Lina Allemano is a trumpet player so multi-faceted, she requires multiple projects to adequately explore the breadth of her artistry. Already within this space, we’ve taken a look at the electro-acoustic quartet Titanium Riot, the all-acoustic quartet Lina Allemano Four and the power trio Ohrenschmaus. This time around, we’re delving into the electric-acoustic duo BLOOP with effects thaumaturge Mike Smith and their maiden offering Proof.
As we mentioned above, Allemano already has an electro-acoustic venture, but for BLOOP, she is both wholly the acoustic part and the conduit for the electro part, playing trumpet sometimes with one hand as she plays percussion with the other one. Smith, meanwhile, processes the horn sounds in real-time. It’s live-time, too, as these tracks were cut without edits or overdubs and the music was made up on the spot. As filter-free creativity goes, it doesn’t get purer than this.
On “Enchantments,” you can clearly hear the trumpet in its unadulterated form with a warped version of the same trumpet figures playing right alongside it, or sometimes slightly delayed. The mostly note-less “Decanted” goes even further away from the ordinary: Allemano’s puffs and smears altered, looped, sampled, you name it. Smith effectively turns that trumpet into some exotic percussion instrument.
The billowing trumpet echoes on “Recanting” are made more interesting by Allemano’s use of mutes, which while organic don’t often sound that way. Smith loops Allemano’s trumpet parts over each other on “Oracle of Chanterelle,” creating the illusion of there being three Allemanos instead of one. That this was done spontaneously and still sounding perfectly coherent (and musical!) is the astonishing part.
Echoes also dominate “Actual Bloop” but this time the notes are largely played choppy at first and the fading loops run longer. To apply these effects to a trumpet is pretty peculiar but for “The Nestlings (Metamorphosis)”, Allemano is also using whistles and other oral sounds that sound altogether alien when Smith stretches, contorts and samples them.
The solemn “Cremini Oracle” is given more heft by judicious use of sampling/looping; a song that would sound fine raw and natural achieves more depth with the tactical aid of technology.
The ten-minute “The Summoning” is almost like a summation of the ploys introduced in the prior tracks, an instantaneous amalgam of organic and synthetic. Experiments with combining these two worlds on the fly can be a risky proposition but Lina Allemano and Mike Smith have it all figured out and the Proof is in the pudding.
Proof will ship on or around April 11, 2021 from Bandcamp.
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