These two recent recordings are linked by the presence of Portuguese guitarist Abdul Moimême, but more than that, each is a masterful work of inspired collective improvisation, each a work of hive mind, achieving a collective synergy so close-knit, one in which initiating impulses and successive responses are so closely interwoven -- perhaps impossible to assign -- that they might be the work of a multi-armed and multi-mouthed deity, a figure playing numerous instruments at an initiation into the mysteries.
Dissection Room (Albert Cirera/ Abdul Moimême/ Álvaro Rosso) - Live at Penhasco (discordian records, 2025)
Dissection Room first formed in Lisbon in 2017, combining Moimême, Spanish saxophonist Albert Cirera and Uruguayan bassist Alvaro Rosso. This is their second CD, following the eponymous release of a 2017 concert, Creative Sources 549CD. At the root of the trio’s mystery there is Rosso. His instrument will suggest foundation, stability and form, even those players in the virtuosic lineage, but Rosso is also an agent of chaos – his contribution a chain of disruptions: claw-like plucking of multiple strings, quivering bowed harmonics, his sound amplified or closely miked, bass grit ground out at the frog of the bow, tones seemingly echoing backward as well as forward. Cirera’s soprano and tenor saxophones provide strong central voices, whether or not they are altered with various objects and insertions; at one point there is a continuous line suspended between saxophone timbre and a violin. Moimême’s instrument is the soul of unpredictability, frustrating even identification: two horizontal guitars, one a radically evolved baritone of his own design, with extensive electronics and preparations and striking devices. Distinctive individual events from any of the three occur amidst a dense field of quivering sound, the act of distinguishing events and individual contributions only clouding the listener’s essential immersion in the collective work’s unfolding, the miracle of collaboration that take place here.
Wade Matthews, Abdul Moimême, Luz Prado- Trust from Intimacy (scatter archive. 2025)
The trio of sound artist Matthews, Moimême and violinist Luz Prado is a merger of two pre-existing duos, Matthews and Moimême, Matthews and Prado. If anything, it takes the elements of synthesis and mystery even further than Dissection Room’s Live at Penasco, for Matthews represents the same scale of sonic variety and invention (timbral, contrapuntal, environmental) as Moimême. My early descriptions of Moimême’s work included metaphors of train stations in outer space. The same qualities of mystery. energy and inclusive terrain are even more evident here, with all the partners contributing to the mystery, whether it’s Matthews’ wandering sound samples (at one point documentation of a recorded voice will appear, then move from natural timbre to Disney Duck range) or Prado’s exacting imaginings of alien insect voices. This is not a trio but an orchestra, operating both in the internal world of dream in collision and in imaginings of outer space, the nervous system and the overlapping voices of distant radio frequencies. At every turn, every dance of drama, mystery and eerie, speculative glissando or rattle, this work moves both further in, to the echoing songs of the subconscious, and further out, where elastic string harmonics fade into twilight. The work’s complexity, its invocation of both lived in spaces and/or psychic realms, both evades description or synthesis, demanding listening.
Note: In an “Ezz-thetics” column from 2017 I recounted a 2016 Lisbon lunch meeting with Moimême and Matthews when they were making field recordings for Lisbon: 10 Sound Portraits (Creative Sources 421 CD): https://www.pointofdeparture.org/archives/PoD-60/PoD60Ezz-thetics.html
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