reviews
PascAli ‘suspicious activity’
(creative sources 2012)
..."the CD is an intelligent introduction to two innovative bassists approach to expanding the double bass soundworld"...
D. Barbiero -Avant Music News read full article
...”Frappant, sciant, fouettant, vrillant, Niggenkemper & Ali dépassent la simple tentative d'épuisement de la contrebasse : ouf !”...
Guillaume Tarche © Le son du grisli
...”What I appreciate the most about this record is the choice of the two artists to not go for long compositions, which is often a distinctive tendency of double bass players, both when they perform as a soloist and in 'mono-instrumental' combinations....
...On the other hand, the sacrifice of their identities goes in favor of the cohesiveness of the whole. That’s why I feel like saying that PascAli is indeed a group more than a duo...
...The two bassists must have been accurately torturing every single inch (or centimeter) of these poor and fatty instruments. No respect for strings, frets, bridge and the rest. Did they survive to the recording?... P. Casertano Freejazz-blogspot read full article
...’With Suspicious Activity, he has teamed with fellow bassist, Sean Ali, to craft twelve short sets of improvised yet well structured pieces for prepared bass. The results are intense and superbly performed.
...I'm really wondering if its this that is creating the sound or not. But either way it's very interesting to see what they have chosen to do with it. It's an opening piece that describes the creative spirit on display over the next 40 minutes...
Suspicious Activity is an intense session. It's the album that only you might enjoy. It's the album that will annoy the neighbors, eliminate the bad people from your party and influence people. Suspicious Activity is the beautiful document of the vocabulary of sound and space.Highly Recommended.”... by S. Moore in JazzWrap read full article
..."When both bassists are bowing those low end groans/drones together, it is as if some giant is snoring in the enchanted woods... It is strange that some of this sounds electronic or alien, just how are they doing that?!?... Most impressive!"...
by B. Gallanther in Downtown Music Gallery read full article
...”Even if they avoid any kind of processing, effects and electronics, they manages to keep their sound genuinely acoustic and impressively descriptive, so that you don't really need a review to understand what you're going to listen to!... ...The mere listening of a CD could deprive the listener of the pleasure of their bizarre ways for the transfiguration of double-bass, as I'm pretty sure you'll wonder about the techniques and objects they used to turn their musical instruments into squawking chickens ("Chicken Talk"), shredders ("How Long Does It Take Styrofoam To Become Earth Again?"), power saws ("Sawing Logs"), angry dogs ("Dog Bite"), beloved fetishes ("Kissing F-holes"), resounding behives ("Buzzing Bees"), innuendos ("Serene Moment", "Bonanza's Nuts", "Witch Tricks") or authentic sonic set designer ("Highway To Hell", "Industrial Romance"). I've just listed a part of the wide sonic mimicry this creative couple of musicians collected in 22 wacky sketches. I'll leave you the pleasure to explore the remaining sketches of pure sonic camouflage”...
by Vito Camarretta in Chain D.L.K. read full article
Un duo de contrebasses préparées avec une grande diversité de propositions sonores souvent surprenantes et contrastées. Vingt-deux morceaux focalisés chaque fois sur des idées originales. Ces deux as du bruitage fomenté nous servent des grondements qui déraillent ou s’enfoncent dans le sub-grave, des vibrations de baguettes entre les cordes, des grincements réellements musicaux ou quasi-vocalisés, des battements de cordes contre la touche, le tout en s’aidant de multiples objets. Absence de phrases « contrebasse » même free et aucun de ces sons boisés caractéristiques. Froissements et accidents sonores et jeux expressifs entre bruitisme et construction musicale qu’ils superposent à tout va et qu’ils ont l’art de conclure avec un relâchement absolu dès que l’oreille se met à suivre le déroulement. Moins un dialogue qu’un jouer ensemble avec une connivence totale : qui joue quoi ? Ces bruissements inventifs nous font découvrir des sons très souvent inusités qui revisitent créativement les duos de contrebasses des Kowald, Léandre et Barre Phillips. Certains sons me rappellent les groincements éléphantesques ou les cris de baleine en danger de Peter Kowald il y a très longtemps quand le Globe Unity Orchestra s'arrêtait net. A écouter. by Jean-Michel van Schouwburg in Orynx read full article
...”Suspicious Activity propose 22 vignettes musicales explorant diverses combinaisons de préparations et de techniques étendues. Toutefois, on n’a pas l’impression d’un catalogue: l’album se tient bien, l’écoute nous transportant d’une atmosphère à l’autre. Les titres imagés (“buzzing bees”, “mating whales”) dirigent trop l’écoute, mais c’est ma seule critique. Pour le reste, c’est un disque brillant”...
by François Couture in Monsieur Délire
...”Sean Ali and Pascal Niggenkemper create an original sonic language by preparing their acoustic basses with items including kitchenware, aluminumcans, lampshades and other objects. The resulting reverberations end up sounding as if they could come from a variety of other instruments. Suspicious Activity unrolls during 22(!) short tracks and neither electronics nor processing is present on any of PascAli’s selfdescribed “little monster children”. And with the minitune times ranging from 54 seconds to less than four minutes, there’s no space for prolonged expression.
But the triumph of this CD’s program is how many unexpected textures the two can produce acoustically without interest or ideas flagging. With the re-jigged bass strings allowing them to use extended techniques in a unique fashion, at points the warm woodiness of the basses is almost completely absent. Instead string friction, scrubs and stretches expose canine-like yelps and barks, aviary-like squeaks and squeals, car motor grinds, log-sawing and what could be throat-clearing.
On “Witch Tricks”, for instance, one man’s bass screams as if screws are being driven into its body as the other player outputs narrow snarls that could come from an English horn. On “Chicken Talk” the parallel, though never harmonious, string stops take on altissimo properties usually associated with reed instruments. Mallet blows suggest pick-axe patterns from one bull fiddler as the other sympathetically strums and twangs on “Japanese Garden”. Narratives may also involve quirks such as Ali and Niggenkemper sounding col legno strokes from scroll to spike during “Mechanics at the Balloonparty” or tightening and loosening the strings while vibrating them on “Serene
Moment”. Yet despite these mad-scientist-like experiments, there’s never a question that the properties of the acoustic double bass itself is the center of this research.
This focus is what makes Transatlantic and Suspicious Activity valuable, not only as listening experiences but as glimpses into the bass’ continuing musical evolution”... by Ken Waxman in The New York City Jazz Record & Jazzword.com