Cover of Diatribes – Sistere. Artwork, Design and Handwork by Katarína Škamlová, Jakub Juhás and Zoltán Czakó. Released 2017 by Mappa Records MAP06

Diatribes: Floating on a Sonic Carpet

The music of Diatribes, a duo by the Geneva-based musicians D’incise and Cyril Bondi, induces hypnotic states. Lucia Udvardyova reflects about the inclusive communal effects of the duo's radical sonic abstraction in their latest EP Sistere.

Lucid signifiers devoid of obvious meaning or reference to external circumstances point to a primordial and abstract sonic state where music floats in and out of consciousness over and over again. Layers of sound are intricately and gradually woven into a magic carpet that dissolves at the end and drops you back into the reality of the everyday. Aural cartographies and the mediation of recording processes in various spatiotemporal contexts (resonance, vibration, reverberation) are the main elements in Sistere, the latest release of Diatribes, a duo by the Geneva-based musicians D’incise and Cyril Bondi who run the renowned imprint & (meta) orchestra Insub.

Both pieces are more than twenty minutes long and are bona fide repetitive electroacoustic recordings that usher the listener into a hypnotic state of timelessness, an inclusive communal ritual, a Zen-like mantra, a wall of sound for perception projections. There's an inherent subtlety and gentleness to the record, the music evolves over time horizontally and vertically, with added and deducted instrumental layers. Sistere is a very open record – it welcomes the active listener, without excluding the «passive», comfortably drowsy one.

Biography

Lucia Udvardyová is a music journalist, curator, and organizer. In 2010, she co-founded Easterndaze, a project that aims to document and interconnect the emerging underground scenes in Central and Eastern Europe. She has worked with Czech Radio, Resonance FM, Cashmere Radio, The Listening Biennial, The Quietus, and The Wire, Central European University (CEU), and the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts (FAMU), among others. Between 2016 and 2021, she curated and co-organized the Easterndaze x Berlin series that aims to bring together collectives from Berlin and the CEE region. She also gives lectures and talks and leads sound-related workshops. Udvardyová currently works for the SHAPE platform, a pan-European festival initiative that promotes innovative music and audiovisual art, CTM Festival’s discourse program and magazine, and she’s the film curator at WOMEX. Follow her on her website or Instagram. Follow her on Website.

Published on June 09, 2017

Last updated on December 01, 2021

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