By: admin

admin — Wed, 29 Jul 2015 17:52:34 +0000

There seem to be an increasing number of artists out there today whose music is located somewhere in the interstices between freely improvised music and new music classical. The vocabulary of the sounds and tones are somewhere in between. There is a sequential structure that often enough is more than freely creative, yet within that envelope is music that sometimes sounds composed, sometimes free improv.
I have covered such music on this site from time-to-time. Here is another.
Eduardo Raon creates a twelve-part sound poem he calls On the Drive for Impulsive Actions (ShhPuma CleanFeed 007). The music is created on harp for the most part, played conventionally and unconventionally. At times it sounds like it is also multi-tracked, and it is at times subject to electronic manipulation. There is also something he calls the Daxophone, percussion, the occasional sound of voices in laughter–children and adults–and the appearance of the whir of Screaming Cicadas.
All is sequenced in a way that gives it structure. Some sounds seem randomly or freely generated, others sound a bit more worked out. But the impressions overall are of a spontaneous, creative generation that has been sound-sculpted by Raon.
The sound of the harp predominates as a rule, yet all sounds flow smoothly together to create a work of art that is much more than a collection of disparate sounds.
It is fascinating to hear. It has an aural attractiveness which the harp does much to create. And Raon has an inventive knack on the instrument.
Well worth hearing!

in: Classic Modern Music by Grego Applegate Edwards

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Eduardo Raon já fez parte do Powertrio, com Joana Sá e Luís Martins (que também já editaram em duo e, no caso da primeira, a solo pela Shhpuma). Nesta sua obra em nome próprio, explora um universo insectóide. Nos últimos meses tem sido viral uma peça que reduz o tempo de uma gravação de cigarras a “cantar” o número de vezes necessário para equiparar a esperança média de vida destes insectos à humana, sendo o alegado resultado muito semelhante a um coro humano tal como estamos habituados a ouvir. Se essa peça, do compositor Jim Wilson, humaniza os insectos, a obra de Raon vai no sentido de insectizar as pessoas, na medida em que explora uma aleatoriedade impulsiva.

Recriando estes pequenos seres electroacústicos, o harpista afasta a natureza humana da racionalidade, dando possíveis pistas para o modo de sentir a (sua) música. “On the Drive for Impulsive Actions…” é um disco que nos contagia como um todo e no fim questiona-nos com um “o que é que se passou aqui?”.

in: Jazz.pt by Bernardo Álvares

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With its timbral versatility and expansive range of tones, the harp is an instrument well-suited to avant-garde and experimental music. Like any other string instrument—but perhaps even more so—it can be prepared, struck, plucked, bowed and otherwise played in any number of conventional and unconventional ways. On this new release from Shhpuma harpist Eduardo Raon covers a gamut of approaches to the instrument, retaining its natural voice at times and at other times modifying its sound not only with a repertoire of extended techniques but with extensive electronic manipulation as well. Raon, a native of Portugal now residing in Ljubljana, creates an eclectic if sometimes fragmentary sound world with the twelve tracks presented here. But no matter what kind of sound modification is used, the focus stays on the acoustic properties of the harp in all of their dimensions. Field recordings of cicadas and laughter round out the imaginative set of sounds Raon assembles.

in: Avant Music News

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Comments on: EDUARDO RAON // On the Drive For Impulsive Actions

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