[des]integração : "Permute" - reviews
sirr.ecords - 009 - September 2002
(www.sirr-ecords.com)
"The release by [Des]intergracão is a live recording of a whole group: Carlos Santos, João Castro Pinto, Miguel Carvalhais, Nuno Moita, Paulo Raposo and Pedro Lourenço. If one studies the artwork, one can see various persons behind laptops, so, who knows, maybe it's safe to assume that this is a big laptop band (or is that bigband laptop?). It doesn't sound like a bigband laptop, really. [Des]integracão operate in a careful, improvised style. It's hard to imagine that there are six people working on this music, because everything seems to fit together very well. There is space for everyone in this work, which never goes out of control (maybe even stays a bit at the controlled part for an improvisation) but displaying great pace amongst these six people. Great work."
[by Frans de Waard, in : Vital Weekly, nº 343, week 41, 2002]
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"Words failed me when I first encountered Cage of Sand by Carlos Zingaro. Nine pieces for violin and electronics, performed in real time with only a touch of editing and mixing, and I became stoically silent in the wake of their intensity and vigour. At times tense, at others playful, yet always challenging and complex, Zingaro's improvisations are charged with electricity, latent and explosive in turns, the unpredictable electronic elements originating from inventive strains on the violin, all the while involved in its own tricks and acrobatics. The recordings for the album were completed in March of 2002. Two months later, a collective called [des]integração assembled at the Centre of Modern Art, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon. They performed a set of improvisations using sound sources exclusively extracted from Zingaro's Cage of Sand. There are six core members of the group: Carlos Santos, João Castro Pinto, Miguel Carvalhais, Nuno Moita, Paulo Raposo and Pedro Lourenço. They are also joined by a seventh member, Carlos Zingaro himself, who is credited for doing 'live mixing' for the event. The live set was then edited and remixed by Paulo Raposo (who incidentally is the founder of sirr.ecords), and released in the form we see here. In these three segments, just over 30 minutes long, the group has created something entirely new from their sound source, which is barely traceable in these new fibres of electronic sound, an integration (or disintegration, if you like) of elements that goes beyond mere permutation and into realms of transformation, retransformation. Clearly, the computer has taken over the role of the dominant tool, which in Zingaro's original recordings is occupied by the violin, no matter how much space in the foreground the electronics may seem to occupy from piece to piece. Zingaro relies on words such as (re)reading, (dis)assembling, (re)interpretation, (re)cycling in his notes for this new project, and they are certainly fitting descriptors here. These new pieces are open improvisations, yet each shows commendable restraint and control; they are haunting pieces of disembodied sound, groundless, ephemeral, digital. Considered on its own or as a postscript to the original recordings, however you package it, this is still some marvelous work. Listen closely."
[by richard di santo, in : Incursion.org, issue 061. 28 october - 10 november 2002]
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"The sweepingly evolving portuguese experimental music scene has already granted to us a lot of interesting projects, [des]Integração is the recent one. As we used to say and see, it's a supergroup, i.e. consists of famous musicians: Carlos Santos and Paulo Raposo are musicians of the band Vitriol and founders of Sirr.ecords, Miguel Carvalhais is designer and done some records for various portuguese labels, other musicians are Nuno Moita, João Castro Pinto, Pedro Lourenco and Carlos Zíngaro. Quite elegant and accurate piece of soundplay in three parts is there, with total time about half-hour. It's much like a romantic fantasy takeoff from the digi-minimalism age, but in fact the musical profile of the band is uncertain. Each conceptual unit as it is, it may have only a general purpose which speaks for band approach and is clearly declared in the band name. Disintegration means disassembling every solid matter, crushing to pieces, to construct something new from these loose particles. It isn't the interpretation of music, it's re-interpretation of sound. In the case of current album, this is the sound from Carlos Zingaro's recent recording, "Cage of sand". Endlessly changed and permutated snapshots can be only recognized by those who has listened to the original source. For the rest of audience, this is just a calm and quiet mix of lowercase sounds without deployment. No such obvious sound organization as harmony and rhythm are present, but the slightly evolving timbres of abstract and disconnected snippets, coming from nowhere and blurred away for a while, when a bleak and colourless wallpaper turn to silence. A beautiful abstraction, an example of soundesign as single object of art, elusive emotional nothingness, which isn't accessible for any rational thoughts."
[http://feedback.pisem.net/d_.htm#7] (translated from russian]
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