the first to be a duo. He teams up with Ferran Fages, who plays the acoustic turntable. Chambel plays eletronics [sic], alto sax and voice according to the cover. I think I didn't hear the voice element in the music, but I might be wrong. The three pieces here are all very minimal and use a few sounds. How does an acoustic turntable sound? The most straightforward answer is to go to the Bandcamp page and have a listen. I didn't find it easy to detect what that was. Some of the hand spun, rotating/looped sounds that I heard on this disc must be from the turntable. Chambel amplifies his saxophone and sometimes uses the mouthpiece, and sometimes fiddles with the knobs. Again, I think this is what's happening. Everything is on the verge of feedback, yet it never goes over the top and becomes full-blown. The room is alive, so we hear all the detailed action and sounds that go on here. It is all very object-based, scratching surfaces upon surfaces, yet it also has improvised music; of a more electro-acoustic nature. I think this is fascinating music. Partly because it is so much under control, yet it has all the freedom for the players. There is much interaction, and it is minimal and yet always moving and changing within small parameters. It's improvised, and yet it never sounds like it. It remains quite mysterious, and that's part of the beauty here. (FdW)
Frans de Waard, http://vitalweekly.net/1339.html?fbclid=IwAR1CfDLON3Mh9P5sIAOJEn7MAcQ-XefNhSMHiUutYTvZJ4Ajk49wchkfNK8

Pedro Chambel and Ferran Fages craft three environments for turntable, electronics, alto saxophone, and voice on the 38’ Os passos seguem como um espelho. Each theme seems to be three textures, two relatively constant, one changing, and all timbrally ambiguous. Extended techniques and electronic treatments blur sources. A pulse might come from the periodicity of a rotating surface or a beating resonance. And following the title textures appear to mimic others, a metallic chirp could also be effervescent electronics, an alternating beeping a modulating wailing, ptyalistic utterances electric sputtering or frictional turntable that itself seemed like the fetch of dewy breath along the bore. One among them drifts significantly, a resonant howl becomes stridulating static becomes dinosaur roars, an anonymous circular scraping to fan resonance, irregular rustlings to growls, groans, sucks. But though one changes more noticeably in relation to the others all are always changing. Regular soundings occurring not rhythmically but in constrained ranges of texture and time. At the thresholds of identity, texturally, through repetition, follower and followee. - Keith Prosk, https://harmonicseries.substack.com/p/118

Time for the promised electroacoustics! Ferran Fages on acoustic turntable and Pedro Chambel on alto sax, voice and electronics. Three improvisations here last less than 38 minutes (time and place of creation unknown).The first sounds of the recording are almost filigree. Something resonates, something flows in a stream of rough ambient, water is pouring somewhere. The dark electroacoustic jumble, however, sticks to a coherent narrative, which is often based on repetition. In the intertwining of events, we can hear the sound of a prepared saxophone, the tube of which is full of objects that distort its sound. After time, everything here resembles a post-industrial, but very lively scratch. The second improvisation takes on a meta-rhythmic structure even more. Noises, rustles, dreamlike phrases resemble here a bit of a soundtrack to surreal cartoons. Live and synthetic sounds coexist in an almost perfect symbiosis, and the whole thing seems to be characterized by a certain trance worthy of post-techno, with bass micro pulsations, but devoid of the typical beat.The third improvisation takes on a blush from the very beginning. The aforementioned electroacoustic balance is somewhat disturbed towards more synthetic phrases. The saxophone tube hisses, electronic decorations stick together, and the improvisation takes on a slightly industrial sound. With time, almost plunder-phonic accents appear in it. A noise drone on the one hand, and noisy synthetics on the other. The narrative, however, is again moderately calm and does not seem to be accidental. The ending itself seems a bit challenging for a less experienced listener, but it still defends itself artistically.

Andrzej Nowaktp://spontaneousmusictribune.blogspot.com/

Os passos seguem como um espelho offers very little information about the meeting of autodidact, prolific multi-instrumentalist Ferran Fages (of Tàlveg and Ràdium Trio), who plays her on acoustic turntables and Portuguese Pedro Chambel, who is also a medieval history scholar and close collaborator of French composer Bruno Duplant, He began his musical career as a guitarist but now plays on electronics, alto sax and employs his voice and released the album on his own label.
The album offers three distinct pieces. “Tema 1” is a quiet and fragile drone and relies on the mechanical crackling sounds of Fages’ turntables and the almost silent extended breathing techniques of Chambel that eventually become one ambiguous sonic entity. “Tema 2” revolves around an enigmatic and hypnotic electronic pulse like an otherworldly meditative ritual. “Tema 3” interweaves again, but in a more tangible manner, the extended breathing techniques of Chambel and the fragmented and sudden, noisy blasts of Fages into a puzzling texture. Somehow, these weird collisions of sounds make perfect sense.

Eyal Hareuveni: https://www.freejazzblog.org/2022/07/the-art-of-turntablism.html?fbclid=IwAR1rax5f6PSgXb4nMNO9JcvIJBqiILY-lUVxkdwN2Ec1YWoFrHRe847LtZE

If you want to buy it go to: https://pedrochambel.bandcamp.com/releases.