Altered Egos by Ernesto Rodrigues, Florian Stoffner, Bruno Parrinha & João Madeira

Ernesto Rodrigues - viola, crackle box
Florian Stoffner - electric guitar
Bruno Parrinha - clarinet, alto saxophone
João Madeira - double bass

Reviews:
"For this short but intense album, about 35 minutes, three Portuguese musicians, double bass player João Madeira, Ernesto Rodrigues on viola, and Bruno Parrinha on alto sax and clarinet, are joined by the Swiss guitarist Florian Stoffner, a 360 degree musician who frequented both the creative area and the more orthodox jazz within his long career.
The guitar relates well in these collective improvisations in which we listen to each other carefully, without ever showing off our muscles thanks to the possibility of using an amplifier, everything is calm and very soft, sometimes on atmospheres more marked by free, elsewhere the dialogue it becomes more material but without anyone dominating the other participants.
The long association with the three Portuguese musicians obviously makes itself felt and this contributes to Stoffner's integration, so that a very intimate and engaging dialogue emerges, short but intense.
Everything is well mixed by the double bass player João Madeira, also an excellent contribution to grasp the essence of this music." VITTORIO LOCONTE, Kathodik.org

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"Turning straight back to another (quartet, in this case) release from Ernesto Rodrigues, and apparently my first review of a performance recorded in 2023 (in Lisbon last month), Altered Egos continues not only to elaborate a personal-collective style in the post-pandemic era, but prolific ongoing collaborations with Bruno Parrinha (here on both clarinet and alto sax) and Joao Madeira (double bass) in particular. Indeed, it seems an album such as Derive (a quintet, recorded at the end of last year), featuring all three, comes to mark the forging and refining of a new body of musical figures and practices, transformational practices once again as invoked by the Altered Egos title.
Joining that core trio for the latter then is Florian Stoffner (electric guitar) - whom I'd mentioned (in a March 2021 review) for his duo album with Paul Lovens, Tetratne on Hat - and Stoffner does inject some timbral variety, but mostly understated and seeking to blend. There's sometimes a ringing sense of electric guitar, especially for the first track of this relatively short album, but also a variety of glissandi and "elasticity" in general, a stark concluding landscape leading into more four-way free jazz counterpoint for the second track, more percussive and pointillistic, a more industrial (yet somehow zoomimetic...) feel developing only to fade away for the third and final....
There's thus a fairly typical arc for a new interaction, finding its way into what can become clearly articulated intricacy, in what can also seem (at least in the beginning) like a trio against a soloist. (And the eventual quartet sound is not so different from that of e.g. Aeon, as reviewed here in July, albeit with Flak on acoustic guitar and Rodrigues on violin.... Moreover, the latter is on crackle box here as well, something he also played on the new - likewise recorded in 2023 - Impromptu from Suspensao. For both though, the horn tends toward subtlety and color, less often centered or as strongly contoured as the strings....) In any case, it can be difficult to pick and choose what to discuss here, but the results from Rodrigues and Creative Sources seem to be in another particularly fertile (yet concentrated) period. In that fast-moving context then, Altered Egos did stand out to my ears overall for its detailed textural interactions and subtly lingering affect."-Todd McComb's Jazz Thoughts

Tracklist

1.	bitter butter	13:26

2.	tolerant talent	13:24

3.	beautiful irritation	7:12

Credits

released June 5, 2023

Recorded on March 10th 2023 in Lisbon.
Recording, mix and master by João Madeira.
Graphic design by Carlos Santos.
Cover art by Silena.
Production by Ernesto Rodrigues.

License