Monday, June 3, 2019

DANIEL BARBIERO & CRISTIANO BOCCI – WOODEN MIRRORS (Vital Weekly Review)

In 2015 Daniel Barbiero and Cristiano Bocci released their first collaboration for Acustronica,
followed in 2017 by ‘Non-Places’. Now they present a new recording, this time released by Plus Timbre, a netlabel dedicated to experimental and improvised music. The release consists of two lengthy tracks: ‘Wooden Mirrors’ with Barbiero on double bass (left channel) and Bocci also on double bass (right channel). On ‘From a Concourse’ Barbiero play also double bass and Bocci live electronics. Because Barbiero lives in the US, whereas Bocci is settled in Italy, they communicated by tape for their first two releases. For their new project, however, Bocci came to Maryland for doing live recordings in August 2017. Bocci, by the way, is a multi-instrumentalist playing the guitar, 6-string electric bass, double bass, theremin and viola da gamba, as well as sound designer and composer. He participated on many albums as a sideman and has his own projects, like this one with Barbiero. Barbiero is a double bassist, sound artist and composer, based in Washington DC.
He worked for example with If Bwana and Andrea Centazzo, a.o. ‘Wooden Mirrors’ has them both in a fascinating duet. Very organically and fluently they wave their patterns, in an answer-response way, or by going both with the flow they create, all in a very pleasantly meandering and poetic dialogue. For ‘From a Concourse’ Bocci uses also live electronics for creating looped sounds and other manipulations. Gradually the improvisation becomes more and more ‘electronic’ but always with a recognizable bass-sound in the centre. Nice work.
http://www.vitalweekly.net/1186.html