Dymny/Trilla – Cave Canem (2015)

Dymny/Trilla

Michał Dymny - electric guitar
Vasco Trilla - drums
Paulina Owczarek - baritone saxophone (6,8)

Cave Canem

FMR 399



By Adam Baruch

This is an album by a duo comprising of Polish guitarist Michał Dymny and Portuguese/Catalan drummer Vasco Trilla. Polish saxophonist Paulina Owczarek guests on a couple of tracks. The album presents nine pieces, assumed to be spontaneous improvisations, which are not specifically credited on the album's artwork.

The content of this album is a typical radical avant-garde offering, which can only be considered as "music" under the most flexible definition of the term. There is plenty of sound creation and even interplay, but devoid completely of any melodic or harmonic substance this Art Form is accessible to a very narrow audience, and even then mostly live on stage rather than in recorded form. The two tracks with Owczarek participating are strikingly more accessible by the way.

But searching and exploring is an essential part of the artistic process and has its place among the many Improvised Music/ambient recordings, even if it is able to reach a limited audience. The fact that the musicians/performers are able to cooperate and communicate within this sonic environment is already a proof that such experimentation has its justification.

The question of course is if this music is able to make listeners place this album in the player more than once? I am not qualified to judge it beyond my personal universe, but I rather doubt it. Nevertheless the fact that this music was recorded and released is a statement, which left a mark on the overall artistic fabric of our common universe, and is already fully valid as such. In order to be alive, music has to have its avant-garde, as much as it needs its mainstream. Therefore these efforts, which might seem extreme and narcissistic at one point of time, might prove to be prophetic some time in the future. Who can tell?