Denzler / Guionnet / Kinoshita / Unami : Vasistas

"Listening is porous - however hard you try to exclude the sound of the outside world, it sneaks in, and even with the most expensive headphones money can buy clamped tightly to your head the tiniest friction of hair on skin will be loud enough to spoil your music, if you let it. And we all know what happened when Cage went into that anechoic chamber. Old story. So instead, open your ears to it. "Vasistas" is a French word - one of only a few deriving directly from German - meaning louver window or opening windowpane, a perfect metaphor for music opening out onto reality, which is exactly Bertrand Denzler and Jean-Luc Guionnet on saxophones, Kazushige Kinoshita on laptop violin and Taku Unami on laptop (computer this time) and guitar do in this 67-minute span of music. As if to prove the point, Vasistas wasn't recorded late at night in a studio, but one afternoon in Patrick McGinley's London home, in which the sound of the inhabitants moving about in nearby rooms joins the distant rumble of passing traffic and the fragile, predominantly quiet music. The dynamic level may be low and the texture sparse, but if you choose to turn up the wick and concentrate there's a sense of concentration and intensity to it all. Turn the knob the other way, however, and the result is equally captivating, as the puffs and bleats of the saxophones, the grainy rustle of Unami's electronics and the intermittent crinkles and pings of Kinoshita's fiddle mesh gently and rather magically with the surrounding environment. If you do the same you'll find it fascinating to listen to."-Dan Warburton (Paris Transatlantic)

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2005
Country: Portugal
Recorded on September 19, 2003 in London

Personnel:
Bertrand Denzler-tenor saxophone
Jean-Luc Guionnet-alto saxophone
Kazushige Kinoshita-violin
Taku Unami-laptop, guitar