Order via Bandcamp NEXT Festival Records
This album was supported using public funds (Slovak Arts Council/Fond na podporu umenia)The latest album by innovative Slovak composer, Barbora Tomášková, offers a unique suite of sounds, where boundaries between acoustic traditions and exploratory electronics dissolve. The Slovak composer and performer’s practice revolves around innovative use of ’objets trouvé’ and western classical instruments via hefty electronic manipulations and many extended techniques. Taking its name from both the less common and stable form of DNA and the Slovak term for “from the bottom”, Z DNA is a showcase for the composer’s distinctive interplay between wild improvisations and intricate composition. On ‘Askja’, guttural vocalisations and tumbling piano keys lie alongside unrecognisable processed noises and haunted music box melodies. ‘Saholesí’ crests upwards from rumbling electronic nonsense to a heavenly duet for bass clarinet and trumpet ascending to heaven before collapsing into sneering bass drones, found sound detritus, and a chasing clarinet.

Each of the four pieces on Z DNA unfold like their own miniature sonic narrative, with hints of patterns emerging and crumbling repeatedly. There’s a ritual sensation to the interaction of sounds on Tomášková’s mesmerising pieces; a dark and deeply resonant spin on composed improvisations with as much in common with Iannis Xenakis as Don Cherry. The album features contributions from some especially talented musicians including violinist Rozália Miklášová, clarinettist Braňo Dugovič, and the keystone of Oskar Török, whose delicate trumpet often more closely resembles a shakuhachi than a horn. Tomášková herself performs on cello, vocal, and electronics, not to mention a range of her own found/invented ‘sound objects’.
Tristan Bath