CD Digisleeve 4 pagine

Andrea Massaria _ chitarra _ effetti
Meinrad Kneer _ contrabbasso
Joe Hertenstein _ batteria _ percussioni

Per maggiori informazioni:
www.andreamassaria.com
www.joehertenstein.com
www.meinradkneer.eu

"(...) The Absence of Zero is the title of a long poem by Canadian poet R. Kolewe, published in 2021. The Absence of Zero is also the title of a November 2021 trio recording made in Berlin by guitarist Andrea Massaria, double bassist Meinrad Kneer, and drummer Joe Hertenstein, an international trio whose members are currently based in Trieste, Germany, and New York, respectively. What can these two different works, in very different media, have in common? Kolewe’s poem, inspired by relativity theory as well as the phenomenology of everyday life, is a meditation on the malleability of time and how we experience it. Massaria, Kneer, and Hertenstein’s music, created in the real-time crucible of free improvisation, is the record of how time is experienced in all its patchiness and plasticity when it is transposed into sound.
The sounds favored by the group over the course of these five untitled, texturally thick tracks are elastic—elastic both in their responses to each other and in relation to themselves. At the collective level, the three voices are in constant communication and mutual adjustment throughout, the pull of one counteracted by the push of another. Individually, each musician expands and contracts the boundaries alternately opening up and limiting his instrument’s range as it moves back and forth between conventional and unconventional soundworlds. Massaria trained as a classical guitarist before moving into jazz and free improvisation; here his spiky lines and broken rhythms reflect something of the dexterity of classical guitar technique while repositioning it at the outer limits of its musical potential, helped along by the use of various electronic effects. Kneer counters Massaria’s electronics with purely acoustic playing, leveraging extended techniques with fingers and bow to match Massaria abstraction-for-abstraction. Underneath it all Hertenstein free pulse drumming maintains a constant chatter of cymbals, snare, and tom toms, alluding to the kit’s conventional role rather than reprising it.
The last word can go to Kolewe’s The Absence of Zero, one of whose quatrains uncannily suggests something of what it is like to listen to Massaria, Kneer, and Hertenstein’s The Absence of Zero: Uncertain if there are figures without boundaries, leave pages blank, nothing uncovered distance scattering error quantum error & so beginning with unrecognized constellations." Daniel Barbiero, Percorsi Musicali, 2023.

01 _ Zero One 11:40
02 _ Zero Two 8:38
03 _ Zero Three 10:13
04 _ Zero Four 4:51
05 _ Zero Five 8:59

(C) + (P) 2023

CD Digisleeve 4 pages

Andrea Massaria _ guitar _ effects
Meinrad Kneer _ double bass
Joe Hertenstein _ drums _ percussion

For more info:
www.andreamassaria.com
www.joehertenstein.com
www.meinradkneer.eu

"(...) The Absence of Zero is the title of a long poem by Canadian poet R. Kolewe, published in 2021. The Absence of Zero is also the title of a November 2021 trio recording made in Berlin by guitarist Andrea Massaria, double bassist Meinrad Kneer, and drummer Joe Hertenstein, an international trio whose members are currently based in Trieste, Germany, and New York, respectively. What can these two different works, in very different media, have in common? Kolewe’s poem, inspired by relativity theory as well as the phenomenology of everyday life, is a meditation on the malleability of time and how we experience it. Massaria, Kneer, and Hertenstein’s music, created in the real-time crucible of free improvisation, is the record of how time is experienced in all its patchiness and plasticity when it is transposed into sound.
The sounds favored by the group over the course of these five untitled, texturally thick tracks are elastic—elastic both in their responses to each other and in relation to themselves. At the collective level, the three voices are in constant communication and mutual adjustment throughout, the pull of one counteracted by the push of another. Individually, each musician expands and contracts the boundaries alternately opening up and limiting his instrument’s range as it moves back and forth between conventional and unconventional soundworlds. Massaria trained as a classical guitarist before moving into jazz and free improvisation; here his spiky lines and broken rhythms reflect something of the dexterity of classical guitar technique while repositioning it at the outer limits of its musical potential, helped along by the use of various electronic effects. Kneer counters Massaria’s electronics with purely acoustic playing, leveraging extended techniques with fingers and bow to match Massaria abstraction-for-abstraction. Underneath it all Hertenstein free pulse drumming maintains a constant chatter of cymbals, snare, and tom toms, alluding to the kit’s conventional role rather than reprising it.
The last word can go to Kolewe’s The Absence of Zero, one of whose quatrains uncannily suggests something of what it is like to listen to Massaria, Kneer, and Hertenstein’s The Absence of Zero: Uncertain if there are figures without boundaries, leave pages blank, nothing uncovered distance scattering error quantum error & so beginning with unrecognized constellations." Daniel Barbiero, Percorsi Musicali, 2023.

01 _ Zero One 11:40
02 _ Zero Two 8:38
03 _ Zero Three 10:13
04 _ Zero Four 4:51
05 _ Zero Five 8:59

(C) + (P) 2023