Caterina Barbieri & Bendik Giske
At Source
light-years
Let’s get this out of the way: At Source is a gorgeous record. Of course it is. The product of a long-brewing collaboration between modular synth sorceress Caterina Barbieri and saxophone wizard Bendik Giske, it’s a collection of four patiently sprawling compositions. Yet these these avant-garde composers don’t just play together; they engage in a kind of darkly hypnotic dance, with Barbieri’s twinkling arpeggios and Giske’s brassy tones constantly dipping and darting around each other like children engaged in a carefree game of tag.
As Barbieri explained in a recent First Floor interview, At Source was born out of a series of collaborative live shows, and listening to the record, it’s easy to imagine her and Giske duking it out on stage, pushing the limits of their chosen instruments as they worked to find a collective flow state. The music feels exploratory, and while the duo don’t shy away from marinating in the occasional meditative passage, much of the record sounds like they’re actively reaching out to the cosmos.
In other words, there’s a sense of grandeur at work. The standout “Impatience, Magma” stretches out across more than 11 intoxicating minutes, allowing Barbieri’s bright synths to slowly blossom before the warbles and wails of Giske’s saxophone elegantly flutter into the proceedings. Though his contributions to At Source never once feel unnecessarily showy, there’s something acrobatic about his playing; on “Alignment, Orbits,” Giske’s melodies nimbly sidewind through the composition like a garden snake, but it’s his percussive tapping of the sax keys that provide the track with a boost of rhythmic momentum.
At Source isn’t the sort of collaboration where two artists come together and forge something entirely new. Throughout the record, Barbieri and Giske sound undeniably like themselves, and while they’re both polite enough to occasionally step back and let the other take the lead, what ultimately makes At Source such a spellbinding listen is the way in which their individual crafts so clearly complement one another.