El Jardín de las Matemáticas LP

The results are a wild mix of folk, ethnomusicology, musique concrete and psychedelia.

Credits:

Alvaro Daguer, Pablo Picco, Tomás Salvatierra & Mark Harwood.

Grabación y primera mezcla por Tomás Salvatierra & Alvaro Daguer en el estudio portátil de ETCS Records entre Enero y Julio del año 2023 en Santiago de Chile. Grabación y mezcla por Pablo Picco en Salsipuedes, Córdoba, Argentina entre Abril y Julio del año 2023.

Recording and first mix by Tomás Salvatierra & Alvaro Daguer in the portable studio of ETCS Records between January and July 2023 in Santiago de Chile. Recording and mixing by Pablo Picco in Salsipuedes, Córdoba, Argentina between April and July 2023.

Edición y master final en Berlín, Alemania por Mark Harwood entre Junio y Septiembre 2023 / Edited and final mix by Mark Harwood, Berlin, July 2023 – January 2024

Masterizado y cortado por Rashad Becker en Clunk, Berlín, Septiembre de 2023 / Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Clunk, Berlin January 2024

Obra de Fonia Quimoz / Artwork by Fonia Quimoz

Reviews:

“El Jard​í​n de las Matem​á​ticas (The Garden of Mathematics) is a first time cross-continental collaboration between four musicians who each occupy different corners of the global experimental music scene. The group comprises of Mark Harwood (head of the tape music label Penultimate Press) from Melbourne, Australia, Pablo Picco (known for his wide-spanning Bardo Todol project) from Salsipuedes, Argentina, and Alvaro Dauger and Tomás Salvatierra from the Chilean free-folk group Glorias Navales. Each artist brings their own perspective to this self-titled record, but there’s clearly a deep musical understanding being shared here. The result is a free-flowing, yet cohesive, statement of folkloric sonic abstraction.

The music reaches even further than the global experimental pedigree of the musicians involved would suggest, and the most immediate influence on this record seems to be the ethnographic recordings proliferated on labels such as Ocora and Lyrichord in the 1960s and 1970s. Though these recordings often captured extensive musical traditions, the unimpeded presentation of the recordings reflected a radical inclination that was in line with contemporaneous innovations in electronic and improvised music. El Jard​í​n de las Matem​á​ticas represents the nexus of ethnomusicology, improvised music, and (perhaps most unique to this record) the DIY tape music that informs much of Harwood’s work on Penultimate.

“Las palabras fueron Sonido / Words were sounds” opens the record with a steady drumbeat rhythm and soaring streams of flutes. The shakers and flutes call to mind traditional trance-inducing ritual music, counterpointed by clattering tape hiss. The record is filled with a dense atmosphere and tension, evoking the feeling of maintaining direct eye contact across a crowded forest. But perhaps the most gripping aspect of the record is how colorful and alive the entire process is. The most impressive track on the record is “El problema de Suslin / Suslin’s Problem,” which includes what sounds like a prepared acoustic guitar and a restless, ominous hum permeating throughout. The tension is augmented by tape recordings playing in reverse, but then about halfway through the acoustic guitar comes to the center, and it’s unabashedly pretty. As murky and mysterious as this record may be, at its core there is a deep sense of joyfulness. John Cage described music as simply an affirmation of life, and El Jard​í​n de las Matem​á​ticas fully realizes this understanding of music in its most elemental sense.”

by Levi Dayan – Dusted Magazine

“The Garden of Mathematics is a multicultural project written and recorded by Mark Harwood, director of the Penultimate Press record label, from Melbourne, Australia; Alvaro Dauger of the Chilean folk/experimental group Glorias Navales/A Full Cosmic Sound/ETCS Records; Tomás Salvatierra also from Glorias Navales and Pablo Picco, known for his work as Bardo Todol, from Salsipoders, Argentina. All of these musicians played entirely by experimenting with natural and manufactured/found sounds.The self-titled album consists of seven tracks whose backbone is improvisation with doses of folk, musique concrete and psychedelia, in which Chinese drum, ocarina, shakers, flutes, whistles, violin, bells, acoustic guitar, gongs, clarinet, n’vike, harmonium, Korg ms-20, moceño, ribbons. owl flute, among other instruments and artifacts that produce an atonal sound amalgam. It includes musical fragments, voices and other sounds or noises produced by the musicians, some of them recorded in the environment.

The atmosphere that is breathed has hints of South American indigenous music, creating a meditative space and direct contact with the natural environment.

The album opens with “Words were sounds” that begins with a persistent drum, while a spiral of flutes/ocarinas flirt through the air and the shakers vibrations spread and the brief notes of the harmonium splash. In the self-title track the rattle of crudely rubbed strings emerges and come to the point of creaking, whereas the clarinet meanders, the whistles and the ocarina generate a primitive atmosphere that continues in “Mountain Lights” with the syncopated percussion, the ceremonial flute and the gong unfold a mysterious atmosphere. “Suslin’s Problem” displays an out-of-tune violin recorded on a tape in reverse, the bells and the timid acoustic guitar chords weaving a harmonic game. In “The Fat Golem” the birdsong coalesces with a drone between the flutes, then the harmonium surges that beautifies the sacred space where everything flows. In “The Math Owl” the flutes predominate over a variety of noises. Close the album “Goat Grazing” in which the farmers’ screams herding the sheep can be listen, feeling a direct connection with those forgotten trades.

The harmony between the musicians allows a pastoral, intimate tone to prevail on this album, with a connection to Earth, to nature, but also to small and complex noises, as well as simple and more abstract details.”

Guillermo Escudero – Loop Magazine