Helena: BILBAO MMXXIII [Blu-Rei]. The composer is Àlex Reviriego – the five pieces here make up a half-hour live set played by Helena, a trio of Reviriego on double bass, Clara Lai on piano and Vasco Trilla on percussion, with some background audience sound. Each piece is distilled, concentrated into little moments of articulate stillness, proceding from one moment to another with stead deliberation. At times some of the pieces resemble cool jazz, but the absence of any propulsive beat atomises the elements of the genre into something more abstract and rarefied. Trilla plays a large side drum with a soft mallet, more for emphasis than rhythm, with bells, woodblocks and a cymbal for faint washes of noise. Lai’s piano acts as a focal point but limits herself mostly to slow, chordal themes which offer some movement while always staying in the same place, while Reviriego and Trilla act as commentary, the bass part often shadowing the piano. Things start out weird with the first track and then gradually build momentum to an almost indulgent climax on the penultimate track, with the trio’s members throwing out some more demonstrative chops, but then regain composure for the final piece: a stately, slowly unwinding processional.
Markus Reuter / Vasco Trilla / Àlex Reviriego: Música fúnebre [self-released]. Speaking of processionals: Reviriego and Trilla join up with Markus Reuter on Música fúnebre, an ominous piece that spreads out over half an hour to steadily immerse the listener in a sensation of crepuscular horripilation. Reviriego’s bass provides the sombre undertones for Trilla playing a set of flat bells and Reuter on a Phillicordia organ. The source of inspiration is Lutosławski’s Musique funèbre, specifically the twelve-note series in its opening form, all tritones and half-steps. The trio wallow in the funereal harmonies, starting out as a drone before using otherworldly bowed bell edges and the eerie electrical sound of the organ to evoke old-timey spooky movie music. It’s almost cheesy, except that it’s done wih seriousness of purpose and, thanks to pursuing the twelve-tone ramifications, just keeps evolving into something different. When the bells are finally struck the instrument’s overtones imbue everything with a luminous, sinister halo. The trio take an obvious pleasure in indulging their creepy side, not least when Reviriego starts to get some coffin-like sounds out of his bass fiddle.
