Tom Arthurs _ tromba
Alberto Novello _ circuiti analogici

Lavoro interessante con tromba ed elettronica come protagoniste, trame intense, sottili suoni di creatività! Registrato all'Art OMI (Ghent, NY, USA) in una calda e tranquilla notte d'agosto del 2018. Registrato e prodotto da Alberto Novello. Mixing di Alberto e Tommaso Marte. Mastering di Tommaso Marte. La foto della copertina è di Erin McKinney.

Alberto Novello è uno scienziato, compositore e artista multimediale italiano la cui attenzione è rivolta alla creazione e alla manipolazione di fragili architetture multi-media sul limite tecnologico tra instabilità ed errore, fallimento ed espressione. In tempi recenti si è spostato dal controllo dei sistemi digitali all'improvvisazione con processi elettronici analogici, in diversi ensemble e contesti. Ha studiato composizione musicale elettroacustica con Jean Claude Risset, Paul Berg, Joel Ryan e Richard Barrett. Negli anni, ha assistito nel loro lavoro Alvin Lucier, Nicolas Collins, David Behrman e Trevor Wishart. Attualmente è professore di musica elettronica al Conservatorio di Padova. http://jestern.com

Tom Arthurs è un trombettista e compositore inglese, di Northamptonshire. Il giornalista Thomas Conrad del New York City Jazz Record descrive il suo modo di suonare come "meravigliosamente e continuamente non familiare" e John Kelman di All About Jazz descrive le sue improvvisazioni come "semplici ma perfette", dimostrando "una perfezione e un tono armonioso che rende il suo modo di giocare vulnerabile come il più delicato Miles Davis". Nel corso degli anni ha suonato e registrato con Ingrid Laubrock, Dine Doneff (Kostas Theodorou), Denis Badault, Maciej Obara, Julia Hülsmann, Theo Bleckmann e molti altri; ha condiviso il palco con un'incredibile gamma di musicisti, tra cui John Surman, John Taylor, Kenny Wheeler, Benoît Delbecq, Jack DeJohnette, Tom Rainey, Eddie Prévost e Steve Beresford. Ha registrato per ECM, Ozella, Act, Intakt, Babel, Unit, Jazzwerkstatt, Creative Sources, Babel e Not Applicable. Attualmente dirige il dipartimento di musica jazz e contemporanea presso l'Università delle Arti di Berna, in Svizzera. http://www.tomarthurs.co.uk

"(...) È un progetto di improvvisazione elettroacustica portato a termine negli Stati Uniti, quello che vede coinvolti il trombettista Tom Arthurs e Alberto Novello, scienziato, compositore e musicista impegnato su più fronti per dare ai suoni vite parallele a quelle tradizionalmente intese (su Novello si dovrebbe aprire un capitolo a parte per le sue ricerche sui laser, sui trasmettitori neurali, vettori grafici, etc.).
In Cahier de petits coquillages vol. IV/V, la sperimentazione consiste nel mettere di fronte le plurime evoluzioni della tromba di Arthurs con la materia analogica trattata da Novello; la performance si sviluppa in due lunghi pezzi che sondano una zona tecnicamente esplorabile, quella che corrisponde all'instabilità, all'errore e al fallimento distruttivo. In questo vespaio di suoni Novello si serve di una taratura del synth che lo indirizza verso sprazzi sonori impostati al glitch e agli scarti erratici, mentre Arthurs accende Davis e Dixon in equazioni differenziate.
Non c'è nessuna volontà di sviluppare mentalità subliminali né tanto meno rifarsi alla natura lenta o all'immobilità suggerita dalla titolazione, questo è un vero e proprio esperimento da laboratorio, in cui c'è un deleterio reset mentale indotto dai suoni, qualcosa che non permette di estendere il pensiero, specie in Escargots. Ma questi musicisti fanno il mestiere più difficile e rischioso al mondo in questo momento, ossia andare ad estrapolare suoni ed idee da una ricerca di cui si percepisce la ricchezza ma che sviluppa l'antipatia uditiva dell'audiance, incapace di comprenderla." Ettore Garzia, Percorsi Musicali, 2018.

