Started in Spring 2005 with a series of recordings, this collaboration is motivated by Maurizio’s need to explore the sonic potential of metric-freed percussion instruments, with Isambard’s desire of matching software electronics with acoustic sound at its richest and most varied timbric expression.
Maurizio’s set-up makes only a partial use of conventional instruments (two surdos, Tibetan bowls, few cymbals), but it expands on a wide extent in the realm of found objects, employing a palette of kitchen utensils, marbles, film tapes, magnolia leaves, and different components from industrial machineries.
Isambard’s contribution to the sound construction is non-generative. He does not produce any sound of his own with his laptop; he picks up, instead, the sound created by the acoustic instruments, processes it in real time (mainly using Max/MSP software) and plays it back to Maurizio as a mode of conversation.
The duo’s music is mostly improvised, and predominantly concrete in the use of the instrumentation.
In an ideal stage situation the acoustic instruments are not amplified, and Isambard’s speakers are placed very close to the performing musician. An area, both physical and sonic, is created in this way, within which the two performers work at generating one single and undivided sound output. No one is accompanying anybody else; both performers occupy the same sound zone, and are, under all perspectives, playing one single four-handed meta-instrument.