Eyal Hareuveni (Percorsimusicali) on Suite by Marco Fusi and Pierre Alexandre Tremblay
Marco Fusi is an Italian violinist and violist, a researcher in music performance, and a passionate advocate for the music of our time. His PhD from the University of Antwerp focused on the performance practice of Giacinto Scelsi’s works for string instruments. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Artistic Research at HEMU Lausanne and an Associate Researcher at the Orpheus Instituut in Ghent.
Pierre Alexandre Tremblay is a Québécois composer, bass guitarist, and electroacoustic musician, now residing in Huddersfield, where he teaches composition and improvisation at the University of Huddersfield.
Suite is a six-movement “Baroque encounter,” or a “first dance,” as the Bead label calls it, that documents the first-ever free improvised meeting between Fusi, playing violin and viola d’amore, and Tremblay, playing bass guitar and electronics, at the University of Huddersfield in November 2023. Fusi performed Tremblay’s composition “Encounter 1.4“, with Tremblay on his album Wired Resonances (Huddersfield Contemporary, 2025). The cover artwork is by painter Sebastien Robinson, who also did the cover artwork for Fusi’s collection of American composer Evan Johnson’s compositions, Dust Book (another timbre, 2025).
This meeting explores and investigates electroacoustic resonances and timbres of Fusi’s string instruments and Tremblay’s effects-laden bass and electronics with their static noise, as they unfold across space, stirred by sonic memories and shifting emotional states. Obviously, such an elaborate, complex dance demands deep listening for the distinct sonic languages, palettes, and gestures. But the immediate, thoughtfu, and always inventive abstraction of these gestures transforms them into coherent yet unpredictable and enigmatic statements, without losing their urgent sense of discovery. It also suggests that contemporary, extended bowing techniques may integrate organically and enrich the art of the moment, blurring the distinction between free music and avant-garde, contemporary music.
Squidco on Suite by Marco Fusi and Pierre Alexandre Tremblay
Bowed resonance, baroque memory, electric bass vibration and electronic transformation merge into a tactile electroacoustic dialogue of gesture, space, memory and shifting emotional tension.
Andrzej Nowak (Spontaneous Music Tribune) on Suite by Marco Fusi and Pierre Alexandre Tremblay
The legendary British label Bead Records, revived a few years ago by Norwegian drummer Emil Karlsen, consistently delivers intriguing albums, usually in black-and-white covers. The artistic output often results in unconventional juxtapositions of acoustic instruments and electronics.
The album Suite is another example. The violin, also in a period version, engages in a lush dialogue with the bass guitar and the aforementioned electronics. A lot of good stuff happens during the nearly hour-long improvisation, divided into six special sections – be sure to listen, but first, read up.
The celebratory drumming on the strings and soundboard, the hum of the amplifier, and the nervous, synthetic echo, after the opening ritual is completed, quickly coalesce into a stream of something denser, more intense, even dirty. We also hear an acoustic creaking, likely directly from the violin's neck. The punchline of the first play is a painful chant emanating from both instruments and clinging to the gently coupling amplifier. The second story is more delicate, though it is composed of prepared phrases flowing in a unified, electroacoustic stream. A melody emerges, successfully interwoven with the ephemeral electronics.
In the next track, the constantly scuffed melody seems to dominate, and the whole thing even takes on a delicate folk flavor. The subtle rhythm lulls the artists into a meditative state, and the story soon takes on the qualities of a cooling ambient. Only the electric bass strings break the silence, sowing unrest, but the improvisation's conclusion is amicable, oily, drone-like. The fourth installment feels cleverly danceable, conducted with a slight predominance of non-acoustic sounds. The excitement mounts, but suddenly the synthetic layer fades, leaving only the bare strings of the violin and bass on the battlefield.
In the penultimate story, only acoustic strings perform, and the background is filled with an ominous ambient sound. The first strings begin to wail, floating in the air. The electronics take a journey in the opposite direction, into the depths of darkness. The improvisation's punchline is a rhythmic figure, crafted with perfectly clean phrasing from both string players. In the final story, the strings tick like clock hands or piano keys. An electroacoustic commotion nestles in the background, building tension. After a brief buildup, the narrative sprawls across a deep valley and dies.
Squidco on Quartetics by Reuben/Hanslip/Lash/Hession
Demonstrating how quickly committed improvisers can reach consensus, this newly unearthed session from 2019 preserved the first-ever quartet date by a group of UK-based players. Bassist Dominic Lash has worked with everyone from Alexander Hawkins to John Butcher; tenor saxophonist Mark Hanslip with the likes of Stephen Grew and Johnny Hunter; and drummer Paul Hession with Mick Beck and Simon H. Fell. What defines this 33 minute disc is how perceptively Costa Rica-born laptop manipulator Federico Reuben syncs his coded and processed creations to the others’ acoustic sounds.
An academic as well as an electro-acoustic player, Reuben has worked with the London Improvisers Orchestra and multiple sound innovators in smaller groups. Here his static, glitches, samples and live processing bring an additional element to the taut improvisations without upsetting the sonic flow. A fine instance of this is “Dog And Tooth”, where Reuben’s processing reflects back into the mix as Hanslip’s reed slide from smeary altissimo whorls and shakes to low-pitched snorts and tongue stops. Almost simultaneously his playing is underlined by Lash’s multi-string sweeps, with the piece concluded by combining Hession’s clatters and clunks with proliferating voltage-created glitches.
The bassist performs a similar linear function throughout the disc with thick pumps and cadenced pulses preserving the narrative flow. Meanwhile slurping reed cries and note-bending breaths are intertwined with flanged, stretched and echoing processing samples which create their own path as well as accompaniment. Reuben’s skilful keyboard manipulations are paramount on the concluding “Child Coordinates” as the saxophonist’s breathy puffs and basso snuffs are backed by processed piano patterns as if an avant Tommy Flanagan was backing an equally outside Ben Webster. Paced with a walking bass line, the ersatz keyboard finally reveals its electro-acoustic genesis after it suddenly begins sounding synthetic, music box and hurdy-gurdy-like tones presaging Hanslip snarling the same phrase over and over as a coda.
Seven years on, the music is still distinctive and inventive. It would be significant to hear how the four play together now.