on insula dulcamara
paulo raposo / carlos santos
_sirr013

"These six tracks are as elusive and elegant as their Portuguese titles (remind me to move to Portugal someday), slowmoving and laminal though never spacey and ambient, and packed with juicy detail enough to richly reward repeated listening. The source material used, much of it culled from field recordings made in the Portuguese countryside, is diverse and evocative in itself, though astutely manipulated with Max/MSP software and high-frequency electronic squiggles emanating from a no-input mixer. Raposo and Santos are not content to let that awesomely powerful software package dictate proceedings. Insula dulcamara is certainly one of the most musical electronica outings of recent times, and is strongly recommended".
—JB www.paristransatlantic.com

these two improvisers bring turgid nanospaces of feral fauna to life right before your very ears. Unlike their compatriots, who restrict themselves to the routinely staid confines of staunch academic avant-gardism or the right angles of trad-jazz philistines, Raposo and Santos are illustrators bent on establishing a defined mood, pace, and palpable atmosphere sometimes lacking in the uncommunicative mucking about of conservatists. Here, it’s permissible to bask in the echo of road noise, the timber of isotopes emitting radioactive scuzz, the choruses of EKG monitors left on random repeat, without the categorical weight that insists you search for signifiers. Superb.
e|i magazine

The album discloses very little about the what, where and how underpinning Paulo Raposo’s collaboration with Carlos Santos. One you know it all derives from phonographies, elements rush to place themselves under the sonic microscope. The echoing emptiness of concrete structures, the mad rush of a highway, the sounds of wind and water can all be traced back to the hundreds of different sounds heard on Insula Dulcamara. Then again, electronic treatments allow us to transform most everything into most everything else, so maybe Raposo and Santos are playing with our ears, creating comfort zones where there should be none and turning highly familiar places into alien landscapes. Insula Dulcamara is an album of soft sound art. It is gentle on the ear and relatively easy to get into, yet it requires the listener full attention to stay in focus. Become distracted and it fades into the background and turns into an undifferentiated soundscape. Keep your listening eye on the music, scrutinize it and it reveals innumerable hues and shades, tells opaque stories and leaves you with the impression of having lived an enriching peaceful moment. The music is never suggestive enough to be cinematic, which turns out to be the album’s biggest strength.
Francois Couture, All music guide

Dall'estremità satellitare del Portogallo, con sede a Lisbona, l'intraprendente etichetta Sirr-ecords convalida il primo promettente lavoro elettroacustico su cd di Paulo Raposo e Carlos Santos, prodighi e diligenti progettisti di estatiche barricate di 'musica dall'ambiente' (e non 'per l'ambiente'). In "Insula Dulcamara" riescono così a centellinare e a dispensare terapeutiche profusioni di note ondulate nell'iniziale "Polen", mentre in "Reflux" ci impartiscono istantanee ascensionali in un habitat dissolvente e coalizzato. La raffinatezza lampeggiante della conclusiva
"Venice" riesce a coadiuvare l'ospitalità di sonorizzazioni penetranti ed interrate. Questo superbo lavoro omette la speculazione plastica di una certa scuola elettroacustica del passato, e potenzia l'innovazione sostanziale nel cratere della musica sperimentale europea di questo primissimo frammento di secolo. Raposo e Santos sono da apprezzare per il loro proficuo impegno e la loro gratificante serietà; a loro indirizziamo i nostri sentiti ringraziamenti.
Maurizio Bianchi,.idbox

Together they explore the depths of micro cosmos in sound in a world filled with cracks, clicks, cuts, processed feedback and much more. I have no idea what their input is, but my best guess is that they have a whole bunch of field recordings at hand. Hard to trace any recognizable sound in there, but the abstractions work really well. It's not that these two composers have done an incredible new work per se with a brilliant new look on the future of electronic music, but overall it's a good and solid work of serious microsoundings.
Franz de Waard, Vital Weekly