"(...) Applying a 21st Century interpretation of what bare bones sonority can sound like are these discs of improvisatory encounters between a single trumpet and programmed electronics. Instructively despite instrumental affinity each duo [originally it's a twin review with Peter Evans and Sam Pluta "Two Live Sets", on Carrier Records, 036], creates a provocatively original program. British trumpeter Tom Arthurs and Italian analog circuitry controller Alberto Novello appear to have divided their Petite Coquillages into two programs, one with a faint attachment to arena Rock and the other brushing against chamber music.
Now teaching in Bern, Arthurs has additionally worked with musicians like Ingrid Laubrock and Eddie Prévost, while Novello, a professor of electronic music at the Padua Conservatory also improvised with Evan Parker and Karl Berger.
Simpler, “Molluscs”, the second and shorter Cahier de Petite Coquillages track is also the more fine-spun of the two, at least until its climax. At that point Arthur uses half-valve effects to move into the highest register of the trumpet ending with a striking display of seesaw breaths, peeps and cries. Before that his exposition is a combination of plunger digs and pennywhistle-like textures challenge by machine-like friction from Novello’s instrument which with its clanks and clicks also takes on idiophone coloration. With reverse aims, “Escargots” speeds from the beginning with electrified sounds that resemble tape running backwards and a busy hamster on its running wheel. As the oscillations beep and shimmy as well as replicate a percussion ostinato, Arthurs startlingly produces higher-pitched but sympathetic grace notes and whines. One-third of the way through however, the interaction hardens as the tempo accelerates and trumpet tones become more abstract. Eventually the brass soars even higher becoming a bizarre tattoo. Novello exposes his Metal affiliations at this point and for the remainder of the track produces processed percussive timbres that indirectly approximate dance floor beats. The ending is a challenge between Metal-oriented thumps and rubs and mewling brass inserts that come in-and-out of aural focus.
Experimentation not elegance is the result and modus operandi of these sessions. They will be especially welcomed by those who want to chart the path of new sounds." Ken Waxman, Jazz Word, 2019.

"(...) Scientist, composer and multimedia artist Alberto Novello – aka Jestern – is a man who, per his own words, is concerned with the “technological limit between instability and error, failure and expression”. In the 31-plus minutes of this record he puts British trumpeter Tom Arthurs right through a skittish sequence of modifications of the native quintessence of a trumpet, altering it via uneven electronic impulses “reinforced” by continuous dynamic changes.
Arthurs’ timbre and phrasing are of clear jazz descent, though his influences embrace much more than that. What could have been a disastrous “mix-oil-with-water” situation reveals instead to be a contiguity of acoustic environments and creative personalities that works quite well in long stretches. As the trumpet dictates twists and turns with an appreciable degree of dissonant relax, Novello’s manipulation equals a spontaneous vandalizing of certain instrumental characteristics. The outcome is a singular coalescence of subsonic throbs, unruly frequencies, unrelenting pitches and piercing harmonics immersed in some sort of boiling liquid. It remains nice and stimulating even after a number of consecutive listens. The audacity of this attempt has definitely been repaid by music worth of being considered at the very least entertaining." Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes, 2018.

"(...) In August, 2017, Alberto Novello, the Italian-born composer, programmer, and multimedia artist, and UK trumpeter/composer Tom Arthurs shared an ArtOMI residency in Ghent, New York. The four-week summer program was intended to bring together international artists for the purposing of fostering collaboration; this recording, made during the residency, is one such successful one.
For these performances, Novello, who uses the stage name Jestern, accompanied Arthurs’s acoustic trumpet with analogue electronics. The musical relationship the two forged is one of strong, independent and parallel voices that nevertheless provide complementary parts of a distinctive whole. This they do largely through contrasts of timbre and phrasing, given the particular capabilities of their instruments. Novello’s electronics are glitch and jumpy; even at their most abstract they allude, however obliquely, to rhythms rooted in the body: foot-tapping, finger-popping, knuckle-rapping. Their chopped sounds are a sonic bed over which Arthurs’s melodic lines lie—sometimes uneasily, sometimes comfortably, but always appropriately." Daniel Barbiero, Avant Music News, 2018.

