Like many artists during the Covid period, HUM, the quintet of Cristiano Bocci (electronics); Alessandro Ciccarelli (trombone and electronics); Andrea Fabris (percussion and electronics); Giovanni Falascone (piano and electronics); and Alessandro Gambato (electric guitar and electronics); began collaborating remotely. The musicians are members of the BlueRing Electronics collective, which came together under the auspices of northern Italy’s BlueRing Improvisers Association in 2020. In October 2023 the five assembled in Milan for a residency that culminated in a live performance, the results of which are documented here on three tracks.

Frame, a graphic score by composer Giovanni Sparano, opens the album. The score is composed of various sections corresponding to parameters including timbre, textural density, pitch, and dynamics. HUM’s performance leaves plenty of open spaces for the voices of acoustic piano and metallic percussion to make themselves heard in between electronics-dense passages. The second performance is a collective improvisation that begins with a duet for muted trombone and piano and moves through sections for percussion, electronics, samples, and points beyond, ending with a reprise of acoustic piano. The final track is a realization of another graphic score, this time by composer Massimiliano Viel. The tone here is generally more somber and the sounds drawn out; as with the previous two performances, the group demonstrates a sophisticated sense of balancing open and closed sonic spaces.

https://avantmusicnews.com/2024/11/10/amn-reviews-hum-live-in-milano-elli-records-el57/

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