Ferran Fages — Un Lloc Entre Dos Records
Ferran Fages is an improviser and composer from Barcelona, Spain-he utilizes guitar, turntables and electronics to create his work- and is also involved in a few collaborative improv projects such as Ap'strophe, Atolón, Cremaster, Fagus, L'Eix, Octante, Phicus, Taumatrop. Seemingly he’s been sonically active since the late 1990’s, and this is the 7th Another Timbre he’s been part of.
Un Lloc Entre Dos Records(A place between two memories) is a studio recording from April 2018 and is apparently the last in a trilogy of works for solo acoustic guitar & sine waves. The fifty-three-minute track is presented as one long piece without any index points, and it’s a very pared back, decidedly barren & mostly sparse work. It begins with a series of descending & discordant guitar pick patterns- to start with they are mid-ranged, but later we get more high pitched plucks added in. To me this opening brought to mind a skeletal Feldman composition played on guitar instead of piano. As the track moves on it continues with the patterns, but they are often broken by moments of silence & slowing in pace- all nicely creating a feeling a wintry uneasy & tension.
At around the twelve minute I make out the first clear & pronounced addition of Sine waves- and initially these appear as a slow burning drone rises around the rapidly paring back guitar patterns. Then the guitar elements completely stop, and we’re left with just the languid drift of the Sine waves, which seem to swarm & circling, yet slowly climb in a mostly sourly sinister manner. At around the twenty-fifth minute, the guitar reappears as a tinkling strum around the sine waves- fairly soon the sine waves pared back, and we move into a more forceful though no less barren series of strum & pick guitar patterns- which at times move in wonderful tolling bleak-ness & churning discord. The Sine Waves don’t obviously appear again- but instead, we get a series of eventful & pace shifting guitar patterns to play out the remainder of the track.
Un Lloc Entre Dos Records is oddly haunting & intriguing work- which managers to keep a consistently bleak tone, yet still offers ups moments of sour surprise & uneasy sparse discord along the way. I’m certainly interested in hearing the other two pieces Fages composed for acoustic guitar & sine waves, and I’ll also be looking into his other work too after hearing this release.