Elisabet Curbelo - 2024 - Resonance Unbound

(57:27; Neuma Records)

Track list:
1. Canarian Bayram 9:14
2. Fantasía Flamenca 6:52
3. Roxanne’nın Dönüşümü 5:48
4. Kara Toprak 7:38
5. Mikrop 4:49
6. Epulos 11:42
7. L’anello 11:24

Line-up:
Elisabet Curbelo - electronics, voice
with:
University of Utah Ensemble (Conductor: Jason Missal)
Beatriz Lopez Salinas - percussion
Sanaz Nakhjavani - kanun
Ulrich Mertin - viola
Tommy Babin - double bass
Steven Schick - percussion
Renga Ensemble (Conductor: Steven Schick)


US based composer and musician Elisabet Curbelo has been creating music of different kinds for the past couple of decades, and from what I understand she has also been experiencing cultural impulses from a number of different nations in the same period of time. This fall she is out with the album "Resonances Unbound" on US label Neuma Records.

This album features a collection of compositions written in different time frames and in different locations, and that have been recorded in a few different locations too from what I understand. Variety is a bit of a key word here, as a matter of fact, also when it comes to the different landscapes explored.

Those fond of a more traditional inspired creation within the classical music realm will find a lot of charming features in opening work 'Canarian Bayram', a more romantic creation that opens with seaside sounds, piano and an acoustic guitar before the orchestra gradually move in for a more layered, busy and intense surge. With this composition concluding on a similar relaxed and romantic tone and mood as it started.

For the next quartet of landscapes explored we are taken into the realm of electronic sounding effects and treated sounds, where fragmented sounds, drones and noise effects of varying kinds and degrees are defining features of each of these works. Each of them markedly different from one another, and for my sake possibly with the machine like circulating and fluctuating patterns of 'Roxanne’nın Dönüşümü' as possibly the most alluring of these. Although the drones, cosmic sounds and static noise combined with viola textures of 'Mikrop' are rather compelling and transfixing too.

The album concludes with creations of a rather different character altogether, and for my taste in music not quite as interesting as the ones explored earlier on. 'Epulos' makes use of the double bass in a creative and inventive manner, with a dark and borderline foreboding landscape as the result, while my notes for 'L'anello' contains the description "classical goes free form". While none of those descriptions are what one might describe as accurate, at least for those without a deeper knowledge about the experimental aspects of classical music they should give a fair general ideal about what kind of landscapes one will encounter in these concluding 23 minutes of the album.

This is an album that deploys itself into several related fields of music that, as I would describe them in a layman's terms, all have a bit of a niche audience. From the more alluring landscapes of classical music we get in the opening track through to various degrees of experimental electroacoustic landscapes that continues on from this and on to a more clear cut experimental take on the classical music tradition at the end. Those who are generally intrigued and interested in all of these niches of music should find a lot to enjoy on this album, especially for those who generally regard unpredictable patterns as a positive in such landscapes.

Olav M. Björnsen, September 2024

Links:
https://elisabetcurbelo.com/
https://neumarecords.org/