Reviews 2087
Italian guitarist Archetti and Swiss cellist Wiget are improvisers who wring unusually accessible electro-acoustic soundscapes from minimal resources. These 14 tracks proffer a spare, warm-toned, vaguely melancholy marriage of classical modernism, organic drones and the darker end of immersive, eno-esque ambience.
Mojo (UK)
Luigi Archetti & Bo Wiget continue their partnership that started in 1998 with Low Tide Digitalis III (RCD2087). Archetti, guitarist & mandolin player, but also visual artist, is not only profiled by Animals of the Night with the Guru Guru drummer Mani Neumeier and Guru Guru himself, with whom he Wischiwaschi such as Wah Wah (1995) & Moshi Moshi (1997), but also recorded the respectable In the Guru Lounge (2005). His 16 year younger partner on cello and - like Archetti - Electronics, has already earned laurels on the theater stage in addition to projects like Both Messies or the cello duo with Simon Lenski. The ebb here is again electro-acoustically drenched, sometimes as sonorous and droning minimalist as melancholic chamber music by Gavin Bryars ('piece 25', partly 'piece 34') or covered in sadness like the cellistic memento mori with desert guitar ('piece 35), mostly full of dream-caprician oddities that are not always easily assigned to an instrument. Standing waves, more organized or accordionistic than guitaristic, are more likely to baffle the imagination than to furnish them with ambient furniture. Rough feedback growls through fine webs of string, electronic pinching and chirping sparkle timbres of color that seem to slowly float in the room. Gentle cello strokes, fluffy brushed guitar strings, pizza ringtones, polished loops, stinging or pulsating noise open the view, as otherwise only modern art can do, abstract, minimal, concrete, op, informal ... which are not always easy to assign to an instrument. Standing waves, more organized or accordionistic than guitaristic, are more likely to baffle the imagination than to furnish them with ambient furniture. Rough feedback growls through fine webs of string, electronic pinching and chirping sparkle timbres of color that seem to slowly float in the room. Gentle cello strokes, fluffy brushed guitar strings, pizza ringtones, polished loops, stinging or pulsating noise open the view, as otherwise only modern art can do, abstract, minimal, concrete, op, informal ... which are not always easy to assign to an instrument. Standing waves, more organized or accordionistic than guitaristic, buff the imagination rather than furnishing it in an ambient way. Rough feedback growls through fine webs of string, electronic pinching and chirping sparkle timbres of color that seem to slowly float in the room. Gentle cello strokes, fluffy brushed guitar strings, pizza ringtones, polished loops, stinging or pulsating noise open the view, as otherwise only modern art can do, abstract, minimal, concrete, op, informal ... Electronic pinching and chirping sparkles sound bodies that seem to slowly float in space. Gentle cello strokes, fluffy brushed guitar strings, pizza ringtones, polished loops, stinging or pulsating noise open the view, as otherwise only modern art can do, abstract, minimal, concrete, op, informal ... Electronic pinching and chirping sparkles sound bodies that seem to slowly float in space. Gentle cello strokes, fluffy brushed guitar strings, pizza ringtones, polished loops, stinging or pulsating noise open the view, as otherwise only modern art can do, abstract, minimal, concrete, op, informal ...
Bad Alchemy (DE)
Third and probably the last part of the “Low Tide Digitals” by the duo of the Italo-Swiss, who is present in the visual arts as well as in music, and the Confederate who studied cello in Austria - on the Norwegian label we trust. Archetti commutes between advanced electronics, background guitar and the herb rock band Guru Guru, as a casual actor and with luminaries like Lüdi, Bittova and Sugimoto, Wiget is bustling. All of this - and that Archetti & Wiget worked before the duo was founded in the improb band Affront Perdu - can be more or less heard from the pieces 24 to 37 that are collected on this CD. The two succeeded in creating an entertaining, never-flattened acoustic-meets-electronics album with many small facets, allusions, explosions, and associations. What a pity, that they don't spin the series of publications endlessly; but who knows what the finite is for.
Freestyle (AT)
Luigi Archetti, born in the Italian city of Brescia but long resident in Switzerland, and Norwegian Bo Wiget have arrived at the creative summit of their partnership with the third instalment of the Low Tide Digitals series. Like previous chapters, the record explores the fertile grounds connecting the purity of acoustic instruments (cello for Wiget, guitar and mandolin for Archetti, whose surname ironically translates as "little bows") with the superimposition of now inhospitable, now ear-cuddling landscapes making restrained use of electronics, handled by both artists. The basic principles behind these investigations are clearly audible: movement is scarce, weak tranquility suddenly destabilized by sepulchral hums and hollow spaces conscientiously probed in partially inimical atmospheres, with occasional stabbing distortion and dissonance woven in, as if Archetti and Wiget wanted us to appreciate their angelic creature's evil side. When these worlds are properly intertwined - as in the Eno-meets-lowercase broken silences of "piece 26", the ravishingly undressed grace of the skeletal masterpiece "piece 27", the shifting drones of "piece 31" and the glorious ascension of " Piece 37 "- we feel sheltered, privileged even.
Paris Transatlantic (FR)
Blandingen av acoustical instrument and electronic element foreign straktmodighet and avdempet eleganse. Archetti og Wiget forholder seg til lyd på en ytterst kresen måte. The 14 instrumental histories som fortelles he contrast and og dynamiske. Low Tide Digitals III holder god tyngde og tåler å bli veid opp mot det som ellers skjer på det electroakustiske feltet. Å skape lavmælt intensifies som trekker lytteren inn, he crevende. Luigi Archetti og Bo Wiget has a message about the holde p oppmerksomheten uten tippe over mot effektmakeri. 5/6.
Aftenposten (NO)
http://www.soundofmusic.nu (swedish)