Two well known figures in the epicenter of the always active experimental and electro-acoustic scene of the city that never sleeps, Lea Bertucci and Ben Vida pair in ‘Murmurations’ a lived understanding of sound, confluencing their idiosyncrasies in a communal space and time of hidden cartography. Without exactly leaving a comfort zone, which in truth never existed given the exploratory bravery inherent in their music, the effabulation of ‘Murmurations’ results from a natural process of convergence between the form and the matter that we recognize them separately, in dialogue. Starting from improvisation, to conjecture with thoroughness and wave, until they reach a dozen brief themes, full of detail and immersive power, hovering without ever settling between electro-acoustics, free improvisation, concrete music and sound poetry.
Following his solo career, punctuated by records as hypnotic as ‘Metal Aether’, ‘Resonant Field’, or ‘A Visible Length of Life’, Bertucci uses his arsenal of wind instruments – bass clarinet, saxophone, flute – and tape manipulation as a probe into the mysteries of acoustic phenomena and their resonance with the surrounding space, the seemingly veiled reflection of sound. Ethereal matter reconfigured by the experienced Ben Vida, artist with ubiquitous presence since the haunted folk days of Town & Country, past Bird Show and solo work under his own name via labels like PAN or Shelter Press, who welcomes it into his sampler and modular synthesizer to make it both the center of the action and peripheral presence. Laments, textures, timbres and murmurs, originating also from the processed voice of both – without hiding the influence of Joan La Barbara or Meredith Monk – that both assume a clandestine existence and are a focus of transparent attention, in a tense but undulating suspension. BS
