A musician with a long and solid creative relationship with artists from this country, Giovanni Di Domenico has returned to this stage from time to time, in keeping with this emotional connection, in various configurations. Always relevant, and with Norberto Lobo particularly present in these same endeavors: via Eggstream, The Dream & Drone Orchestra, Orchestra Listen/Silent, or—linking him to this evening—Denki Udon. A trio where Lobo’s guitar and Domenico’s piano met Tatsuhisa Yamamoto’s drums, with the result of this triangulation finding a lasting home on ‘In ZDB’ via three:four in 2015. Having unfolded over more than a decade since then, this rapport between the Italian pianist and multi-instrumentalist and the Japanese drummer—which dates back to 2010— in a memorable trio with Arve Henriksen of Supersilent, has been nurtured on various fronts, in collaboration with names like Jim O’Rourke or Eiko Ishibashi—artists for whom Yamamoto recorded drums on albums such as ‘Simple Songs’ or ‘The Dreams My Bones Dream,’ respectively. In other words, rich résumés that intersect in a network as dense as it is meritorious, and which, as a duo, have already offered us the hypnotic ‘Mokusatsu’ on Matière Mémoire. An album of suspended gravity, restrained in its delivery yet pulsing with life in a more or less minimalist music that ranges from solemn piano chords in a nocturnal narrative with slow-motion drums, to field recordings, moments rising to Fender Rhodes and swinging cymbals, and passages that are more textural and full of intrigue, without laying bare emotions but perfectly felt in a liminal space of shadow and coziness.
BS

More than just a guitarist in the most formal and clinical sense of the word, Manuel Mota is a passionate devotee of the instrument, whose meticulous exploration of its characteristics is always imbued with lyricism. With the most romantic and dusty tradition of the blues haunting his work in an expressive yet seemingly intangible way, Mota is one of the leading figures of improvisation on the European scene, and one of the most vital guitarists of the last two decades anywhere.
Elusive to any vague categorization or lazy ruminations on his own language, Mota continually challenges himself at his own gravitational center, always finding spaces to explore in a music that is deeply his own.
Praised by figures such as Derek Bailey, Nöel Akchoté, and David Grubbs.
Economy of means, a primarily underground circuit, and limited editions. Recent collaborations with Margarida Garcia, Graindelavoix, and the Osso Exótico collective.
Always unpredictable and always essential.
BS