A brand new release is out now on Inexhaustible Editions which now resides in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The album is part of the label’s new series that document works which can be put in the experimental music tradition, works that are concieved on the borderline between contemporary composition and improvisation – or aleatoric, open-ended compositions based on text-based scores, legacy of Fluxus, graphic notations, set of instructions, actions, event. The first release on the label in this series was Antoine Beuger’s composition To The Memory Of, played by Conceptual Soundproductions Budapest led by German conceptualist composer and theorist Nikolaus Gerszewski. Now it is followed by the work of Chilean composer and performer Santiago Astaburuaga’s piece La Perpetuidad Del Esbozo #3, performed by Chilean guitarist Cristián Alvear and Japanese improvisers and composers Makoto Oshiro and Hiroyuki Ura who both became prolific figures on the Japanese experimental music scene in the recent years. The members of the trio have already worked together in 2016 and have released a record entitled Lucky Names (Wild Silence, 2017) with compositions by Oshiro and Chilean artist Nicolás Carrasco. La Perpetuidad Del Esbozo #3 was recorded and mixed by Makoto Oshiro in Tokyo and it includes liner notes by the composer himself and a drawing by Nick Hoffman.
Santiago Astaburuaga holds a master from composition from UNAM, Mexico where he is currently finishing his doctorate studies. He has been a vital part of Chilean experimental music scene as a composer and performer. He was part of a larger pool of musicians and performers (Nicolás Carrasco, Edén Carrasco, Cristián Alvear, Felipe Araya etc.) who organized performances and recordings of contemporary and experimental music in Chile. They have played free improvised music and experimental pieces by John Cage, Christian Wolff, David Tudor and composers of the Wandelweiser collective (Antoine Beuger, Manfred Werder, Michael Pisaro, Stefan Thut etc.) alongside compostions by Carrasco and Astaburuaga. They performed in concert halls, galleries, bookstores and public places. The extensive documentation of this local activity which had deep international repercussions in establishing the current field of experimental music gravitating around Wandelweiser collective and various practicioners all over the world can be found here, here and here. After studying in Mexico he became also a part of that scene, with Gudinni Cortina, Jacob Wick, Rolando Hernandez and others. As a performer he has recorded music by Nicolás Carrasco, Rolando Hernandez, Manfred Werder, Lo Wie and many others.
Listen and order the recording here:
Guitarist Cristián Alvear has been one of the most rentless practicioners of experimental music in the recent years and has played and recorded many of Astaburuaga’s pieces (you can find some on his Bandcamp site). But the one that has really put Astaburuaga’s name on the international plane is an ensemble recording of his piece, Grado De Potencia #1, released by canadian label Caduc. The piece is based on the potentiality of sounds that lay in-between tones and noises, always changing it’s positions, fading in and out on the intensive threshold of hearing. These are the spaces that Astaburuaga creates in his compositions, spaces between determinacy and indeterminacy, between steady and unsteady sounds of various background and of various sources (objects, instruments, electronics, field recordings, pre-recorded sounds or what he calls archive etc.). In this version of La Perpetuidad Del Esbozo #3 for three performers there are instrument sounds, sinetones, various field recordings (locational recordings done specifically for the performance) and sounds used from personal archives (recordings such as Nick Hoffman’s Bermuda for example that is used in the piece). This can be then choose by the players to use them at various times according to various time brackets that define the piece and in flexible dynamics of sound. This various sound events produces intensive spaces of repetitive or sustained instrumental sounds, noises of our surroundings, ringing sinetones and already recorded sound narratives from records that are always redefining themselves in the relations to each other inside the piece. In-between these relations lay all the intensivity of this excellent piece that should establish Astaburuaga as one of the most vital composer and practicioner of experimental music.
