kind words courtesy of louis pattison. the wire 399. may 2017.
It starts with a shouted “Hiken!”, and the Argentinian duo Elgier and Quinteros immediately let fly. He plays piano, she plays cello, and together they make more racket than most quartets, their chaotic improv conducted with a jerky energy that verges on the comedic. Explosive moments are balanced by subtler passages where the pair hunker down, working microscopically at their instruments with the surprising grace of a contortionist folding himself into a suitcase.
A different kind of trickery is at play on Edinburgh musician Lauren Sarah Hayes’s Manipulation. Her compositions are an exercise in unpredictability, the product of tiny circuit board ecologies that spit out malleable loops directed – albeit only in the most general sense – by outside input. Luckily, the sense of play extends to the finished product, its skittering melodies and clip-clopping rhythms suggesting a mischievous intelligence emerging from this web of wires.