"(...) Cahier De Petits Coquillages Vol. IV/V is presented in a elegant folding glazed paperboard with photos on both sides. The artwork is due to Erin McKinney. The project is an important addition to the catalogue of Setola di Maiale, an independent label, focusing since 1993 on the promotion and diffusion of unconventional music. The release is due to the partnerships between Alberto Novello, multimedia artist, programmer and digital sound-artist, and Tom Arthurs, composer and trumpet player. Since the beginning, the soul of this music confrontation is easily decodable, based on scratchy concatenations of wind instruments. The many dense and moody passages make the atmosphere very intriguing. This is not enough: the sound sources are numberless and also harsh, full of creaks, snorts, continuous pulses, hisses, trills, tickings, backwashes and thousands of other elements the Italian experimenter, also knows as JesterN in the audio-art circle, has in his personal broad background. Nobody would be surprised if the more open-minded lovers of improvisational music or new jazz might have found the duo worthy of interest. The recordings are the last stop of a summer residence organized by ArtOMI in Ghent and New York. The aim of the event was the creation of relationship between style methods and international music experiences. The electronics on play seems analogue. In the second recording the substance undergoes a nervous condensation, full of glitches and trumpet interventions, first limited and later mixed with accuracy. Everything becomes cinematic and alien, the atmosphere makes you feel like you are in some kind of futuristic noir film. The different interventions of the two artists are so intense and decisive as they are moving parallel on the same way, never having an open contrast of timbres, rhythms and phrasings. The single parts come together raw and sophisticated: abstractions and harsh audio emergencies, repetitions and variations, moments of urban lyricism and scattered schizoid equipment. If some vintage free form style is performed with awareness, the goal is still the confrontation with new different styles, given that an unconventional approach requires a deep knowledge of what the history of music has made so far." Neural, 2019.

01 _ Escargots 19:40
02 _ Molluscs 11:30

(C) + (P) 2018

Tom Arthurs _ trumpet
Alberto Novello _ analog circuitry

Interesting work with trumpet and electronics, intense textures, thin sounds of creativity! Recorded at Art OMI, Ghent, NY (USA) on a quiet and warm night of August 2018. Recording and production by Alberto Novello. Mixing by Alberto and Tommaso Marta. Mastering by Tommaso Marte. Cover photography by Erin McKinney.

Alberto Novello is an Italian scientist, composer, and multimedia artist whose focus is directed towards the creation and manipulation of fragile multi-media architectures on the technological limit between instability and error, failure and expression. Lately he moved from controlling digital systems to improvising with analog electronic in several ensembles. He studied electroacoustic music composition with Jean Claude Risset, Paul Berg, Joel Ryan and Richard Barrett. In the years, he has assisted in their work Alvin Lucier, Nicolas Collins, David Behrman and Trevor Wishart. He’s currently professor of electronic music at the Conservatory of Padua, Italy. http://jestern.com

Tom Arthurs (Northamptonshire, UK) is a trumpeter and composer. New York City Jazz Record’s Thomas Conrad describing his playing as “continuously, beautifully unfamiliar”, and All About Jazz’s John Kelman describing his improvisations as “simple but perfect”, demonstrating “an exacting perfection” and with “a harmon-muted tone that renders his playing as vulnerable as Miles Davis at his fragile best”. Through the years, he has performed and recorded with Ingrid Laubrock, Dine Doneff (Kostas Theodorou), Denis Badault, Maciej Obara, Julia Hülsmann, Theo Bleckmann... and has shared the stage with an incredible range of musicians, including John Surman, John Taylor, Kenny Wheeler, Benoît Delbecq, Jack DeJohnette, Tom Rainey, Eddie Prévost and Steve Beresford. He has recorded for ECM, Ozella, Act, Intakt, Babel, Unit, Jazzwerkstatt, Creative Sources, Babel and Not Applicable. He currently leads the Jazz and Contemporary Music department at Bern University of the Arts, Switzerland. http://www.tomarthurs.co.uk

