AMN Reviews: KURUNDU (Zigo & Camila Dos Santos) – Yvykua Ipuva [Plus Timbre PT068]

Much experimental/electronic sound art can be austere and even severely cerebral; Kurundu’s five-movement suite Yvykua Ipuva, by contrast, revels in the polymorphous sensuality of sound.
Kurundu, named for South American ritual amulets, is a binational duo of Paraguayan cellist Camila Dos Santos and Argentinian electronics artist Zigo Rayopineal. Their collaboration has produced a set of richly atmospheric, layered musical constructions built in real time. Dos Santos and Rayopineal are particularly good at creating the illusion of spatial depth with sound, partly through a close attention to the stratification of texture and partly through the reverberant voices they tend to favor. The foundation is Dos Santos’ cello, suitably looped and processed. Her playing here is more about ambience than melody, although a melodic line does unfold slowly at the heart of the long second movement; her use of chords and drones, glissandi and extended techniques complements Rayopineal’s shimmering electronic settings. The latter dominate the fourth movement, which seems to allude to early electronic music’s sonic imaginings of outer space; the final movement puts the focus on Dos Santos’ cello—strummed, overpressured and bowed for harmonics and multiphonics, it sketches its self-portrait in a concave mirror.

https://avantmusicnews.com/2018/02/05/amn-reviews-kurundu-zigo-camila-dos-santos-yvykua-ipuva-plus-timbre-pt068/