The American label Relative Pitch likes to suggest free improvisers from all over the world, with a generous representation of women, that often are undetected by the radar of most free music aficionados. Trasluz (translucent in Catalan) is the debut album of Barcelona-based free improviser, noise maker (her words) and electric guitarist Amidea Clotet, known for her work with local hero, the master pianist and free improvise Agustí Fernández (check their duo album Spontaneous Combustions, released on Fernández label Sirulita, 2021).

Trasluz was recorded by Clotet at La Sexta Baja in Barcelona between September and October 2021 and offers her inquisitive approach to the electric guitar as a sound generator. Clotet explores the infinite sonic and textual possibilities of the guitar as an amplified instrument with an array of objects, devices and bows. Often, and with no prior knowledge, it is impossible to know that the source of the spontaneous, raw and abstract, noisy sounds is the electric guitar. Her treatment of the strings of the guitar may sound as if these rubbed, battered, scratched and bowed strings have developed a life and sonic identities of their own, far beyond any familiar attributes of this instrument.

Sometimes, Clotet’s electric guitar sounds like a twisted reed instrument, an exotic but out-of-tune Eastern zither, a bowed double bass, or a chaotic amalgam of resonant, metallic objects. But most of the time her original and bold approach as well as her urgent and restless research suggests fresh and imaginative sounds that tell weird stories with their very own cryptic sense of drama and suspension.

Eyal Hareuveni 

Amidea Clotet (el.g, objects)