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"multitude" (2010), CD sixto / cave12 more reviews bellow...       Multitude, with bassist Barry Guy, is inevitably influenced by Guy’s own spectacular virtuosity, but it’s also fascinating listening to hear Guy working so intently with improvisers whose fundamental approaches are generally less linear than his own. There is a very close rhythmic connection between Guy and Bondi, evident in the percussive mix of rapid pizzicato bass and drums on “le poids des humeurs.” D’incise’s sounds arise amongst the other two and it is frequently difficult here to demarcate the three. When Guy plays arco, as on “corrosion du possible,” this blurring of identity is even more pronounced, the bassist creating a forest of harmonics and scrapes, sputtering rhythmic figures and sudden movements between registers that seem to spring from and include all the sounds around him (including here the added clarinet of Benoît Moreau). Diatribes, for their part, build up broken fields of percussion and electronic sound, sounding as if their instruments are literally intertwined in the strings of Guy’s bass. Together the three create a world of micro-rhythms and intervals, new patterns interspersing themselves in gaps in time and register. Stuart Broomer/pointofdeparture.org UK improvising double bass player of no small stature Barry Guy lends his considerable skills to the Diatribes team, a Swiss duo comprising drummer Cyril Bondi and D’Incise with his laptop and objects. On Multitude (CAVE12 ORCHESTRA C12 O 01), joined on one track by the clarinet of Benoit Moreau, the group produce some quite startling effects as they mine their way into each episode with an insistent, nagging approach. Drummer Bondi is on particularly good harrowing form on these January 2009 sessions, while bassist Guy’s skill is in quietly concealing his enormous talent behind phrases of understated economy and grace. But listen closely to what he’s doing and you’ll find he packs more musical content and energy into ten seconds of bass sawing than you or I could carry inside a lunchbox. There’s also a good deal of non-musical junkyard charm emerging from the battered metallic objects of D’Incise as they make their clonky way into the day’s events. I seem to recall Diatribes like to use every opportunity to expound their Marxist rhetoric, and indeed the title of the opening cut ‘Le Grand Jeu Financier’ can be read as a sharp critical statement in the current sick world of recession, bank crashes, and toxic debts. Ed Pinsent/The Sound Projector The Geneva-based group Diatribes started out as a trio in 2004 but with the exit of their saxophonist in 2007, they pared down to the duo of percussionist Cyril Bondi (d, perc) and laptopist(?) D’Incise. They’ve put out a number of web-based releases with a large number of collaborators among them guitarist Keith Rowe, pianist Jacques Demmiere and saxophonist Mick Beck. For Multitude, they’ve added the formidable bass of Barry Guy. This trio can build up quite a racket with all manner of sonic mayhem. Much of this comes from the duo but in the dense thicket of sound one can hear Guy adding his own special brand of sonic mayhem. But it’s the quieter pieces in the second half of the program that really catch the ear. “Pour Les Hommes Du Port” finds Bondi bowing metallic objects, Guy eliciting quiet subsonic growls from his bass and D’Incise adding subtle electronic treatments. It’s a wonderful sustained interlude in amongst the forest of sound that this trio generates. And it’s Guy’s willingness to lend his distinctive style of playing to that of these younger players that makes this music a success. Cadence Magazine Here, the evolving Swiss ensemble diatribes is a two-piece — percussionist Cyril Bondi and laptop/objects manipulator D’incise — collaborating with English composer Barry Guy on double bass. Working as an improvisational unit while recording early last year, the three engage in a sort of open-air, post-jazz deconstruction that’s often quite deranged, if sometimes quietly so. ‘Le Grand Jeu Financier’ starts off like a scramble of found sounds before introducing broken melodies, double bass whine, and vibrating, erratic percussion. ‘Le Poids des Humeurs’ is just as cacophonous but more subdued, with cool percussive