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Here is the third volume of the HEPTAD book of compositions for seven string electric guitar by Álvaro Domene. Liner notes by Elliott Sharp: "Crystalline complexity sings in the third volume of Heptad, a new collection of solo pieces by Álvaro Domene for guitar and electronics. There's a subtle swing that shines throughout placing this music within the realm of jazz without ever falling prey to the cliches. Álvaro's style is very much his own yet we may hear hints of John Abercrombie, Anthony Braxton, and Thelonious Monk not to mention the intensity and virtuosity of Cecil Taylor or the mathematical bluesiness of Conlon Nancarrow's pieces for player piano. The sound is always clear and articulate yet warm - the use of electronics never renders the music cold nor clinical. Indeed, the effects vault the playing into the realm of the impossible with delays and pitch shifters being used not for Hollywood-style effects but to extend the range of Álvaro's instrument into deep bass and stratospheric treble while creating contrapuntal lines that swirl into fractal wisps. In addition to waves of notes, there are placid pools of harmonic stillness, all the better to frame the sonic maelstrom. Heptad offers the surprises of improvisation seamlessly combined with the satisfying arc of well-constructed compositions." - Elliott Sharp, November 2022. Make sure you listen to the first and second volumes to experience the evolution of the Heptad sound and syntax: Volume I: ilusorecords.bandcamp.com/album/heptad Volume II: ilusorecords.bandcamp.com/album/heptad-volume-ii Credits Released December 2, 2022 Álvaro Domene: compositions, seven string electric guitar, audio engineering, and artwork. No overdubs. Published by Dometone Music BMI alvarodomene.com
"Heptad is stunning! Vivid, rich in sound and emotion, and packed with ideas." - Elliott Sharp “‘Heptad: Volume 1’ captures Álvaro in real-time performance mode. As he describes it, the pieces are composed and notated and then spontaneously interpreted for this album. All processing happens in the moment, with custom-programmed pitch delay algorithms that influence the final output. Its seven pieces reflect a diversity of approaches. Pulsing, percussive, ambient, ethereal, disquieting and lacerating are just a handful of words that reflect what you’ll hear.” – Anil Prasad (Innerviews.org) "Domene’s latest solo effort retains the extended range of his 7-string electric but favors a cleaner sound than usual. Also retained is his excellent sense of dynamics and compositional arc." - Michael Ross (guitarmoderne.com) "The second track "Attrition" is a great example of this during its nine-minute run. Essentially a suite, the track begins with a pulsating drive and sparkling reversed envelopes of sound, a pause leads to a more atmospheric second with spacious ringing tones and interesting counter motions, which split multi-directionally, but at times coalesce into driving rhythmic figures. Another track, 'Where The Universe Is Set On Cold Fire' sounds like a self-aware Theremin singing of a broken heart. Fascinating. The album is replete with inventiveness. Bring on Vol 2!" - Paul Acquaro (freejazzblog.org)
"Standards, the new album from Domene and frequent collaborator Álvaro Pérez is out now via Iluso Records, and, in typical Domene fashion, it's an absolute brain-buster. If you're into the truly avant-garde side of jazz and guitar music, it’s well worth your time. The take on Mancini’s “Days of Wine and Roses” is one of those sublime moments when experimental music also hits you straight in the heart." - Wolf Rambatz "What the two Álvaros have done here is unique and novel. Jazz standard playing means many different things to many different players and listeners. Here, these two gentlemen have found new implications and personal expressions for standards that nobody has ever approached or explored before. They have brilliantly illuminated aspects of the standards recorded here that no past listeners have ever been exposed to. I suggest you listen with open ears and open minds and prepare to be astonished. Prepare yourselves not to be cuddled and coddled by the familiar expectations of listening to jazz musicians playing standards that have been played millions of times before. Be prepared for a listening voyage through time warps and space warps to new dimensions; far beyond where ANY jazz players have been before." - Henry Kaiser
Musical gestures come to life and evolve in Álvaro Domene’s ‘Torsion’. From superimpositions of dense polyrhythms, interlocked scale shifts, to sonics as strata and atmospheric layerings: there is an orientation to overall structures and a simultaneous intense focus on local texture and timbre, a curiosity for micro kernels of motifs and phrases which then give way, scale shifting and voiced by the guitar, to joyous, raging, leaping legatos across a complex percussive soundscape, and then again to vaster, orchestrally textured landscapes. Conceptually, what drives this project? Is it concerned, as one title suggests, with the erosion of sound? Or the erosion of the tools of sound, leading to a collapse and fusion between systems? The pillars of ostinato and recognizable, partly stable rhythms undergird a cloud of unknowing, a reverse labyrinth in registers above. The guitarist’s mind splits and flies mercurial across the other passages of this labyrinth. Textures grained in foreground and farther away, immersive, all clamor for attention: overlapping syntagmas of rhythm and timbre. Pure pleasure of sound and musical formalisms. And cognition in flux.
