Adding to their already singular catalog of releases, Three:Four Records returns with Carnaval 2, a stunning new work by the composer Alessandro Bosetti, performed by pianist Reinier van Houdt. A vividly conceptual and post-modern hybrid, reinterpreting Robert Schumann's Carnaval as a radically reconsidered series of piano and electro-acoustic interludes - forcing the sensibilities and aesthetics of 19th Century chamber music to coexist with those of avant-garde - it's easily one of the singular and distinct albums we've encountered all year, and yet another proof that Bosetti is a peerless innovator within the landscape of contemporary experimental sound.
While rarely fully acknowledged in its totality, Europe is currently witnessing a renaissance of small independent labels, including the likes of Morc, Standard in-Fi, Bongo Joe, Stroom, Futura Resistenza, and numerous others, each casting aside traditional notions associated with genre and aesthetics to platform contemporary artists and work that ambitiously blur boundaries in vital new forms. Among the more noteworthy of these imprints is Three:Four Records, which spreads its activities between the cities of Lausanne, Paris, Rome and Marseille. Since its founding in 2008 by Gaëtan Seguin and Arnaud Guillet, the label has assembled an impressive catalog of releases by Annelies Monseré & Richard Youngs, La Tène, Razen, Giovanni Di Domenico, Delphine Dora, and Rafael Toral, to name only a few.

The Milan born, Marseille, France, based composer and sound artist, Alessandro Bosetti, has been working in the field of experimental sound for decades, constructing a singular practice heavily rooted in explorations of the musicality of language and sonorous aspects of voice and verbal communication, presenting various forms of vocalization as autonomous objects produced by an instrument of rare expression, seeking to deploy it as a dialogue between notions of language, the unique properties that define it, alongside broader perceptions of sound, within complex tonal and formal constructions that are often threaded by an oblique sense of irony. In addition to a striking catalog of works issued on imprints like Holidays, Unsounds, Sedimental, Die Schachtel, and numerous others, collaborations with the likes of Tony Buck, Chris Abrahams, Jennifer Walshe, Amelia Cuni, Axel Dörner, Annette Krebs, Giuseppe Ielasi, Phill Niblock, and Otomo Yoshihide, to name only a few, he has performed widely across the world and worked extensively at WDR's Studio Akustische Kunst in Cologne, Deutschlandradio Kultur in Berlin, and GRM in Paris.

Bosetti's latest, Carnaval 2, encounters the composer in a rare straying from his intensive focus upon the human voice, working primarily with a sonic palette of piano and electroacoustic practice (though, notably, the human voice does briefly present and feature within, and thus is not entirely absent). Despite sonic distinctions presented by Carnaval 2 within Bosetti's output, the underpinnings of his longstanding practice connected to complex reconsiderations of language, meaning, conceptualism, and humor, resonate deeply through the resulting body of work that comprises the album's two sides. Performed by pianist Reinier van Houdt, Carnaval 2 stems from Bosetti and van Houdt's shared interest in Robert Schumann's Carnaval, a series of 21 short pieces composed for solo piano between 1834 and 1835, that represent masked revelers at Carnival. Perhaps even more fascinatingly in this context, as Carnaval 2 is a reinterpretation of Schumann, the original 21 pieces of Carnaval originated as a set of variations on a Sehnsuchtswalzer by Franz Schubert, adding further depths to Bosetti's resulting work.

Keeping in mind the composer's predilection for humor and play in his work, it seems noteworthy that the piece that Bosetti chose for reinterpretation embarks upon auditory depictions of tricksters and mischief. Carried into being by Reinier van Houdt's virtuosic playing, the outcome could be perceived to internalize the sensibilities of Robert Schumann's Carnaval, rather than attempting a faithful interpretation. Bosetti makes their echoes his own, having meticulously crafted the album's 12 pieces (rather than Schumann's original 21) over the duration of six years from their inception at a residency at GMEM studios in Marseille, into dancing, deeply emotive and imagistic melodies and lines, framed by stunning radical shifts into subversive electroacoustic passages and interludes, as though Bosetti has distilled the essence of Schumann into a series of harmonically rich and complex drones. The result is a post-modern hybrid with no easily recalled equivalent - forcing the sensibilities and aesthetics of 19th Century chamber music to coexist with those of avant-garde (minimalism and electroacoustic practice) - that makes no attempt to explain or reconcile the resulting disjunctures. The navigation of perceived conflict and humor is left to the listener alone.