confusion, while a clarinettist guests on ‘Corrosion du Possible’, marked by the wobbles and moans of Guy’s instrument. After that, some prettiness peeks through the vaporous ‘Pour Les Hommes du Port’, the noisier ‘Ne Plus Avoir Peur des Monstres’ is all friction and turbulence, ‘Un Peu Plus Rouge’ makes for an itchy nine minutes, and the closing ‘Exil’ settles into its own version of a groove. Even in the vast field of improvised music today, few combinations of sound are as simultaneously anarchic and subtle as what’s heard on this bewildering album. Doug Wallen/Cyclic Defrost Diatribes, despite their name, are not the type to make shouty music, music of polemical over-statement. Nonetheless, what they create is far from laidback or quietist; it’s joltingly, bracingly mobile, full of interlocking and interweaving textures and actions that avoid the more linear unfolding of much ‘European Free Improvisation’, whereby instruments tend to remain as discrete units, each pursuing their own path in concord (and sometimes discord) with the other members of the ensemble. Diatribes, by contrast, desire to run rings round each-other, in a scintillating, quick-silver, chattering, sometimes clattering, overlapping dialogue that blurs the distinction between who’s speaking and when, thereby creating a whole whose parts can never quite be disentangled from each other. They work on the interplay between the percussive and the electronic: Cyril Bondi is nominally a ‘drummer’, D’Incise nominally plays ‘laptop electronics,’ but both employ numerous percussive ‘objects’ which they use in such a way that it can be very hard to tell who exactly is doing what. What results is a kind of musical border region, where percussion stretches out to taut, drone-like sounds, ‘wild ascending lisps’ and slow, trembling groans, created from the friction of bow on metal, while electronics merge with ‘objects’ in rustling, scratching, tumbling figures, complementing and contrasting with the recognisable drum playing – yes, the recognisable drum playing that does appear through all the thicket of ‘small sounds’, though in little eddies, scurries, flurries, rather than in big, rhythmic statements. Barry Guy is perhaps the ideal partner for this duo, never (grand)standing out as the ‘special’ invited guest, the ‘world famous’, ‘veteran’ improviser who’s deigned to play with the kids in order to show them how it’s done; rather, he leaps right on into their world, for minutes at a time turning his double-bass into something seemingly other than itself, playing at the extreme high register of his instrument to ghostly effect, turning the strings into tuned percussion, thwacking and strumming them, moving from strange, jerked-out blurts to sharp, darting, rippling waves, sliding arco under everything with an almost imperceptible, nearmelodic rumble, before dissolving into harmonics that merge with the creakingdoor sounds emerging round him. Listen to track four, ‘pour les homes du port’, where Guy is playing sequences of held notes, figures that rise slowly up the clef only to descend back down like a sigh of resignation – figures that possess the most subtle, melancholic flavour, but are played so quietly they can barely be heard over blacksmith’s forge clangs and scrapes. And then from that he’s immediately into the almost unbearable tension of grimly-dragged low arco scrape (‘ne plus avoir peur des monstres’); and from that to uncertain plucking, resonances almost reminiscent of kora music, raindrop-delicacy, graduallyemerging rhythmic rumble, mesmerically attractive but never safe, always liable to disappear somewhere, to morph into something, else – even into a straightforward, tapping rhythm, and something approaching a simple melody! (‘un peu plus rouge’). And Guy is not the only guest; we mustn’t forget Benoît Moreau’s clarinet on the third track, ‘corrosion du possible’: howling, open, not smooth or mellifluous as in the classical repertoire but almost choking its way into the frantic web of trio sound, meshing with Guy’s high bass, circular-breathing, birdtweeting, squawking through piercing tinnitus of barely-audible laptop, cymbal whorl. Despite the frenetic quality of such sections, one might feel that the music tends to understatement as a whole – an incorrect assessment, but one that's