CD Feature/ Earzumba: "Bestia Infernal"

Everybody nowadays seems to be into everything, but eclecticism is a double-edged sword: If your music could be anything, it risks being nothing. This danger has never seriously posed itself with the music of Christian Dergabarbedian, though, currently releasing as Earzumba after a lengthy stint as “C.D.” (take a wild guess what that stands for). Which is kind of strange considering his biography alone, which has led him from Buenos Aires to Barcelona with regular excursions all around the globe, is colourful enough to make for an ejoyable novel and his music has always drawn from multiple sources.

On the other hand, we have a strong suspicion that Dergarabedian probably wouldn’t even want his music to be eclectic – in fact that one could actually regard it as anti-eclectic. For even though the sources of Earzumba’s work are as diverse as his influences, the result has always been amazingly free from obvious reference points: “Bestia Infernal”, too, draws from a sound pool by the size of an entire lake, bringing together samples from Jazz, Stadium Rock, Pop and Argentinian Folk, but it never even for a second settles in a particular genre. These snippets from C.D.’s impressive record collection, which includes popular stars like David Bowie and Billy Joel (to name a few), are mashed together, sped up, entertwined and distorted to create bizarre and surreal moods, occasionaly showing enough of the original to remain recognisable, but mostly falling into a kind of halucinatory trance. One thing’s for sure: You can no longer whistle or sing along to these tunes and even Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” will have your feet in a knot with its clattering and stuttering march rhythms from the echo chamber. The final track, “Aura de amenaza misteriosa”, meanwhile, is an atmospheric moment of serene beauty, and leads into the grand finale, a thirty minute long drone recorded for Radio Bremen in 2005, which edges its way through giant vacuum cleaner sounds and majestic rumblings towards a hushed finale .

There are a lot of different things going on at the same time, but that does not make “Bestia Infernal” a cross-all-over album. If this a melting pot, it is one of incredible heat and pressure, amalgamating its contents into a powerful and unique alloy. The result is by no means double-edged, but it does cut both ways – this music will get you all edgey and fidgety on the outside and calm on the inside.

By Tobias Fischer

Homepage: Earzumba