Reinhold Friedl and Franck Vigroux – Tobel

Alamuse

Thirty-six minutes to ascend. Thirty-six minutes to grasp the interior of a piano and strum, stroke and pluck softly until it hums. Thirty-six minutes to clatter and hiss between strings and keys and electronic devices, to shuttle like a poltergeist rising mordant among ectoplasmic shudders.

Reinhold Friedl‘s prepared piano and Franck Vigroux‘s analogue synthesizers, tape recorders and other machinery collide on Tobel with the force of an occasionally irresistible gale meeting a clattery object, the pair rattling off each other until their collective instruments set to shaking. When they scrape and shine, they do so with the slow ear-grinding scream of metal caressing metal, brakes hauled and groaning in an agonising gasp undershot with distant detonations in the underpinnings. The duo like to buzz and burr, to rumble the ivories in acoustic thunder which encounters and complements the electronics’ circling squalls.

Thirty-six minutes to plateau on a road-drill rattle conjured from the bowels of a piano, making and shaking in forms which theatrical sound managers of yore might appreciate the artistry. Thirty-six minutes for the ebb and flaw of glitch and whirr to vent if not spleen then perhaps some electrical steam. Thirty-six minutes with a pulsating near-subsonic fade, a quietude and a spluttery, sliding termination.

Thirty-six minutes can be a long time in the right hands.

-Richard Fontenoy-