possible because of the way the musicians creep up to climaxes (if one can call them that), refusing to signpost them as orgasmic, rising shouts; instead the knuckles whiten as one grips the arm of one’s seat more and more, clenches one’s jaw, focuses more and more deeply on what is happening – as volume increases, as the group lock into a particular rhythmic or harmonic area with an intensity that’s almost harrowing. Diatribes have found a very special way of interacting creatively, a spontaneously-generated form that does seem to possess something genuinely new and fresh – though this has not come about through a deliberate pursuit of novelty for its own sake (gimmickry). They have somehow managed to create a musical space where the usual harmonic or melodic worries and constraints frequently just do not seem to apply, and where the music itself has a vitality that mitigates against any loss that might result; and for this they really should be listened to. Or, to put it more simply: ‘Multitude’ is a flat-out brilliant disc which deserves – no, demands! – that you seek it out and hear what it has to say. Highly recommended. David Grundy/eartrip6 Multitude” porte très bien son nom, alternant calme acoustique et vrais assauts d’affirmation bruitiste. DIATRIBES & BARRY GUY ont su mettre en forme un disque court et fort, dont ils n’ont pas nécessairement voulu gommer toutes les aspérités comme en témoigne la version écorchée du “grand jeu financier” et très vivante du destructuré “Le poids des humeurs” (sorte d’Autechre acoustique), en roue libre et toute contrebasse tranchante dehors. Certes,cela pourra apparaître, à première lecture de cette introduction, comme une nouvelle tentative de domestication du magistral et virtuose contrebassiste anglais Barry Guy. Jeu de tensions, frottements… un son cradingue, des ronronnements électroniques, une batterie extrêmement brute, des larsens et froissements métalliques. Equipé de vis, clous, morceaux de carton ou d’étoffe, ce disque laisse déborder les aspérités entre les cordes, les percussions et l’électronique. Par la répétition, les déferlantes, les percussions et les guitares préparées, des sources frénétiques qui se superposent. Des couches sonores et résonnantes, des pièces polyrythmiques éblouissantes dans lesquelles se concassent Radian et Suboko, Anthony Pateras et Xenakis. Le résultat est convainquant, réussissant de capter l’énergie des improvisions lancées comme une idée le temps d’une rencontre. On referme cet album, complément épuisé mais heureux de l’exercice à la vitalité fougueuse. Laurent Guérel/Essmaa With advanced rock-influenced and so-called noise musicians increasingly adding free improvisation to their programs, a new hybrid is being showcased. At the same time the amount of sonic clamor added means that any resulting interpretation has to negotiate a fine line between incoherence and inventiveness. Although the volume of these sessions is somewhat stentorian, and their coherence sometimes spotty, the cleverness of the participants involved helps avoid major pitfalls. [...]More unusual is Multitude, which features a collaboration between veteran British bassist Barry Guy and two young Swiss noise makers, known as Diatribes. Drummer Cyril Bondi is a member of different Jazz and so-called Post-Jazz combos, having played with bassist Christian Weber and pianist Jacques Demierre – another frequent Guy collaborator – among others. Member of Geneva’s Audioactivity Collective, laptop and objects manipulator d’incise (sic) has used his textural dislocation in situations featuring sonic explorers such as guitarist Keith Rowe or electronic instrument maker Norbert Moslang. Guy, of course, has, over a three-decade career, partnered other major Free Music players such as saxophonist Evan Parker, Almost from Multitude’s beginning the overriding textures are abrasive, multiphonic and staccato. Bondi appears to be distractedly hitting anything he can – hard – spiraling pulses and harsh ricochets characterizing d’incise’s content; while Guy’s sprawling sul ponticello lines or steel guitar-like reverb help muddy the fray. Ironically, when altissimo reed bites from Benoît Moreau’s clarinet are added to the mix on “Corrosion du Possible”, the resulting textures sound neither more complete, complex, nor corrosive