Partial Knowledge
New Focus, 2024
9/10
The first solo portrait album from the composer Adam Mirza, the 7 selections were penned between 2006 and 2022 and welcome some well known names in the area of chamber sounds.
“Reading: (A Mish-Mash) For A Man/I Will Never” begins with loadbang’s inimitable sounds that recruit eccentric winds, horns and voices to a collage of noise, and “Triangles” follows with Alice Teyssier’s flute, Josh Modney’s violin and Cory Smythe’s piano interacting with tense bouts of cinematic and unpredictable gestures.
“Growth” and “QXTR” arrive in the middle. The former is fueled by the Unheard-of//Ensemble and meshes genres with a bit of a haunting quality, while the latter spotlights the Mivos Quartet’s quivering strings amid a blurry sci-fi execution.
Deeper into the creativity, “Shared” allows for the Amorsima Trio’s minimal bouts of atypical and intriguing songwriting, and Olivia De Prato’s violin soundtracks “Time Patterns”, which ends with string acrobatics that few others could replicate.
A highly curious blend of unsynchronized parts, live electronics and spoken text, every moment is artistic, unclassifiable and exciting in its modern chamber presence.
Travels well with: David Fulmer- Immaculate sigh of stars; Arthur Levering- OceanRiverLake