paulo raposo

desntegração
permute
sirr 009
cd 2002

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reviews

The Carlos Zingaro solo recording of magical, real time pieces for violin
and electronics called Cage of Sand was one of 2002's most rewarding
releases. Permute derives all of its sound sources from that album. On 24
May 2002, at the Centre of Modern Art in Lisbon, Zingaro performed live
mixing while six members of the Portuguese collective [Des]integração used
laptop computers to process fragments from his recently completed work. In
the course of these three transformations - lasting 31 minutes all together
- his superbly evocative expanses are narrowed into busy litle circuits of
fizzing electronic motifs. In the foreground traces of the violin linger in
woody clicks and metallic creaks, while a backdrop takes shape in glazed
droning and intimidating rumbles. [Des]integração was formed last January
and is dedicated to exploring different ways of organising sounds. It
follows that each of these pieces, named "Segment 1-3", shares a distinct
family resemblance in terms of overall sound as a result of their recycling
of the same basic materials. Samuel Beckett used to quote fellow novelist
Robert Pinget's remark that nothing is ever said because it can always be
said another way. There's similarly endless mileage in the [Des]integração
project, but with its deliberately restricted scope, Permute stands as an
interesting gloss on Cage of Sand more than a substitute for its fuller
pleasures.

Julian Cowley

The result is a fascinating live Musique Concrete piece that reminded me of
Philip Samartzis and some of the Empreintes Digitales. There is a lot of
looping small noises, burrs and clicks, with various levels of access to
what I understand to be the source material, a violin improvisation. These
come through a short notes sampled and looped, drones and percussive tapping
which is probably on the sound box.
'Segment 1' emerges slowly out of silence, a burring surrounded by
percussive clicks and tocks, light ringing tones and buzzes. A string scrape
enters, long swelling tones, in fact the whole thing sounds a little like a
creaky boat at anchor at times. It eases, a passing buzz tone, creaks
shimmers and high tone, rising and falling with string sounds – string
insects buzzing away. Long spectral tones, bell buzz scrape, chitter and
spacey percussion. Two thirds in (11 from 15) we move towards a crescendo in
activity and volume, plateau and then up again, lots of little noises, then
wind back to fade. A shorter segment, droning tones percussive scrabble and
chitters, echoed, flowing. String scrape plucks and hollow tapping increase,
dits and what sound like voices (distant) fast percussive tings to fade.
The third and final segment, middle length (the total is a little over 30
minutes) starts with box-taps, short and longer string samples, thuds,
twitter and a whizzling tappity of pizzicato strings. The percussion is
quite visceral, vibrating, with shimmers and more distant voices. A deep
rumble and there is almost a feeling of purgatory as a scrambling layer of
voices seems to emerge. As it eases the drones that have been there a while
become more obvious and mellow whooshy, almost melodic, ambience takes over
to the fade.
As I said, quite an unusual release that seems to work well – its dense
atmosphere of sounds that ebbs and flows reflects both the source and the
method of creation, and a surprising consistency and atmosphere has been
created.

Ampersand

The release by [Des]intergracao is a live recording of a whole group:
Carlos Santos, Joao Castro Pinto, Miguel Carvalhais, Nuno Moita, Paulo
Raposo and Pedro Lourenco. If one studies the artwork, one can see various
persons behind laptops, so, who knows, maybe it's safe to assume that this
is a big laptop band (or is that bigband laptop?). It doesn't sound like a
bigband laptop, really. [Des]intergracao operate in a carefull, improvised
style. It's hard to imagine that there are six people working on this
music, because everything seems to fit together very well. There is space
for everyone in this work, which never goes out of control (maybe even
stays a bit at the controlled part for an improvisation) but displaying
great pace amongst these six people. Great work.

FdWaard, Vital Weekly

In a live improvisation from Lisbon's Center of Modern Art, a group of
Portuguese deconstructionists (Carlos Santos, Paulo Raposo, Miguel
Carvalhais, Nuno Moita, Pedro Lourenço, João Pinto and Carlos Zíngaro) go to
work by disintegrating the latter's recording, Cage of Sand; just over a
half-hour of enigmatic transmissions result... from silence, segment 1.
(15:08) creeps in on sparse occurrences of random sputters and thumps
of unknowable origins, growing more overt in its final minutes as its
buzzing/boiling depths begin to churn more loudly. A thinly-hovering
expanse thrums distantly through segment 2. (6:50) in an
inscrutable-though-interesting panorama of subtle noise. A final bout of
artful sonic mysteries, segment 3. unfurls another spacious, strangely
brooding scene; this time muted rumbles emerge against hazy feedback-like
mists and other dimly-defined textures. Quietly intriguing.

Calling to mind works by contemporaries Ultra Milkmaids and Crawl Unit,
Permute (a Portugese collective six piece) has made a disc of unstructured
immediacy. The source material for [des]integracao has been taken from
Carlos 'Zingaro's 'Cage of Sand' another recording on the SIRR.ecords
imprint. Inside we are engaged by what appears to be an illustrative flight
into the miniature world of small creatures and beings. I feel like I am in
a sci-fi rainforest and the only voices I can hear are those of other
insect-like dialects. Improvised at the Center of Modern Art in Lisbon,
these gentlemen take their electro-microacoustics quite seriously. Dealing
with the random elements of working in tandem has led to new perceptions of
sound space, new discoveries among collaborators. Permute does this with the
displacement of form, a beatless setting where clicks, drone, electronics
and percussion show a creative disregard for structure. Methods like this
often bring about a chaotic white noise-based barrage, but not so here -
there are passionate connections between the players that unify and
distinguish each of the three sections on [des]integracao. Don't let the
title fool you.