"(...) Applying a 21st Century interpretation of what bare bones sonority can sound like are these discs of improvisatory encounters between a single trumpet and programmed electronics. Instructively despite instrumental affinity each duo [originally it's a twin review with Peter Evans and Sam Pluta "Two Live Sets", on Carrier Records, 036], creates a provocatively original program. British trumpeter Tom Arthurs and Italian analog circuitry controller Alberto Novello appear to have divided their Petite Coquillages into two programs, one with a faint attachment to arena Rock and the other brushing against chamber music.
Now teaching in Bern, Arthurs has additionally worked with musicians like Ingrid Laubrock and Eddie Prévost, while Novello, a professor of electronic music at the Padua Conservatory also improvised with Evan Parker and Karl Berger.
Simpler, “Molluscs”, the second and shorter Cahier de Petite Coquillages track is also the more fine-spun of the two, at least until its climax. At that point Arthur uses half-valve effects to move into the highest register of the trumpet ending with a striking display of seesaw breaths, peeps and cries. Before that his exposition is a combination of plunger digs and pennywhistle-like textures challenge by machine-like friction from Novello’s instrument which with its clanks and clicks also takes on idiophone coloration. With reverse aims, “Escargots” speeds from the beginning with electrified sounds that resemble tape running backwards and a busy hamster on its running wheel. As the oscillations beep and shimmy as well as replicate a percussion ostinato, Arthurs startlingly produces higher-pitched but sympathetic grace notes and whines. One-third of the way through however, the interaction hardens as the tempo accelerates and trumpet tones become more abstract. Eventually the brass soars even higher becoming a bizarre tattoo. Novello exposes his Metal affiliations at this point and for the remainder of the track produces processed percussive timbres that indirectly approximate dance floor beats. The ending is a challenge between Metal-oriented thumps and rubs and mewling brass inserts that come in-and-out of aural focus.
Experimentation not elegance is the result and modus operandi of these sessions. They will be especially welcomed by those who want to chart the path of new sounds." Ken Waxman, Jazz Word, 2019.

"(...) Cahier De Petits Coquillages Vol. IV/V is presented in a elegant folding glazed paperboard with photos on both sides. The artwork is due to Erin McKinney. The project is an important addition to the catalogue of Setola di Maiale, an independent label, focusing since 1993 on the promotion and diffusion of unconventional music. The release is due to the partnerships between Alberto Novello, multimedia artist, programmer and digital sound-artist, and Tom Arthurs, composer and trumpet player. Since the beginning, the soul of this music confrontation is easily decodable, based on scratchy concatenations of wind instruments. The many dense and moody passages make the atmosphere very intriguing. This is not enough: the sound sources are numberless and also harsh, full of creaks, snorts, continuous pulses, hisses, trills, tickings, backwashes and thousands of other elements the Italian experimenter, also knows as JesterN in the audio-art circle, has in his personal broad background. Nobody would be surprised if the more open-minded lovers of improvisational music or new jazz might have found the duo worthy of interest. The recordings are the last stop of a summer residence organized by ArtOMI in Ghent and New York. The aim of the event was the creation of relationship between style methods and international music experiences. The electronics on play seems analogue. In the second recording the substance undergoes a nervous condensation, full of glitches and trumpet interventions, first limited and later mixed with accuracy. Everything becomes cinematic and alien, the atmosphere makes you feel like you are in some kind of futuristic noir film. The different interventions of the two artists are so intense and decisive as they are moving parallel on the same way, never having an open contrast of timbres, rhythms and phrasings. The single parts come together raw and sophisticated: abstractions and harsh audio emergencies, repetitions and variations, moments of urban lyricism and scattered schizoid equipment. If some vintage free form style is performed with awareness, the goal is still the confrontation with new different styles, given that an unconventional approach requires a deep knowledge of what the history of music has made so far." Neural, 2019.

