sinonó - la espalda y su punto radiante (2024)

New York City-based Latinx vocalist, improviser and composer Isabel Crespo Pardo assembled sinonó to help bring their levitational poem-songs to life with a focus on abstraction, texture and sublime simplicity. The trio features Lester St. Louis - a New York-born improviser, composer and sound designer - on cello, Boston-born multi-instrumentalist, educator and bandleader Henry Fraser on double bass, and Crespo on vocals. 'la espalda y su punto radiante' ("the backbody and its radiant point” in Spanish) is a bold and sinewy suite that evolved mindfully as the players established their creative relationships. For Crespo to achieve the right balance between direction and openness, songs and improvisation, they needed to figure out a special kind of rapport. Before recording the album, sinonó went on tour, changing the compositions each night to suit their mood, or simply to explore new angles. "Everyone is a composer and improviser in their own right," Crespo explains. And each artist was given the room to imprint their own distinct personality. With this trust in place, the individual songs could shift and mutate while still feeling like a complete work.

"The process of the piece is the piece," Crespo adds, seeing ' la espalda y su punto radiante' as a suite unfolding as it was performed. Inspired by Jack Halberstam's iconic text 'The Queer Art of Failure', Crespo was motivated to investigate different kinds of precision, highlighting sonic artifacts instead of erasing them. What might those gestures and artifacts actually mean, and how might they add to the music's texture? On the opening tracks 'ofrendas’ and ‘qué estará pensando', Crespo's voice rises like a wave over rocky, percussive stings and drowned scrapes. When it threatens to fountain into a structured song, sinonó inevitably pulls it back into abstraction. There's a complex, interwoven narrative to the music that gushes from Crespo's poems. "I love songs," they admit, "but I also need the freedom to improvise, sculpting the music for that moment." So sinonó's open structures create their own reality, bending time and widening the liminal space between notes. Each piece allowed them to examine distinct emotional vignettes, taking risks and embodying flexibility in multiple dimensions.

The run of pieces from ‘ofrendas ii’ to ‘siento y sigo' is the album's centerpiece, initially focusing on Crespo's oscillating, rhythmic vocalizations that harmonize with Fraser's staccato plucks. St. Louis joins with frenetic, folk-inspired bursts of sound before the song changes pace in its middle stretch, gathering strength with its grandiose gestures. Then, it disintegrates into near silence; the track's final act is almost whisper-quiet, punctuated with fictile flourishes and spoken-sung phrases from Crespo that zig-zag into piercing screams. 'la espalda y su punto radiante' is a record that rewards the patient listener, allowing its songs to unfold organically, just like they did for the three players. Traveling from the solitude of Crespo's poems to the communion of shared improvisation, it's an experience that provokes empathy and imagination. Space itself is a musical language. And sinonó's space is filled with drama, warmth, intrigue, conflict, and resolution.

Tracklist:
1.01 - sinonó - ofrendas i (2:32)
1.02 - sinonó - qué estará pensando (7:03)
1.03 - sinonó - ofrendas ii (13:16)
1.04 - sinonó - entre paredes imaginarias (2:07)
1.05 - sinonó - siento y sigo (5:06)
1.06 - sinonó - gravedad (9:35)
1.07 - sinonó - la memoria (5:12)
1.08 - sinonó - sin tapar el sol (6:48)