Alfredo Costa Monteiro
NYX
CD (E92)
NYX is a live piece combining real-time and pre-
recorded turntable manipulations and environ-
mental sounds which were carefully selected
for their particular grain and relevance. The live
and pre-recorded sounds are mixed together
in such a way that they become almost indistin-
guishable from one another. The piece on the
whole attempts to convey the telluric forces
present in darkness.
Alfredo Costa Monteiro is a Portugese artist
living and working in Barcelona. He plays accor-
dion, electric guitar, turntable, electro-acoustic
devices and resonant objects.
First edition of 300 copies
Photograph by Dimitra Lazaridou Chatzigoga
NYX is a tense, nervous affair that often breaks
out into really very violent moments of sharp,
abrasive noise. For the most part the sounds
we hear are subtle, gentle lulls and rumbling,
growling textures, but these stop and start in
slabs, which feel almost randomly placed like
a small child’s building blocks. Every so often
though a brittle, barbed crackle might rip across
the textures, or a sudden hit of white noise will
appear, often cutting dead as sharply as it began,
leaving deep hollows in the music in the spaces
they vacate.
There is a deeply angry feel to this thirty-seven
minute piece, but rather than building steadily
into the usual all-out assault that noise music
often slides into, NYX stops and starts, broods
and sulks, luring the listener into a false sense
of safety before hitting them again. The sounds
here are mostly familiar, grainy static and electro-
acoustic hisses, the sound of a turntable cartridge
passing over rough surfaces, the whine of feed-
back and the uncertainty of electronic screeches
but the intensity of the music comes from the
construction of the work, which is carefully
composed to make the most of the jarring effect
that each sound enters and exits with.
If Costa Monteiro set out to portray something
of the depth and qualities of darkness then he
has achieved it here. Listening carefully is a bit
like wandering around unfamiliar narrow streets
in the dark. Every little sound alerts you, every-
thing feels alive, and turning a corner to be
suddenly faced by a dramatic noise, as happens
several times in this album frightens you out of
your skin. Maybe not one for those of a nervous
disposition then, but an enjoyable ride for the
rest of us.
Richard Pinnell at The Watchful Ear
—
The performance is split into three sections
of pronounced activity, bracketed with quiet
tactile cracklings emerging from silence.
In each of these sections, rarefied tones echo
through magnetic hums and muffled howls,
looking as if they build as a gradual crescendo;
however, Monteiro upends these trajectories
with harsh bursts of sibilant noise and scab-
rous metallic scrapings. The interplay between
all of the sound elements is both cryptic and
dynamic, while never overworked through
effects or treatments. Electroacoustics in
fine style.
Jim Haynes in The Wire