"(...) Scientist, composer and multimedia artist Alberto Novello – aka Jestern – is a man who, per his own words, is concerned with the “technological limit between instability and error, failure and expression”. In the 31-plus minutes of this record he puts British trumpeter Tom Arthurs right through a skittish sequence of modifications of the native quintessence of a trumpet, altering it via uneven electronic impulses “reinforced” by continuous dynamic changes.
Arthurs’ timbre and phrasing are of clear jazz descent, though his influences embrace much more than that. What could have been a disastrous “mix-oil-with-water” situation reveals instead to be a contiguity of acoustic environments and creative personalities that works quite well in long stretches. As the trumpet dictates twists and turns with an appreciable degree of dissonant relax, Novello’s manipulation equals a spontaneous vandalizing of certain instrumental characteristics. The outcome is a singular coalescence of subsonic throbs, unruly frequencies, unrelenting pitches and piercing harmonics immersed in some sort of boiling liquid. It remains nice and stimulating even after a number of consecutive listens. The audacity of this attempt has definitely been repaid by music worth of being considered at the very least entertaining." Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes, 2018.

"(...) In August, 2017, Alberto Novello, the Italian-born composer, programmer, and multimedia artist, and UK trumpeter/composer Tom Arthurs shared an ArtOMI residency in Ghent, New York. The four-week summer program was intended to bring together international artists for the purposing of fostering collaboration; this recording, made during the residency, is one such successful one.
For these performances, Novello, who uses the stage name Jestern, accompanied Arthurs’s acoustic trumpet with analogue electronics. The musical relationship the two forged is one of strong, independent and parallel voices that nevertheless provide complementary parts of a distinctive whole. This they do largely through contrasts of timbre and phrasing, given the particular capabilities of their instruments. Novello’s electronics are glitch and jumpy; even at their most abstract they allude, however obliquely, to rhythms rooted in the body: foot-tapping, finger-popping, knuckle-rapping. Their chopped sounds are a sonic bed over which Arthurs’s melodic lines lie—sometimes uneasily, sometimes comfortably, but always appropriately." Daniel Barbiero, Avant Music News, 2018.

"(...) È un progetto di improvvisazione elettroacustica portato a termine negli Stati Uniti, quello che vede coinvolti il trombettista Tom Arthurs e Alberto Novello, scienziato, compositore e musicista impegnato su più fronti per dare ai suoni vite parallele a quelle tradizionalmente intese (su Novello si dovrebbe aprire un capitolo a parte per le sue ricerche sui laser, sui trasmettitori neurali, vettori grafici, etc.).
In Cahier de petits coquillages vol. IV/V, la sperimentazione consiste nel mettere di fronte le plurime evoluzioni della tromba di Arthurs con la materia analogica trattata da Novello; la performance si sviluppa in due lunghi pezzi che sondano una zona tecnicamente esplorabile, quella che corrisponde all'instabilità, all'errore e al fallimento distruttivo. In questo vespaio di suoni Novello si serve di una taratura del synth che lo indirizza verso sprazzi sonori impostati al glitch e agli scarti erratici, mentre Arthurs accende Davis e Dixon in equazioni differenziate.
Non c'è nessuna volontà di sviluppare mentalità subliminali né tanto meno rifarsi alla natura lenta o all'immobilità suggerita dalla titolazione, questo è un vero e proprio esperimento da laboratorio, in cui c'è un deleterio reset mentale indotto dai suoni, qualcosa che non permette di estendere il pensiero, specie in Escargots. Ma questi musicisti fanno il mestiere più difficile e rischioso al mondo in questo momento, ossia andare ad estrapolare suoni ed idee da una ricerca di cui si percepisce la ricchezza ma che sviluppa l'antipatia uditiva dell'audiance, incapace di comprenderla." Ettore Garzia, Percorsi Musicali, 2018.
 
01 _ Escargots 19:40
02 _ Molluscs 11:30

(C) + (P) 2018