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Almufaraka — Master of Disorder
(Circum-Disc Helix LX020, 2024, CD)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2025-04-05

Master of Disorder Cover art

Three voices: Gaëlle Debra, Patrick Guionnet, and Maryline Pruvost, along with skins, wood, and metal played by Peter Orins, whom we have reviewed many times here at Exposé in various groups and configurations. Sounds like something that could be pretty enjoyable, correct? Well, wait a minute now — those three voices are screaming, bellowing, whispering, with cries, shouts, and whistles, making bizarre clicks and strange vocal sounds, and occasionally something that might be considered melodic; three vocalists can do a lot when working together, but these three are pretty much working alone on their own solo improvisations in some sort of archaic avant-garde stew that combines all of them together at once. Little they are doing seems to be language based, just sounds for sounds sake in most cases, although “Autosuggesion” may be the exception, where the male voice seems to be narrating something (I don’t understand exactly what) while the two female voices are whooping and hollering and going off in crazy directions. Orins is the one piece of the puzzle that ties it all together in some way: scratchy noises, cymbals, drums, wood blocks, metal cylinders, marimba perhaps, and other mysterious percussive sounds tend to guide all of the vocal sounds in various directions as each of the eight pieces proceed. A lot of what is here is very quiet, sometime together with sounds that are quite loud, so this does merit the consideration of headphones, where all the voices and sounds tend to be sorted out a little better. One could imagine that this would all be chaotic and abrasive, and I suppose some parts are, but more than anything else these pieces co me off as pretty gentle and docile, far more interesting than any other adjective that it could be associated with, like most of the work that Peter Orins is associated with. This is the music that I imagine people in caves were making ten thousand years ago, long before the invention of stringed, brass, and woodwind musical instruments.

Filed under: New releases, 2024 releases

Related artist(s): Peter Orins, Almufaraka

More info
http://circum-disc.bandcamp.com/album/master-of-disorder

 

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