For all the criticism aimed at platforms like Bandcamp, on the flipside, it’s communities like it that help illuminate artists like Greg Nieuwsma and Antonello Perfetto.
Making music together since 2014, the midwestern born Nieuwsma and Italian percussionist Perfetto came together in Krakow, Poland, and both still residing there, the pair have crafted a body of work that reaches far and wide.
Both formerly of post-rock outfit, Sawak, following their five full-length releases, Nieuwsma and Perfetto found new synergy as a duo, taking flight over a creative voyage that has spanned over nine full-length releases. Their latest, Bird Brain, arguably at the highest point of their creative arc.
Inspired by a pair of blackbirds nesting on Nieuwsma and his wife’s balcony, the experimentalist spent weeks tracking the birds’ progress, both in sight and via field recordings. The parents and their five tiny eggs – all of which hatched but over the ensuing weeks only a sole chick survived – and as time led the parents to teach it to fly, suddenly the nest was abandoned once their work was done.
This evoked a similar story I experienced with wood pigeons. Weeks and weeks of watching a family wait for their own big day, however this particular tale doesn’t have a happy ending (the nest, wedged in the crevice of the balcony, then suddenly dislodged by a gust of wind). Like the story that inspires Bird Brain, I often wonder… where do the birds go? Are they free as the expression suggests, or is that freedom overshadowed by the blunt trauma of loss? And how exactly do they deal with that trauma?
Greg Nieuwsma & Antonello Perfetto - Bird BrainIn this case perhaps the answer lies in Bird Brain’s centrepiece, The Multiplication of Words. Long-form improvisational post-rock that essentially ties the album together. The field recordings of opening piece (Field Recording of a Blackbird Nest, Natural Speed) and penultimate track (Field Recording of a Blackbird Nest, Time Compressed (Suggesting a Being Whose Perceptions Span Greater Temporal Ranges Than Our Own), tell their own story, too. The former, the embryonic stages for the blackbirds and their family; the latter, field recordings of the young blackbird soaring at altitude.
And it’s this majestic nature that echoes Bird Brain with something that sounds like a homage to prime-era Thrill Jockey than any lost gem under layer upon layer of new releases that threaten to break the internet. Take the sinewy Territory is a Place to Sing, which calls to mind the kind of intricate interplay reminiscent of peak Tortoise. It’s Perfetto that turns that track on its head, though – his percussive freak-outs launching from the speakers making everything around you light up.
Elsewhere, on Mode of Attention Pt.1 and Pt.3, Nieuwsma and Perfetto present something melodic and woodsy. Almost Richard Thompson-inspired, landing in the same lonely orbits as Grails’ The Burden of Hope, while Mode of Attention Pt. 2 is more of a free-form expression – the hooping strings and spidery arpeggios that are prominent throughout the duo’s former releases shining through here.
While instrumental music can be what you want to be, Bird Brain’s backstory holds the same weight as reading fiction. They say one sees a lot of themselves in fiction, and in context, it’s no different with albums like Bird Brain. Stories of one’s past seen through the lens of others. That commonality of experience making itself heard through sound, and on Bird Brain Nieuwsma and Perfetto reveal themselves as genuine storytellers.
Bird Brain is out now via Cruel Nature Records. Purchase from Bandcamp.
