The mystery combo tellKujira consists of four players: Ambra Chiara Michelangeli on viola, Francesco Diodati on guitar, another Francesco (Guerri) on cello and Stefano Calderano, also on guitar, with both guitarists also applying effects.
The blossoming abstraction unwinds as La Lucha Es Un Poema Colectivo opens with crossed electric wires and percussive false starts, engaging and disjoining and emitting hollow echoes. A mystery voice intones as the instruments stretch and elaborate, dissolving into playground mayhem.
Certain sounds are freed and smeared, with string lines threaded and suspended from a long thin wire hanging way above us, fluttering in a stiff breeze. The deep dirge of cello constantly drifting is the centre point that ties the disparate directions together until a sweet, sinuous side is shown and a long, slow melodic gravitas is welded to the more awkward sections that seem somehow familiar yet austere.
As an opener it is an impressive idea of what the quartet can achieve and seemingly without effort; but they can be far gentler, using train sounds and children’s voices that are less claustrophobic and reach out skyward. They dwell on moments of insistent guitar and stubborn radio dial disturbance, uprating the catalogue of mystery until a melancholic cello line interacts with swooping violin and nagging guitar to open things up further. The rumbling storm of sound reminds me in places of a much starker version of Louisville’s much-missed Rodan and their cabin in the woods in the midst of Autumn vibe, but with an underlying tension that speaks of unresolved things.
The final section of the album has a more awkward progress, the notes standing alone on a shifting sand of percussive sound that seems to undermine the progress. It moves unevenly, but the sweetness of the string tone and the phased waves of African voices help to alleviate the tension and draw it into a joyful place. As the bowed strings ascend, so the plucked cello throws an arm around the shoulders before the barely present cello disappears out of sight into a perfect sky and a perfect ending to the album.
-Mr Olivetti-