TJNorris

Words failed me when I first encountered Cage of Sand by Carlos Zingaro.
Nine pieces for violin and electronics, performed in real time with only a
touch of editing and mixing, and I became stoically silent in the wake of
their intensity and vigour. At times tense, at others playful, yet always
challenging and complex, Zingaro's improvisations are charged with
electricity, latent and explosive in turns, the unpredictable electronic
elements originating from inventive strains on the violin, all the while
involved in its own tricks and acrobatics. The recordings for the album
were completed in March of 2002. Two months later, a collective called
[des]integração assembled at the Centre of Modern Art, Calouste Gulbenkian
Foundation in Lisbon. They performed a set of improvisations using sound
sources exclusively extracted from Zingaro's Cage of Sand. There are six
core members of the group: Carlos Santos, João Castro Pinto, Miguel
Carvalhais, Nuno Moita, Paolo Raposo and Pedro Lourenço. They are also
joined by a seventh member, Carlos Zingaro himself, who is credited for
doing 'live mixing' for the event. The live set was then edited and remixed
by Paolo Raposo (who incidentally is the founder of sirr.ecords), and
released in the form we see here. In these three segments, just over 30
minutes long, the group has created something entirely new from their sound
source, which is barely traceable in these new fibres of electronic sound,
an integration (or disintegration, if you like) of elements that goes
beyond mere permutation and into realms of transformation,
retransformation. Clearly, the computer has taken over the role of the
dominant tool, which in Zingaro's original recordings is occupied by the
violin, no matter how much space in the foreground the electronics may seem
to occupy from piece to piece. Zingaro relies on words such as (re)reading,
(dis)assembling, (re)interpretation, (re)cycling in his notes for this new
project, and they are certainly fitting descriptors here. These new pieces
are open improvisations, yet each shows commendable restraint and control;
they are haunting pieces of disembodied sound, groundless, ephemeral,
digital. Considered on its own or as a postscript to the original
recordings, however you package it, this is still some marvellous work.
Listen closely.

richard di santo, Incursion.org

The sweepingly evolving portuguese experimental music scene has already
granted to us a lot of interesting projects, [des]Integração is the recent
one. As we used to say and see, it's a supergroup, i.e. consists of famous
musicians: Carlos Santos and Paulo Raposo are musicians of the band Vitriol
and founders of Sirr.ecords, Miguel Carvalhais is designer and done some
records for various portuguese labels, other musicians are Nuno Moita, Joao
Pinta, Pedro Lourenco and Carlos Zingaro. Quite elegant and accurate piece
of soundplay in three parts is there, with total time about half-hour. It's
much like a romantic fantasy takeoff from the digi-minimalism age, but in
fact the musical profile of the band is uncertain. Each conceptual unit as
it is, it may have only a general purpose which speaks for band approach
and is clearly declared in the band name. Disintegration means
disassembling every solid matter, crushing to pieces, to construct
something new from these loose particles. It isn't the interpretation of
music, it's re-interpretation of sound. In the case of current album, this
is the sound from Carlos Zingaro's recent recording, "Cage of sand".
Endlessly changed and permutated snapshots can be only recognized by those
who has listened to the original source. For the rest of audience, this is
just a calm and quiet mix of lowercase sounds without deployment. No such
obvious sound organization as harmony and rhythm are present, but the
slightly evolving timbres of abstract and disconnected snippets, coming
from nowhere and blurred away for a while, when a bleak and colourless
wallpaper turn to silence. A beautiful abstraction, an example of
soundesign as single object of art, elusive emotional nothingness, which
isn't accessible for any rational thoughts.

http://feedback.pisem.net/d_.htm#7, translated from russian

À semelhança do que fez, ao vivo, com as músicas de Marc Behrens e Madonna
(!!), o colectivo português (des)integração pegou no último registo a solo
de Carlos Zíngaro, «Cage of Sand», e utilizou-o como base das reconstruções
em computadores "laptop" por parte de Paulo Raposo, Carlos Santos, Pedro
Lourenço, João Pinto, Nuno Moita e Miguel Carvalhais, com o próprio Zíngaro
como 'tonemeister'. O evento teve lugar na Sala Polivalente do Acarte, no
Centro de Arte Moderna da Fundação Gulbenkian, em Lisboa, e é uma selecção
do que aí aconteceu que encontramos neste CD. O título «Permute» explica o
que está em causa: uma «permutação de métodos, ideias, lugares, sons e
imagens, (des)integrando e des)construindo, no sentido de que este projecto
se propõe desterritorializar códigos implantados e transformar géneros
idiomáticos através da dissolução do autor numa cirurgia colectiva», como
explica a editora. E como se podia prever, os resultados são bem distintos
dos encontrados no disco do violinista. Um complemento muito interessante a
«Cage of Sand», dando uma outra perspectiva deste disco, ainda mais
atomizada e particularista ao nível da manipulação dos materiais sonoros.

rui eduardo paes, JL