The Barcelona-based Duot – sax player Albert Cirera and drummer Ramon Prats, has an important mission: demolishing the partisan divide separating indoctrinated jazz musicians from self-taught avant-gardists. Obviously, Duot commits itself to work opposite the norm, dogma or orthodoxy, and seek the unpredictable, free and spontaneous demeanor. Duot is also guilty of eccentricities and celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2017 with a non-stop 10-hour concert.
«Fe» is already the fifth album of Duot and comes after intensive tours and a series of free-improvised collaborations with innovative musicians, among them hurdy-gurdy player Marc Egea, guitarist Andy Moor (from The Ex with whom Duot recorded «Food», Repetidor, 2017, who mastered «Fe»), violinist Carlos Zingaro and pianist and mentor Agustí Fernández. Duo still sticks here to their challenging aesthetics: building larger-than-life pieces, out of vertigo, as though they were walking a tightrope without a safety net. «Fe» was recorded at the same dome where Duot played its 10-hour concert, El Bosc de can Ginabreda in Banyoles in two sessions in June 2018.
The six «Cúpula» pieces of «Fe» radiate faithfully Duot raison d’etre: «unconscious search of a sound that we don’t know; a moment to remember; a state to reach». But the dome with its acoustic qualities, as well as the cover with a picture of Virgin Mary, suggest also an evocative, liberating sonic ritual. Duot begins this ritual with a contemplative but quite thorny drone, exploring the acoustic, timbral possibilities within the dome’s space and patiently gaining more power and volition, leading to the spiritual-ecstatic, Ayler-ian gospel-ish cries of the second piece. Duot experience with noisy sounds and ephemeral architectures on the third piece, employing an array of extended techniques. The fourth piece examines the reverberating qualities of the dome as Duot interplay spirals fast upwards. The fifth one offers a playful dialog comprised that enjoys the rich vocabularies of Cirera and Prats. Fe is concluded with a quiet and compassionate, hymn-like ceremonial piece.
Eyal Hareuveni
Albert Cirera (ts, ss), Ramon Prats (dr)