cat nr Z6000999
€ 10
CD
Flute player Anne La Berge and Dutch composer and guitarist Lukas Simonis are long-time collaborators, like in their ”Apricot My Lady” project with the Bohman Brothers. Both create improvised pieces, using various effects and vocals. Prickling to the ear, open and sonorous, as musicians can do who are totally at home with their instruments but use them with humour and much attention to each other’s ideas.
“….The record name says it all, in a way. The sounds conceived in the fourteen improvisations of Rust Fungus give in effect the idea of transforming matter, not necessarily in the “positive” acceptation of this expression, except for the sheer quality and indisputable honesty of the resulting music. La Berge is renowned for her work with flute and interactive computer processing, while Simonis is one of the most consistent triturators of guitar timbres around. This means that you won’t find sonorities describable as merely “interesting” or “pleasing” here. The duo strives to render the listening experience rather uncomfortable, choosing spiky paths across the idiosyncratic traits of their instruments rather than letting hands and lungs go just to enjoy the ensuing outcome, which seems to have become a recurrent behaviour (though ably disguised under pretentious declarations of intents) of a sizeable portion of nowadays’ avantgarde. The disobedient attitude is highlighted throughout the full hour of the disc, informed by many moments of total introversion. Stimulating, if unsentimental shocks and perturbations are followed by tightly “arranged” permutations of functional mayhem. Nevertheless, one detects the existence of an implicit basis on which both performers establish harsh palettes, amassing colours and noise in such a homogeneous fashion that distinguishing the sonic generators becomes pretty hard at times. Needless to say, all of this constitutes an excellent alternative to a rapidly expanding unspoken plagiarism that, for our good luck, appears totally extraneous to the couple…”
(Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes)