Archipelago by Guilherme Rodrigues, Gábor Hartyáni, Guido Kohn & Hui-Chun Lin

released September 18, 2024

Das Berliner Cello-Quartett Hunter Underwater präsentiert stolz sein neues Album Archipelago. Die vier Cellist*innen Guilherme Rodrigues, Guido Kohn, Gábor Hartyáni und Hui-Chun Lin haben dieses Werk gemeinsam komponiert und in einer intensiven Phase des Experimentierens entwickelt – das Ergebnis ist ein brillantes und einzigartiges musikalisches Erlebnis.
Das Album umfasst sieben Musikstücke, die Klangskulpturen und Landschaften erschaffen, die den Hörer in schwer erreichbare und kaum erkundete Regionen entführen. Mit kreativen musikalischen Konzepten und perfekter Spieltechnik widmet sich das Quartett Themen wie Umwelt und Astronomie. Die abwechslungsreichen Strukturen der Stücke zeigen die Vielfalt und Reifung ihrer kammermusikalischen Sprache.
Archipelago ist das zweite gemeinsame Werk der Gruppe nach ihrem 2022 erschienenen Debütalbum Hunter Underwater. Beide Alben demonstrieren die musikalische Vielfalt, Sensibilität und Kreativität der Künstlerinnen. Der Name Hunter Underwater ist eine Hommage an die großen Meeressäuger – die Wale –, deren Intelligenz und Überlebenskraft die Musikerinnen inspiriert. Während das erste Album den Fokus auf die majestätischen Wale legte, zeichnet Archipelago die Werke und Kompositionen der vier Cellist*innen, die zwischen 2021 und 2022 entstanden sind. Die Gruppe zeigt in der Musik das harmonische Zusammenspiel von „stillem Klangbild“ und fließenden Bewegungen in vollkommener Perfektion.

English:

The Berlin-based cello quartet Hunter Underwater is proud to present its new album Archipelago. The four cellists—Guilherme Rodrigues, Guido Kohn, Gábor Hártyáni, and Hui-Chun Lin—have co-composed this work, refining it through an intense period of experimentation. The result is a brilliant and unique musical experience.
The album features seven compositions that create sound sculptures and landscapes, transporting listeners to remote and rarely explored regions. With creative musical concepts and flawless technique, the quartet addresses themes such as environmental conservation and the cosmos. The diverse structures of the pieces reveal the quartet’s evolving chamber music language, showcasing their range and maturity.
Archipelago is the quartet’s second collaborative work, following their 2022 debut album Hunter Underwater. Both albums demonstrate the group's musical diversity, sensitivity, and creativity. The name Hunter Underwater is a tribute to the great marine mammals—the whales—whose intelligence and survival skills inspire the musicians. While the first album focused on these majestic creatures, Archipelago highlights the compositions created by the four cellists between 2021 and 2022. The group masterfully captures the interplay between "quiet soundscapes" and fluid movements, achieving a perfect harmony.

REVIEWS:
Continuing to develop a distinctive sound world for four cellos, Hunter Underwater has released a second album, Archipelago, recorded in Berlin back in October 2022. This is a much longer album — twice the length & divided into individually named tracks — compared to Hunter Underwater (recorded in 2021 & released in 2022), which I never actually reviewed, but did mention e.g. in the January 2023 review of Offshore Adventures, i.e. from the "similar" quintet for trombone, two cellos, and two double basses around Hui-Chun Lin. That was also a second album (albeit with personnel changes), as coincidentally recalled here in a couple of other reviews this month.... And then Archipelago is much more sophisticated than the relatively more random & rhetorical Hunter Underwater, forging an increasing sense of underwater world, perhaps even coming to recall genres of "whale song" albums.... (And I might also compare its watery evocations to Jon Rose's new Aeolian Tendency, for which he uses self-made instruments to capture the sounds of wind. Archipelago is not so impersonal-passive however, i.e. not capturing the sounds of seas, but evoking them....) So joining Lin, who seems indeed to be cultivating this sound world in general (while also being slower with releases...), is the prolific Guilherme Rodrigues — who brings a more lyrical, quasi-romantic vibe at times... — along with (again) Gábor Hartyáni & Guido Kohn, with whom I'm (still) not otherwise familiar, but who do seem to bring a strong sense of suspension & shifting textural interplay. (There're various harmonics, bouncing string attacks, sorts of hocketing... including passages of smooth extension.) There's also a little story about Buddhist monks to open the album, and the speaking voice for that is uncredited.... The story passes in about a minute though, the music being relatively subdued to start, conjuring a distinctive minimalism at various points as it goes, almost tuneful at times, and with a real sense of repose (while building to some intense moments as well...). As noted, the result is much more coherent than the first album, i.e. leaving aside various tangential notions of "What can four cellos do?" to focus more on the particular sense of underwater scene here. And the impression does linger.
(www.medieval.org/music/jazz/)