After a continous and longlasting collaboration, Hildegard Kleeb and Pelayo Arrizabalaga have recorded their first album in the radio studio of DRS in Zürich in May 2007. The CD „am(vr)ee“ is the result of this work.
Hildegard Kleeb is a pianist. Pelayo Arrizabalaga plays Lenco and Philips turntables from the 50s and 60s.
Except «prelude 231» by Franz Schubert and «freedom» by Duke Ellington, all tracks on the CD are composed by Hildegard Kleeb and Pelayo Arrizabalaga. Recordings from Jimi Hendrix, John Coltrane, Arthur Honegger, Igor Stravinski, Herbie Hancock, Sophia Gubaidulina and others have been integrated as loops, as scratches and/or as playbacks in a modified pace. Overtones and harmonies from the piano are interwoven with frequencies from the turntables.
Rapidly played cluster-and scales-improvisations imitate the scratch-techniques of the turntables and duell with their gestures - pulsating, polarising, vibrating... Composed structures such as «plastik», «prelude 231» or «josepslap» stand vis-à-vis structured improvisations such as «granit»,»martillo contra aguja» or «conversaciones nocturnas».
Vinyl fields form the coordinates for processes and changes. The compositional course is organised in musical «meeting-points». Improvisations migrate towards these moments and then away from them again; associative sound patterns emerge. By the use of modified paces from the turntables, female voices are transformed into barking dogs, accompanied by the permeating, repetitive piano pulse from Ravel›s «le gibet». This is the world of Aloysius Bertrand, whose gallows is creaking in the desert. In «trio» the piano adopts the solo part of the classical jazz trio, accompanied by bass and drums from the turntables.
In «mobile futurista» minimalistic patterns and harmonic gestures hang in the delicate sound net from F.T.Martinetti’s Futuristic Manifesto. Two chords from Satie’s Gymnopédie compose the matter of «satin». The titel «am(vr)ee» for the compositions of Hildegard Kleeb and Pelayo Arrizabalaga was created by the genevan musician/poet/medical practitioner Vincent Barras: “Chercher toujours un titre simple (mais aussi un peu compliqué), autour de néologismes sonores, avec les motifs de l‘ombre, „hombre“ „hambre“ „free“ (ou „fried“)! donc „am(vr)ee“: il y
a âme, hombre, frei, bee, homme, ombre, ambre, hambre, et tout ce qu‘on veut... bref, rien de plus difficile qu‘un titre. choisir entre un titre explicite, sémantique, directement évocateur, et un titre sensoriel (sonore et visuel), indirectement évocateur.”
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