Alessandro Bosetti: Her Name

The saxophonist, who has gained deserved attention on two Potlatch releases Places dans l'air (2003) and Phosphor (2001), moves away from his horn and into his computer. He sampled different conversations in his world travels and these "field recordings were transcribed and orchestrated for performance. Much like pianist Jason Moran's answering machine based improvisations, Bosetti takes the tone and pace of spoken and sung words (sometimes nonsense) and builds a musical short story.

The Berlin-based, Milan-born, artist prepares each piece and presents it with accompanying ensembles and instrumentation. Many might call this experimental music, but these pieces (or stories) are quite pleasant. The title track has Bosetti replaying a spoken recording, while speaking the words in tandem in English. Elsewhere he repeats the words, although he is unsure of the language and meaning. The direction, as on the wordless "Her Face, is the retelling and re-contextualizing.

When he does pick up a saxophone on "Ivory Coast, he is accompanying a narrator, electric guitar, percussion, and some eerie electric manipulations. The "conversation, foreign-accented English, is quite silly, but musical too.

The experiment comes to full realization with "Idiot. Bosetti transcribes the nonsense of a distorted short-wave radio broadcast and repeats it, as faithfully as he can, over the sample. The voice is orchestrated by both electric piano and soprano saxophone. The scratchy broadcast then extends into a group dynamic with live bass and backing singers. If this weren't experimental music, I'd say it was a brilliant piece of pop music.

Her Face is a work of genius.