Ferran Fages : Acoustic guitar
Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga : Zither

ap’strophe is the duo of Ferran Fages and Dimitra Lazaridou Chatzigoga. They began working together in 2006, when Ferran Fages recorded his last guitar album “Cançons per a un lent retard”, where Dimitra Lazaridou Chatzigoga collaborated in the track Paraula clau, which they composed and interpreted together. After recording the album they realized the impossibility of re-interpreting this piece, which is based on the detuning(s) of the guitar, but they decided to continue working together. They decided to treat the piece Paraula clau as finished and started to search for a common sonoric space. The result of this survey gave shape to their present collaboration, which consists of a duo of acoustic guitar and zither. With their music they investigate the perception of the distinctive timbre of the guitar and the zither alongside the differences and similarities of their string instruments.

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Commenting on the title he gave to the first album by ap’strophe, Michalis Kyratsous writes (read this after the jump):

By applying the title “objects sense objectes” I wanted to throw some light on the paradoxes of the function of objects (object, objecte) within the field of contemporary improvised music, as they appear and operate in this first release by the duo ap’strophe. The forms that emerge from these four musical ‘exercises’ are essentially lacking, or rather moving away from what could be called objectual precision. Here we are dealing with forms that are constructed by ‘determinate’ objects, emerging from the organization of ‘determinate’ material, but, at the same time, eagerly transcending the logical determinations and the certain limits of a simple, empirical sonoric realization. The method in play is neither the suture of various schemas nor the putting together of several acoustic signs. One might describe its particularity (idio-morphy) as a procedure of overloading, as a gradation of signifiers (sense), or an approximation of an autonomous discourse –all the above being recurrent phenomena, proper to the nature and practice of improvised music of the last four decades (whose ontogenesis begins in the mid sixties, though no one was nor is listening…). All this is in consonance with the philosopher Michel Serres, who in his book on senses affirms: “A sound event does not take place, but occupies space, even if the source – its cause- often remains vague…”. This complex treatment of object and discourse allows us to consider the ambiguous nature, and why not, the essence of this entity, of this musical genre that was recently described by critics as “electroacoustic improvisation” (but, beware, the term improvisation shall not decide on the end, the telos of this music, it rather pretends to signify a modulation, a way of treatment, of realization of the musical material, with the simultaneous application of a restriction of contents). This is where ap’strophe are departing from and through the recording of ‘objects sense objectes’ they are raising the following questions: Is representation (material, form, content) the basic reality we must start from? What it is that we find through the articulation, the encounter of liberty with causality (identification through categories), in music and other fields? Can we create pure situations of psycho-physio-acoustic stimulation?

For more info, pictures & samplers:
http://www.etuderecords.com
http://www.myspace.com/etuderecords

http://www.lasospechosa.org