Glissandro 70
Glissandro 70

THE REVIEW

Let's start from the end.
From those 13 minutes that begin with a swaying and insistent bass line around which tiny sound shards, percussion, skewed sounds, chimes appear, disappear, return, consolidating into a layering that grows ever more hypnotic. Thirteen minutes that wrap you in a rhythmic spiral, seasoned with echo-laden voices, dotted with rolled percussions, thin guitars. And then bewildered voids, populated by liquid sounds, repeated fragments, and minimal variations.
One might say a strange hybrid of electronic, smoke-filled dub, ethnic vocation. However, it reminded me of the oscillating state to which the guitar repetitions of the juju music of King Sunny Ade led you, in his albums straddling the '70s and '80s. Although the sound mix is of an entirely different nature, the effect produced (and wanted?) isn't so far off...
Africa, therefore, but in an electrified and modernist version, which crosses the "canonical" incompleteness of a postmodern approach in the structure of a track like "End West".

And the guitars of the Nigerian musician (or perhaps those of Orchestra Baobab) seem evoked, married with those of a Fripp on vacation also in the opening track of this curious, hard-to-label record: the 2'47'' of "Something" are another little riddle, placed right at the entrance, that listening to the rest of the record won't completely solve. Is it funk, for example, that I hear in the 6'27'' of "Analogue Shantytown"? Yes, certainly, a sparse and cooled idea of funk. Based on the still hypnotic effectiveness of minimal variations: a voice that whispers insistently, a falsetto chorus that loops on the slightly obsessive sound carpet. Talking Heads without the magically nervous or obliquely surreal gift of the word? Boh...
The slight circular treatment of the voices and the few sounds of which "Bolan Muppets" is made, which melts in the ethereal finale, does not provide other useful terms for the definition: it is, however, another useful element for the sound compound that has meanwhile definitively set its enveloping work around us.
"Portugal Rua Rua", which seems to want to reveal from the title some coordinates, at least geographic ones, (which we will discover not so obvious, more accepted as a suggestion than a compositional indication) in its 7'09'' is the only track to take on the guise of a song. But it doesn't give up a dilated and circular identity in the sounds of small guitars, as in the insistence of the voice at the beginning.

What I'm listening to, however, isn't a recent world music production: it's a recently made record by two musicians, Sandro Perri and Craig Dunsmuir, usually engaged in other projects, respectively Polmo Polpo (but how do they come up with certain names?) and Guitarkestra. Here, they seem to prefer an open space to attempt to set it up by marrying discreet electronics to the charm of a "primitive minimalism", intended as immersion in the reiterated circularity of sound.

And guess for which label Glissandro 70 records?
I know, the doubt is legitimate. But despite appearances, I can assure you that I don't receive any compensation from Constellation for the recent proposal of many of their products on the pages of DeBaser.
However, thinking about it, perhaps I might have earned at least a small discount...

A short album that, radiating its small hypnotic charm, might spin obstinately in your player just like the ring of sounds that rotates within it.
Between 3 and 4.