than those created by the other three on their own. Guy, on the other hand, is more assertive on a track such as “Un Peu Plus Rouge”, where his resonating string picks and tough strums dominate. During his solo he grippingly works his way upwards to the bass’s scroll and downwards to its spike. However, with Bondi’s weighty beats resemble the thumps produced by clog-dancers, and the sequenced electronic impulses excessively droning, the bassist’s string strategy must also move with lute-like precision. Just as notably, his reverberating spiccato and sul tasto strokes also stand out among the electronics’ crackles, buzzes and grinds on the conclusive “Exil”. Suspicion remains though, that some of the contrasting string pulls may be the result of computer sampling playback. [...]While no one should look to these CDs for melodic subtly, they do prove that clever riffs and textures can still arise from concentrated noise creations such as these. Ken Waxman/jazzword  Kasper t. Toepliz/Revue & Corrigée I was previously not familiar with Diatribes, though the list of collaborators they have worked with at their website makes impressive reading. I must say that its maybe as long as a decade since I last heard Barry Guy’s music, either live or on disc, so in some ways this music comes to me entirely fresh. It is an interesting affair anyway. The easy, lazy option here would be for me to dismiss the music on this CD as busy, scratchy old school improv and either pass over this CD without review or give it short shrift. Trying not to be lazy or take the easy option then I have listened to this CD four times tonight, with one of those listens completely focussed, doing nothing else at the same time. While this is relatively frenetic, energetic improvisation that doesn’t leave a lot of room to breathe, there is a really nice balance of textures going on here that makes listening vertically down into the music, as opposed to listening horizontally along to it is a rewarding experience. Multitude isn’t really easy listening. Although the sounds come thick and fast there is actually quite a limited spectrum of sounds to be heard here, so what matters is how these few simple elements combine, perhaps even more so than where they actually go. The basic Diatribes duo combine electonics, through the enigmatically named D’incise’s laptop and objects and Bondi’s entirely acoustic percussion. They remind me a little of Bark! the Furt offshoot group that matches up thick and fast synthesised sounds with stormy flurries of drums, but there is nothing here quite that frantic, the tendency for each track seeming to be to find a particular level, a certain atmosphere and then stay there, with little dynamic change or alteration in pace or density through to the end. Barry Guy adds a further musicality to this, a wonderful touch, a remarkable ability to listen into the stream of sound emanating from the Swiss musicians and somehow play into a through their contributions rather than sit on top of them. Listening carefully to this music was actually less of a challenge than I thought it might have been, and instead rather an enjoyable experience. Dissecting the music with my ears, separating the instruments out, listening to how the shards of digital samples mix and blend with the scrape of a bowed cymbal or how the groan or thud of the bass picks its way between the chaotic shapes of the other musicians. Never in solo mode, eschewing any sense of “the maestro” in the music, Guy gets it just right, nothing flash, always working for the greater good of a collective music. He pitches his bass to find time with the younger musicians rather than the other way around. he plucks, strums, bows, scrapes and is physically all over his instrument in these recordings. Despite the feeling of tension that this music brings, the pieces do flow nicely, sometimes sounding like several overwound alarm clocks at once, but always allowing the listener down into the music should they choose to do anything more than allow the music to flow past. Listening to a typical track tends to be about separating the different contributions in my head and then putting them mentally back together as they play, enjoying the individual intricacies of the different layers, but then considering the cumulative impact of it all. I