Roberto Ottaviano QuarkTet - Sideralis (2017)

The absolute microcosm evoked by the name of the quartet opens to the infinitely great in the title of the record. Once again flanked by pianist Alexander Hawkins, who was already in the previous tribute to Lacy FORGOTTEN MATCHES, Roberto Ottaviano returns with a really rich and composite album, changing and interesting every time he plays.

The opening with Vulpecula has obstinate dancing, dry and sharp sounds, a single central light that spells light and spacious, coherent in the spirit of research, intense and rigorous but at the same time communicative. Traits that have always characterized the musical aesthetics of the artist Barese.

In the forthcoming Berenice's Code, which is very elegant in the incipit, in the circus sounds of Planet John Lee Hooker and in On The Harmonica Wake, the exploration of the sound spaces provides listening to music, both in the thematic materials and in the broad stages of development free.

The most bloodthirsty and remarkably rhythmic moments are in the explicit homage to the pianist Herbie Nichols, swinging and well supported by the work of an excellent Michael Formanek, and embellished by the concluding solo of Gerry Hemingway, a versatile drummer and open as few; and in Holy Gravity, where it is still the powerful launch of the double bass that says it moves to a relaxed funky, unusually declaimed by ours with the use of baritone. Even more intense is Centaurus, the only space where sounds become more tight and febrile in a typical post-free style.

Completely composed by the leader, the record reaches the peak in the concluding Sideralis, eight minutes of pure sound abstraction, evoking the ethereal spaces suggested by the title, where the balance between sound and silence, note and noise surpasses the fences of gender easy to label, and reminds us of the contemporary music that is most carefully taken care of in the interior of the sounds (we think of Scelsi or even more of Luigi Nono) reaching comparable results to the best results in this field.

Also worth mentioning is the high quality of recording, which guarantees peremptory and balanced presence of the instruments, perfect definition and spatiality, absolute timbre fidelity.