«Error Connection Error» documents an experimental, free-improvising electro-acoustic trio, featuring Marseille-based, French sax player François Wong and Sardinian guitarist Fabrizio Bozzi Fenu together with American synth player and percussionist Gino Robair. Wong is a researcher and composer who experiments with the electrification of his alto and baritone saxes with different software or with guitar or bass amplifiers. Bozzi Fenu focuses on extending the sonic palette of the electric guitar, often with microtonal sounds, leaving enough space to fully appreciate the depth and texture of these sounds. Robair, who runs the Rastascan label, is a composer, improviser, and writer, known for his collaborations with Tom Waits, Anthony Braxton, Terry Riley, Lou Harrison, John Butcher, Derek Bailey, Peter Kowald, Otomo Yoshihide, and the ROVA Saxophone Quartet, among many others. He plays here on modular synth, the analog synth blippoo box (described by its inventor Rob Hordijk as operating according to the principles of chaos theory), and energized surfaces. The album was recorded in Marseille in August 2018.

This trio creates a kinetic and chaotic sonic compound that often makes it hard to say who is doing what. You can recognize the sound of Wong’s saxes when he is not connecting his instruments to amplification, but the noisy hammering or the rustle of ethereal noises can come from Robair’s energized surfaces, from the effects-laden guitar of Bozzi Fenu, or from the amplified, electric saxes, as it happens on the title-piece. Often, Wong, Bozzi Fenu, and Robair’s sonic approaches simply blend, blur and extend organically each other’s gestures as on «A Word With Hans». This inclusive sonic approach sketches delicate, kaleidoscopic puzzles on «Riddles of the Sleeve»,  «Coupler» and «Zero Beat and the Reaction Set», embraces a familiar mode of free-improv that is rooted in free jazz on «Unsafe as Milk» and also suggests a fragile and subtle drone on «Super Heterodynes».

Robair offers «Error Connection Error» limited-edition of 100 discs with another experimental trio of him The Open Secret with British sax player John Butcher and Viennese turntable wizard dieb13, «A Geography for Plays» (Ratascan, 2018), as both trios complement one another in their luscious blend of electronic and acoustic sounds. Maybe one day these trios will become a sextet.

Certainly, this is the real deal when it comes to imaginative and provocative free-improvisation that is determined to go against the grain of your expectations.

Eyal Hareuveni

François Wong (bs, ts), Gino Robair (modular synth, blippoo box, energized surfaces); Fabrizio Bozzi Fenu (prep. g) Recorded, mixed, and mastered in August 2018 at Boyer Studio, Marseille, France