Another creditable release from Martina Bertoni, the Italian cellist residing in Berlin – she continues to develop her technique of applying treatments and filters to her instrument, creating rich drone textures with endless possibilities.
At one level you could say the cello is just the “primary source” as the notes are hinting here, but Bertoni’s too good of a player to simply generate mindless tones ad infinitum, and I’d like to think it’s her fingering and bowing techniques that contribute most to the shape of these six compositions on Hypnagogia (KARLRECORDS KR097). Having used the word “shape”, we’d also need to point out that she veers away from conventional form and structure and leans more in the direction of taking the lines for a long walk across a cosmic park, with an extendable leash from the pet store of infinity where the manager offers you a choice measured in lightyears when you ask for a certain length. If the long form is where this player really stretches her sinews, then perhaps ‘Collided’ is one notable success, absorbing the attention of the listener like so much ink on blotting paper.
We enjoyed her Music For Empty Flats from 2021, which was an extended study in loneliness and doubt, but for today’s offering she sets herself two goals, or at least proposes two contextual brackets which we might use to peg her music. One of them is about hypnagogia itself, often a popular subject among experimental musicians, and although clinically the word is used to describe a particular state between sleep and waking, Martina Bertoni seems more interested in using it as a lever for her brain, a means whereby she can “tap into the pristine structures of the subconscious”. Score one for the latterday surrealism movement right there. The second framing device is Solaris, everyone’s favourite science-fiction exploration of sentient planets and ambiguous events, and she sidesteps the visionary piece of cinema by Tarkovsky in favour of the original novel by Stanislaw Lem. This choice is a good theme to explore, but it does tend to reframe the music as a “story”, something resembling a rather conventional movie soundtrack. Evidently I’m one who prefers her “bleaker” introverted mode, but this is still a strong record. (12/12/2022)