publisher description

This music does not fit under the umbrella of any musical genre. It would be a folk song if folk was a stream of consciousness. Add to that certain connotations of contemporary classical formats, and then subtract the mathematics, while also injecting a certain loose balance so characteristic of free improvised music. Yet again it’s just a distant impression, because they use graphical scores.

This idiomatic singularity results from the gathering of musicians with different languages. Adriana Sa comes from experimental music and visual arts, having created and performed with custom instruments combining acoustic elements, software and sensor technologies. To Trips is a blues inspired guitarist, the co-founder of the unique and puzzling country-fado-jazz-rock band Dead Combo; and John Klima was a member of the pop group who became The Presidents of the United States of America, many years before their MTV days.

String instruments are at the core of Timespine – a zither, a dobro, and a bass guitar. There are also occasional live sampling and percussion elements. But they service the flow of combining strummed, plucked, percussed, and bowed strings, all tuned unconventionally, at some moments acting like inconsistent drops of rain and at others suggesting the resultant turbulence of three rivers meeting. The river-meeting-music flows soft and slow, and abstract and in a non-linear way, becoming hypnotic and suspending time. This is a music without metrics, and without a clock – only human biological tempos are followed. The end result is a music that simply sounds great, as if Morton Feldman had a Portuguese guitar rather than a piano as the basis of his creativity.

Clean Feed

This album includes two pieces, as shown in the graphic score bellow. Both pieces were recorded in single takes. 

The first edition of this album is no longer available, but here is the music: Piece 1 and Piece 2.

graphic scores

technical credits

Recorded at Estudios Na Mouche, Lisboa, January 24th, 2013. Mastered by Joaquim Monte at Na Mouche.

Thanks to Joaquim Monte, Sei Miguel, André Gonçalves, Raquel Castro, Ricardo Webbens, Rafael Toral, Pedro Santos, Travassos and Rui Mantero.

There is a written interview by Festival Novas Frequências, Rio de Janeiro.

reviews

“The result of these three string instruments from different backgrounds meeting is nothing less than spectacular.” Freejazzblog

“The Timespine trio builds its music upon a graphical score. The sound inserts itself in an interval between aesthetics. It corresponds to a multi-cultural, highly contemporary vision.” jazz.pt

“One feels like listening to Timespine again and again, far from today’s confusion. It’s a disk to listen in silence, in enthusiastic meditation” Timeout Lisboa 21.01.2014

“The music from the trio Sá/Trips/Klima does not give in to delicacy. It prefers to travel through the calm, foggy environment, deliciously wrinkled.” Bodyspace

“A smashed up beauty “. Ipsilon

“The tracks flow softly, slowly, in abstract and non-linear ways, gaining a hypnotic character and suspensing time”. Hardmusica