Maromas is the debut recording of the New York-based duo of Germany-born, soprano and tenor sax player Ingrid Laubrock and Argentina-born, multimedia artist, processing and electronics player Cecilia Lopez, who also did the mix for this album. Laubrock and Lopez are composers who have developed their own personal compositional tools and ideas, often based on extended techniques and unconventional notation. The album was recorded at Big Orange Sheep studio in Brooklyn in April 2022.

Maromas refers to the doing of tricksters, conjurers, or acrobatic stunts like walking on a tightrope and this apt title captures the essence of this challenging meeting. There is a constant play with form and structure as well as an exploration of sounds, as Laubrock attempts to suggest brief melodic threads and Lopez immediately transforms these threads into raw and noisy sonic events, or how Laubrock translates Lopez’ restless, alien eruptions into loose, melodies.

The ten improvised duets offer a dark and harsh, but often also playful and acrobatic dance in pirouettes, with a great sense of invention and imagination. You get the feeling that Lopez and Laubrock have melted into a two-headed sonic entity that sometimes alienates the sounds of the instruments to the point where they disappear.

Eyal Hareuveni

Cecilia Lopez (electronics, processing), Ingrid Laubrock (soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone)