This album (which bears no filiation with the Amsterdam improv trio Grand Mal) is a beautiful meeting between East Coast and West Coast free improvisers. Technically a first meeting, it is backed by a complex network of previous experiences between all four musicians. The music sounds fresh, exciting, and genre-pushing, and has been beautifully captured by engineer Myles Boisen. The defining personality of the session is Chicagoan Kyle Bruckmann. His double-reed instruments (oboe, English horn, and suona) unfold unusual sounds and he twists them around the other players, drawing a path through the maze of the music. Using circular breathing, he produces long shimmering drones. He occasionally takes a lot of space, eclipsing the other players (in "Shaking Palsy" in particular), but not to the point of disturbing the force. Ernesto Diaz-Infante and John Shiurba entangle their strings (acoustic and electric, respectively). Diaz-Infante provides mostly textures, his quiet playing involving guitar preparations and the use of a small fan at some point. Shiurba is more lively, throwing muffled chords like bumps on the ride or strident cries. Percussionist Karen Stackpole (a member of the Left Coast Improv Group, with Diaz-Infante) plays a delicate role. Sticking to hand-held instruments and cymbals, she flutters around the others, shaking, rubbing, rarely striking something loudly. Her sense of time and place is mostly impeccable -- Grand Mal could be her best session yet. The music sits comfortably on a tension line between maximalist and minimalist improv. Recommended.

Killer improvisations is what we have here. We didn´t expected any other than superb spontaneous music by Ernesto Díaz-Infante. Here we have three other improvisers with him: Kyle Bruckmann playing oboe and english horn, John Shiurba playing electric guitar and Karen Stackpole on percussion. From the first second the madness and imagination of this musicians is unleashed over the lsitener. Here there are over forty five minutes of pure improvisations and generation of musical ideas. Thisquartet of spontaneous musicians interact really well creating fascinating passages where the moods change fastly alternating fast parts with climatic slower ones. There is also a search for the ultimate sound of the instrument and also for the multiplicity of sounds that can be achieved on each of the isntruments present on this recording. Here you have to be really open minded to lsitenb to all the ten composaitions that the quartet presents here. A must for improvisers ans spontaneous music lovers.

Grand Mal, publicado em parceria com a editora de Ernesto Diaz-Infante (Pax Recordings) é o resultado de uma sessão de música totalmente improvisada que teve lugar no Dia de Ano Novo de 2001, algures em Oakland, Califórnia. Kyle Bruckmann (oboé, english horn, suona) já tinha tocado anteriormente com os guitarristas John Shiurba e Diaz-Infante, embora juntos não tivessem desenvolvido qualquer projecto musical consequente. Reunido o trio e estabelecidas as coordenadas, ter-lhes-á parecido adequado à criação do ambiente pretendido convocar a percussionista Karen Stackpole, instrumentista afiliada do género lyttonesco na abordagem das percussões, longe, portanto, do que se possa parecer com um tipo de tratamento convencional. Tudo menos convencional é esta música misteriosa que o quarteto explora intensamente ao longo de dez movimentos, percorrendo um leque diversificado de territórios já anteriormente visitados, mas susceptíveis de revelar insuspeitadas e interessantes (re)descobertas, relatadas em discurso colectivamente improvisado de progressão lenta. O propósito do colectivo aponta claramente no sentido da investigação pormenorizada e microscópica das texturas invulgares criadas pelas duas guitarras, eléctrica e acústica – dificilmente identificáveis como tal – sopros micro tonalistas no limite do audível e percussão espectral. A música é quase estática, ou por outra, evolui milimetricamente quase sem se dar por isso, tal como a vida no interior de um formigueiro, criando um murmúrio orgânico complexo, assaz delicado e plenamente satisfatório.

A branch of improvising artists with roots on the USA West Coast flourishes on not being satisfied with the status quo. These Bay Area renegades continue to push the envelope in search of that which is truly new. Their unique experimental environment has beckoned woodwind player Kyle Bruckmann from his Midwest abode on several occasions. On this trek, he unites with Ernesto Diaz- Infante, John Shiurba, and Karen Stackpole to form a union of sound processors submerged into one bubbling caldron of atonality. Bruckmann plays an unusual assortment of double reeds, including the oboe; its larger sized but lower pitched cousin, the English horn; and the Chinese suona, whose conical bell generates penetrating nasality. With the staccato string outbursts from Diaz-Infante and Shiurba gurgling around him, and delicately placed percussive punctuation marks from Stackpole surfacing through the cracks, Bruckmann takes eerie, calculated steps toward a world of unconventional sound production. He squeezes a tonal spectrum of high-pitched nuances out of his horns, while an irregular form of discordant cadence marks the rout-step procession into areas rhythm makers fear to tread. Ernesto Diaz-Infante is a charter member of the California alliance. He may be classified as a guitar player, but there is no avenue of sound he will not explore in his search for the purity residing along its corridors. Using any method available to eek stark messages from his acoustic instrument, Diaz-Infante turns the guitar into a form of primitive percussion device complete with frame raps and palm massages to counter-balance the sensitive string songs he very cautiously allows to escape from his magical bottle. Shiurba takes the electric avenue in seeking the source of truth. From blunted notes to high- volume cascades of amplification, he coexists in this strange sound world. His instrument at times emulates a motorized vehicle rushing over the highway hitting speed bumps that jar the output to form a tangled olio of music/noise/static. Stackpole weighs her input thoughtfully using gongs, bells, and miniature forms of percussion. She splatters the canvas with intuitively placed strokes to ensure the ride will not veer toward conventionality. When all these ethereal forces forge together, a strange new world of dawning knowledge emerges. The program gains momentum and descends in cloudbursts of multi-phonic signals to announce the collective meeting of four minds. It is music without any preconceived dictate on direction, yet the musicians arrive at their destination as though it were a planned route. The journey affords numerous challenges to the open mind, which in turn cleanses the soul through its chaste and fully unpredictable nature.