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Bertrand Denzler & Jason Kahn: Translations
by John Eyles
It is a great pleasure to welcome this Potlatch album which was released at the tail end of 2022. From 1998 until 2017 the independent French label released a steady stream of albums, averaging between two and three a year. Then, nothing was released in 2018, one album in 2019, nothing in 2020, two in 2021 and, now, one in 2022. Yes, four releases in five years. Given the dates, the slump was clearly not covid-related... Nonetheless, the good news ...
read morePascal Battus / Michel Doneda: Miracle
by John Eyles
Following hard on the heels of Sillons -Reflets by Patricia Bosshard, Onceim and CoÔ, the first album from the Potlatch label since its lone release in 2019, it is a pleasure to welcome the label's second release of 2021, Miracle by the duo of Pascal Battus and Michel Doneda. Each of them has a long history with Potlatch; Doneda first recorded for the label in 1998 on the solo soprano saxophone album Anatomie Des Clefs, and before this one his ...
read morePatricia Bosshard / Onceim - CoÔ: Sillons - Reflets
by John Eyles
Aside from the music, the best thing about this album is that its release signals the Potlatch label is alive and well. (Having released four CDs in 2016 and three in 2017, Potlatch released none in 2018, one in 2019, none in 2020.) In addition to this album, 2021 sees the release of a second, a duo album by Pascal Battus and Michel Doneda. Good news. The music itself comprises two 2018 compositions--"Sillons" and “Reflets"--by violinist ...
read moreBertrand Denzler / CoÔ: Arc
by John Eyles
This release is particularly welcome as Potlatch Records has not released an album since Infra by Pascale Criton, in September 2017. As the label issued its first album--No Waiting, by Derek Bailey & Joëlle Léandre--in 1998, this is an opportunity to mark the ground-breaking label's twentieth anniversary, and send congratulations to proprietor Jacques Oger. It is fitting that an album featuring Bertrand Denzler marks the occasion, as he has been a Potlatch regular, in various guises. Recently, saxophonist Denzler has ...
read morePascale Criton: Infra
by John Eyles
Although she has been composing for over thirty-five years, Pascale Criton is surprisingly underrepresented on disc. In fact, Infra is only her second album release, following the rarely-seen Territoires Imperceptibles (Assai, 2003), a fact which makes this release particularly welcome. In her compositions, Criton has often used tunings with intervals so small that they have tended towards a continuum. Having used quarter tones and twelfth tones in the past, on Infra her compositions employ sixteenth tone intervals that she has ...
read moreCristián Alvear, Seijiro Murayama: Karoujite
by John Eyles
Before coming together in this duo, the Chilean acoustic guitarist Cristián Alvear and the Japanese percussionist Seijiro Murayama were both well-established Potlatch artists. Alvear has built a reputation as a performer of compositions by Wandelweiser members such as Jürg Frey and Antoine Beuger, as exemplified by his fine album of Michael Pisaro pieces Melody, Silence (Potlatch, 2015). Seijiro is represented on the label by a pair of 2011 duo albums alongside French improvising saxophonists, Window Dressing with Jean-Luc Guionnet and ...
read moreMichael Pisaro: Resting in a Fold of the Fog
by John Eyles
The popularity of Michael Pisaro is ongoing; the composer and guitarist now averages an impressive four releases a year, not all on Editions Wandelweiser, as was once the case, but across a variety of labels including his own Gravity Wave, and Erstwhile. Potlatch is a recent addition to the fold; this release is the second on the label to feature music composed by Michel Pisaro, following 2015's Melody, Silence (For Solo Guitar) by Chilean guitarist Cristián Alvear. ...
read moreLucio Capece / Kevin Drumm / Radu Malfatti: The Volume Surrounding the Task
by John Eyles
The Volume Surrounding the Task was recorded live at Q-O2 in Brussels in January 2011 during a tour of France, Belgium and Switzerland by the international trio of Argentine-born Berlin resident Lucio Capece on bass clarinet and preparations, Chicago-based Kevin Drumm on electronics, and Austrian trombonist Radu Malfatti. The music consists of the unbroken title track which lasts over forty minutes and may well have been an entire set. The three players work well together as a trio, ...
read moreLucio Capece/Kevin Drumm/Radu Malfatti : The Volume Surrounding The Task
by Mark Corroto
Let this recording, The Volume Surrounding The Task, be your guide to Buddhist meditation. While the current trend in corporate America (and Europe for that matter) is to foist meditation practices upon employees to gain a competitive advantage, let's head in another direction. CEOs want to sharpen workers' concentration, but minimalist improvisation like this conjured by the trio of Lucio Capece, Kevin Drumm, and Radu Malfatti generates a dreamlike state of distraction. The chimerical illusion of centralization is shattered when ...
read morePascal Battus / Dafne Vicente-Sandoval: Pascal Battus / Dafne Vicente-Sandoval
by John Eyles
This double CD features the duo of Pascal Battus on rotating surfaces, styrofoam, paper, plastic objects and microphones plus Dafne Vicente-Sandoval on bassoon, microphones and mixing board. Although the two have not recorded together previously, they have each recorded before for Potlatch, in duos that were similar enough to be seen as preparation for this meeting, Battus with saxophonist Christine Sehnaoui Abdelnour on Ichnites (2010) and Vicente-Sandoval with Klaus Filip playing sine waves on Remoto (2013). Each of those albums ...
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