won’t pretend that I wouldn’t prefer the music here to be slower, and with a lot more space added so as to allow sounds to really be themselves rather than one tiny part of a dense forest, but as it is the music has its charms. It isn’t completely impenetrable, not by any means, and individual sounds can all be heard, but the pace they shoot past at makes it hard to draw mental lines around them. I sense the playing here, particularly by Guy is exceptionally strong, the result of very careful, responsive listening. its just all a bit too fast and furious for my personal taste. Still a pretty good improv outing, and one that will certainly delight listeners waiting at the busier end of the scale. Richard Pinnell/thewatchfulear.com Orgie d’objets: C’est finalement arrivé. Le camp d’été des ballounes et le camp d’été des outils de construction se sont arrangés pour qu’en soirée, après que les moniteurs de camp soient bien endormis, ils se rencontrent au milieu du lac, sur l’ile du Grand castor. Demandez-moi pas comment, mais les outils de construction ont pu mettre la main sur quelques bouteilles d’alcool et, ce qui était supposé n’être qu’une soirée innocente d’échange de sous-vêtements, s’est transformée en quelque chose d’indescriptible et de trop vulgaire pour les pages du Tout va bien. Au moins, quelqu’un a eu la conscience d’esprit d’enregistrer le tout sur son iphone pour que les générations à suivre puissent comprendre jusqu’où l’on est prêt à pousser les limites de la morale quand la pression des paires carbure à l’alcool et que la lune n’est qu’un minuscule croissant, peignant d’un jaune sale nos corps nus. PJL/douzepouces/CISM FM Diatribes is a duo from Geneva and consists of d'Incise on laptop/objects and Cyril Bondi on drums. D'Incise is very active with improvised music, free-jazz and electro-acoustic music. He is also running the netlabel Insubordinations. Diatribes started in 2004 and collaborated with a huge amount of guest musicians. The last combination is with the double bass player Barry Guy. Barry Guy is one of the world's leading bass soloists and improvisers, played in a lot of ensembles and is also as a composer of new music. Multitude starts as a highspeed train. The first three compositions are full of maniac compositions. The drums and bass freely play restless around and the electronic sounds fits well to these acoustic improvisations. The race ended during the fourth composition and the slow played bass combines the moving drums and laptop regurgitations. "Ne plus avoir peur des montres" goes wild again with high tones in combination with the very low and slow tones of the bass and ended in a complex improvisation. The last two tracks explore the different moods and speeds. After a free dynamic intercourse the album ends with a peacefull alternation of fleeding tones. These moments of rest are very welcome. This album is well-played, dynamic, complex and a feast for the lover of improvised music. Highly recommended. JKH/vital weekly 728  Christian Steulet/Le Courrier Barry Guy ist ein Wanderer zwischen den Welten. Klassisch ausgebildet, hat er sich mit dem London Jazz Composers Orchestra, dem Barry Guy New Orchestra und in seinen gemeinsamen Projekten u.a. mit Evan Parker zunächst vor allem in der Welt des Jazz einen Namen als Kontrabassist der Extraklasse gemacht. Immer öfter (oder vielleicht schon immer?) sind seine Werke aber auch im Rahmen etwa des Berliner Ultraschall-Festivals und damit inmitten der Herzkammern der Neuen Musik zu hören. Der Spagat zwischen Jazz und Neuer Musik gelingt ihm dabei wie kaum einem anderen ohne hörbare Reibungs- oder Spannungsverluste. Für die vorliegende Einspielung tat sich Guy mit dem jungen schweizerischen Avantgarde-Duo diatribes zusammen, bestehend aus dem Laptop- und Noise-Artist D’incise und dem Schlagzeuger Cyril Bondi. Gemeinsam legen sie mit “Multitude” nun ein Album vor, das unter so etwas wie dem Leitmotiv “Verfall” zu stehen scheint und das bereits zum Einstieg mit seiner Vielzahl an Kratz-, Quietsch- und Raschelgeräuschen sofort Assoziationen zu Helmut Lachenmanns musique concrète instrumentale weckt. Gleichzeitig aber ruht diese Musik auf einem oft ganz luftig leichten, ganz ungezwungenen rhythmischen Fundament, und führt so scheinbar unvereinbare musikalische Konzepte zu einer