CD – Dekorder

In Nighturns, the latest recording by Un Caddie Renversé dans l’Herbe, the moniker of Bilal Dídac P. Lagarriga, the combination of African instruments – such as balaphon, mbira and kalimba – together with the use of found voices and traditional classical instruments, results in a powerful, highly involving and passionate amalgam. The influences that go into this project are very diverse. The sounds are mixed and processed using computers and software that make it decidedly more practical and immediate to compare the acoustic recordings of varying quality that are the result of explorations in specific locations and experiences with distinctly exotic and delimited cultures and social practises. It is these random field recordings or recordings sought out in precise contexts that determine the grain of the various compositions, which also cultivate an instrumental wisdom made of accuracy, sensitivity and love of a lively and organic flow. It is “a self-made music”,” says the Barcelona-based Brazilian master, unintentionally subverting the Burroughsian maxim that the author is the one “who is on the spot”,” a place – both physical and mental – where it is possible to change the order of the elements without substantially altering the essence of things. The things, in this case, are nothing more than simple sounds, pure vibrational energy captured and detourned for a more structured and coherent listening. Lagarriga is no stranger to using ethnic instruments and rhythmic structures combined with electronics, techniques that were also used on Like A Packed Cupboard But Quite…, an album released on Dekorder in 2004. Memory for Lagarriga is at the same time a dis-memory, music that has been lost and then found again, a nocturnal drifting through the sandy, dimly lit streets of West Africa or through the retrieval of old recordings, for example of devotional poems recited by pupils of a Koranic school or broadcasts from an Arabic radio station. There is intricate and suggestive percussion, ritual chants and organic sounds. And yet, the overall impression one gets from listening is one of deconstructive minimalism, somewhat magical, but still with a decidedly conceptual and combinatorial feel.

 

Un Caddie Renversé dans l’Herbe – Nighturns