Symbolist

More than an anecdote but less than a full account, The Age of Bronze is like a short story crafted to express an overriding objective. Designed to meld impulses and ideas from three experienced improvisers, the almost 29-minute single track features input from American Stephen Flinn’s varied percussion implements; Portuguese Guilherme Rodrigues’ cello slides and strums; and Irish programmer Roy Carroll’s modular vibrations from electroacoustic media.

Underlined by concentrated buzzes that remain hanging in the atmosphere throughout, crackles, rumbles and organ-like tremolo pitches are often interrupted by string slices, cymbal scratches, and intermittent modulator pops. Interspaced with brief silences, the reinformed drone animates the narrative with horizontal motion even as the trio members’ layered output occasionally adds unfiltered percussion squeaks, strained string pressure and finally thinning electroacoustic squeals to the mix.

A prelude rather than a full realized narrative, the performance can be appreciated for what mutations the Berlin-based Symbolist trio brings to the program. Yet like a tale built around a single impression, amplification of it to the equivalent of an aural full novel would provide more scope and color to a resulting production. After all the Bronze Age was succeeded by the Iron Age which was characterized by numerous advances due to by the availability of more materials.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: 1. The Age of Bronze

Personnel: Guilherme Rodrigues (cello and objects); Stephen Flinn (percussion) and Roy Carroll (electroacoustic media)