No Hay Banda / Steven Kazuo Takasugi / Huei Lin - Il Teatro Rosso [No Hay Discos 005]

Released via the core trios own No Hay Discos outfit on April 18th, 2k25 is "Il Teatro Rosso", the new album by No Hay Banda which sees the ensemble collaborate with composer Steven Kazuo Takasugi and film director Huei Lin for an extended mixed media project which, in its score'esque form, spans a total of seven scenes a.k.a. musical pieces and a total runtime of roughly 49 minutes. Opening with a chiming and highly detailed arrangement of loose, spatial and sparse sonic structures in "The Red Theatre" No Hay Banda creates a vibe vaguely and more atmospherically reminiscent of Ekkehard Ehlers' influental "Plays..." series of the early 2000s without defining the overall playing field too much we see the layers of sonic events thickening with added struck and plucked strings and intensifying dynamics in "The Spasms Of Trapped Animals" which works its way up to a set of quasi-percussive eruptions and intense drums of war contrasted by the fully focused minimalism, or better: Minimal Music, of the subsequent "Life On An Incline or Clean Geometry". Furthermore "Tar Pits" introduces the, albeit raw, use of rasping and intense Avantgarde Jazz-leaning brass instruments for the first time on this longplayer, "The Drowning" follows up with a return to buzzing detail, this time accompanied by sequences of subdued Jazz pianos which, in a livelier and more present form, transform into the backbone of "The Deeper, The Quieter... The Quieter, The Deeper" before the "Grumpy Old Man" bids farewell with the introduction of rather crackly and experimental sounds of probably electro-acoustic origin. A rather interesting album for all collectors of Avantgarde, obscure scores and advanced Contemporary Classical music.

Album artwork on Instagram!