wunderbaren Neue-Musik-Avantgarde-Jazz-Synthese zusammen. Im weiteren Verlauf verlagern sich die Schwerpunkte innerhalb dieses Ansatzes mal mehr in Richtung Free Jazz, auch mit leicht folkloristischen Anklängen, mal in Richtung industriell-lärmigem Noise auf Field-Recording-Basis, mal mehr in Richtung Neue Musik. Dass das Ergebnis aber immer zwingend und überzeugend klingt, ist etwas, dass man außer von Barry Guy und seinen Projekten und Kooperationen wohl nur sehr selten in dieser Vollendung zu hören bekommt. “Multitude” ist Geräuschmusik par excellence! Großartig! Übrigens: Ein Blick auf die Website von diatribes lohnt sich. Viele vorausgegangene Veröffentlichungen des Duos sind auf diversen Netlabels erschienen (unter anderem auf dem eigenen von D’incise, Insubordinations) und können dort kostenlos heruntergeladen werden. Strunz! / aufabwegen magazin Se bem que uma boa parte daquilo a que se chama "música improvisada" tenha o carácter nervoso e hiperactivo que encontramos em "Multitude", não se pode dizer que a junção do contrabaixista veterano Barry Guy ao mais jovem duo de D'Incise (computador, objectos amplificados) e Cyril Bondi (bateria, percussão) percorra caminhos já muito ouvidos – felizmente, este é um território propício aos encontros imprevistos. Os Diatribes afastam-se neste registo ao vivo das conotações free jazz de outras colaborações suas e Guy troca a lógica de escalas pela de texturas, à semelhança do que vem fazendo com o Electro-Acoustic Ensemble de Evan Parker. Neste contexto, com mais espaço de intervenção, o que resulta numa delícia para quantos, como nós, o admiram. O clarinetista Benoît Moreau participa numa das faixas, com o mesmo sentido colectivista que os restantes intervenientes – ou seja, enquanto parte de um todo. Rui Eduardo Paes Cave 12 und das Diatribes-Duo D‘Incise (laptop, objects) & Cyril Bondi (drums, percussions) gehören nach Geneva, ihre Begegnung mit dem Kontrabass von Barry Guy ins Forschungsgebiet der elektro-akustischen Improvisation. Während die Kollegen im CERN Isotopen, Higgs-Teilchen und Bottom-Quark nachspüren, konzentrieren sich diese Drei auf die klanglichen Aspekte von Teilchenbeschleunigungen und Partikelkollisionen. Bei ‚corrosion du possible‘ erhöht noch hitziger Klarinettenbeschuss durch Benoît Moreau die Temperatur. Druck und Beschleunigung erhöhen das Noise-Niveau derart, dass laptopgenerierte und ohne Strom erzeugte Geräuschpartikelwolken und Klangfelder weitgehend ununterscheidbar werden. Guy setzt oft Arcotechniken ein und singt stellenweise so süß wie ein Cello, er kurvt als Dopplereffekt durch den Raum oder pflückt Protonen aus Molekülketten. Bondi tickelt und schabt mit Becken oder rappelt, knirscht und schrillt wie ein Schrottauto, bevor es endgültig auf Würfelform gepresst ist. D‘Incise ist als Phantom vom Dienst schwer zu fassen, klickt und scheppert er mit Objects an Objects, oder tönt er die Blasenkammer mit Drones? ‚Un peu plus rouge‘ rast und flirrt lange auf besonders hoher Betriebstemperatur, bevor es federnd, klopfend, klackend abkühlt zu einem Tamtam aus alter Zeit. Zuletzt knurscht und rauscht es bei ‚exil‘ aber noch einmal ganz vehement, und ich taumle teilchenbeschleunigt davon mit der gefestigten Überzeugung, dass Guy der LHC, der Large Hadron Collider unter den Bassisten ist. Rigobert Dittmann/Bad Alchemy Freischärler aus Genf am See, dass es so etwas gibt. Dort, wo man – hätten sich nicht vor Jahren die Wege mit den lässigen Verrückten von Goz of Kermeur gekreuzt – hundert Prozent Geldadel angesiedelt vermutete. Aber vielleicht schärft ja die stinkreiche Umgebung die Opposition; der Titel dieser experimentellen Platte – ausgeliehen von den linken Politphilosophen Negri/Hardt – spräche dafür. Freejazz, Elektroakustik, Elektronik, das sind die vorherrschenden Ausdrucksmittel der gedanklich und personell offenen Diatribes. Gern laden die Noch-nicht-30-Jährigen sich Gäste für ein Wunschkonzert ein. Ein großer Meister wie Barry Guy kann da keinesfalls ein Fehlgriff sein. Improvisationen an Computer, Kontrabass und Perkussion nehmen vielerlei Gestalt an, die Beweglichkeit äußert sich in Richtungs- und Perspektivenwechsel. Mit Fortdauer der „multitude“ zieht sich die Angelegenheit allerdings etwas in die Länge. Immerhin erzeugt „Multitude“ zwanzig Minuten lang Brisanz. Felix/freiStil 32 |