Tegh & Kamyar Tavakoli / Federico Durand :: Double review (Hibernate)

Newly emergent from Hibernate come low-light Tehran tone-tweakers, Shahin Entezami & Kamyar Tavakoli, with an EP, Through the Winter Woods, and bright-eyed Buenos Aires bard, Federico Durand, with a digital upgrade of a limited tape, Música para Manuel.

Through the Winter Woods by Tehran twosome, Shahin Entezami (aka Tegh) and Kamyar Tavakoli, previously solo (for example, Night Scenes and “A Glimpse“) and ensemble as Artirial, charts a new communion, ‘looking to branch out and try something a bit different.’ What they’ve come up with is a trio of sizzling audio-tracts outside Hibernate‘s customary bucolic comfort zone. The eponymous sylvan setting is unsettled with diverse Persian surgery dervishry brought to bear in ware and tear on sources (guitar…? keyboards…?) and field sounds. A storm is summoned up on “Hollow,” with solemn chords stretched and buffeted by sonic gusts whipping debris through shivering trees. “Fractal” brings more hail and howling in a vast saturated wave of fizzing harmony. A gradual gathering and dissolution, drone and pulse ceding to further frequencies and a static-soaked coda. “Disappeared Stratum” ends streaming vast inner-scaping sounds, calling in all points East of Tim Hecker and Talvihorros. All mastered to full power ambient effect by mist-maxer Lawrence English at Room 40 HQ.

On a different tack, Federico Durand‘s predilection is more for the creaky fragility to be found in instruments, lo-fi loops, and field-found sounds, gently coaxing them into etiolated tone poems. Since debut La siesta del ciprés (Spekk, 2010) a slow release has come via Home Normal, Own, Desire Path, White Paddy Mountain, Spekk (again), and the like. Música para Manuel is a digital upgrade of a tour tape’s two tracks enhanced with three additions. A tribute to his titular grandfather, it makes much of (c)rumbling recorded field-ground *with faltering piano figure*. On “I” elliptical muffled tones float, hanging as if dust motes in filtered light. “II” lets a music box’s nostalgic chimings tinkle tweely from a grainy patina, quavering decay and saturation lending a poignant resonance in accord with the memorial keynote. “III” digs out another dusty piano loop, turning it over pensively before locking it back into world-weary recursion. After more chime time and jangle tangle on “IV,” “V” closes in a fond fuzzy drone glow and wow-and-flutter revenance in a reverent epilogue. Throughout Durand captures the emotional caché within memory with lines snagging poignant presenting-past, articulated in wistful small-gesture melodic miniatures, like musical madeleines.
(*for ground-field-figure, see Bick (2009) ‘Listening Is Making Sense‘, field notes #2, p.45, Hanau: Gruenrekorder)