*200 copies limited edition.* Guitarist Clara de Asís and flutist Mara Winter established Discreet Editions in order to locate and highlight links between ancient and contemporary, experimental approaches to music making. Adrián Demoč’s Sen, the label’s third release, treats that mission with especial seriousness. Dusted’s review of Adrián Demoč’s Žiadba meditated upon the ways that the Slovakian composer’s practice confounded the limits of statehood. This time, he has expanded one of that album’s pieces into something that transcends the boundaries of time. In its original incarnation, “A Luca Marenzio” distilled the polyphony of a passage by its dedicatee, a Renaissance-era maker of madrigals, into something more soberly monophonic.
Sen comprises a rearrangement of that piece, plus two more, all performed by a small combo using mainly instruments that went out of fashion around the time that England’s American colonies swapped king for country-hood. The quintet uses cornetto muto, viola da gamba, gittern, plectrum lute, gothic harp and a nicely new-fangled organ.
CD comes in a 4-panel cardboard eco-pack. Digital Booklet included.
Jedediah Allen, cornetto muto
Anna-Kaisa Meklin, viola da gamba
Lukas Frank, organ
Julia Marty, gittern
Rui Stähelin, plectrum lute
Carolin Margraf, gothic harp
Composed by Adrián Demoč, 2021
« A Luca Marenzio », originally composed in 2018, is a 2021 revision
Recorded and mixed by Clara de Asís in March 2021
Mastered by A.F. Jones, Laminal Audio
Cover design by Discreet
Image: Wall fresco (detail), medieval church of Turňa nad Bodvou, Slovakia Photograph by Ján Sudzina