Flamingo is a Berlin-based, free-improvising trio featuring American contrabass clarinet player Chris Heenan and Danish double bass player Adam Pultz Melbye and percussionist Christian Windfeld. The trio aims to explore sound, texture and dynamics, «sometimes verging on the threshold of hearing and at other times engaging in dense layers and waves of sound».
Flamingo self-titled debut album (released as a vinyl plus download options) was recorded on February 2015 in Berlin by sound artist and engineer Roy Carroll. Carroll often joins the trio for the performances of the sound piece «Loud» (not included on this album), in which quiet sounds and textures are amplified with precise microphone placement and equalization, letting the loudspeakers become instruments in themselves.
This working trio is touring this year on both sides of the Atlantic, including performances with cross-disciplinary art projects. The trio is currently working on such project, Every Vessel, that researches the relationship between sound and sculpture, using custom built software to analyze and visualize music and movement through 3-D printed objects. This project will be premiered in Kunsthal Nord in Aalborg, Denmark in May 2017.
On its debut album Flamingo creates quiet and reserved drone soundscapes where the subtle sonic outputs of the contrabass clarinet, the double bass and the snare drum blend into one unity, that ebbs and flows with its own idiosyncratic logic. The total immersion of the trio in such mysterious, suggestive soundscapes, as on the opening «Life is nothing but trading smells», has a strange ritualistic-meditative effect. Flamingo collective interplay intensifies only on «The void beneath» where it revolves around fractured percussive patterns. But on «The void beneath» and «Attention filter» it focuses again on methodical sonic searches, employing various extended breathing, bowing and percussive techniques in order to create rich drone texture.
Flamingo offers highly unique, intriguing textures.
Eyal Hareuveni
Chris Heenan (cbc), Adam Pultz Melbye (b), Christian Windfeld (sndr, obj)
