The sound creeps on you, appears out of nowhere, out of a distant circumstance, growing in volume and presence, taking on almost frightening proportions… It’s the first piece on Iancu Dumitrescu’s first CD; “Medium III”, for double bass. Forget all you knew about double bass! I give the same advice concerning the double bass on this Dumitrescu album as I give when I introduce people to the violin recordings of wizard Malcolm Goldstein; don’t expect any sound hitherto associated with the instrument!
Yes, Dumitrescu is the composer here, but the double bass player is Fernando Grillo, and what he does to the double bass is simply amazing. A whole new sound world rises out of the big lady of an instrument! Long, outstretched sequences of a drone like quality suddenly get cut up by staccatos that whirl at you like revolving dump trucks. You sort of feel that you have to get out of the way, but you sit back and let the richness of the sound web immerse you, and carry you off to who knows what kind of future!
By this you understand that the double bass is really closely microphoned. You live the life of the double bass through this recording.

Sometimes the music of Iancu Dumitrescu is defined as “spectral” or “acousmatic”, which hints at the way the composer and the player intimately explore the sonic phenomena in structures of a perfect relationship between micro and macro, in a composing and execution act that must be guided by a right-on intuition. The result is spellbinding!

“Cogito / Trompe L’Oeil” for prepared piano, two double basses, Javanese gongs, crystals & metallic objects is the second track on the CD. It starts with a stereophonic distribution of rustling little sounds, soon joined by the higher spheres of the double basses. The basic impression is closely related to the former piece, but the richer instrumentation allows for further explorations, in a primeval tour-de-force of metallics and formidable spectrums of sharp and hollow sounds. If you learn to listen (you have to, you must practice some if you’re a newcomer to Romanian spectrals) you will take up residence in this acoustic feast for a good while. Iancu Dumitrescu’s sound space is addictive! This piece may well be a revelation to anybody who allows himself the benefit of exploration, of the joy of discovery!

Piece no. 3 is “Aulodie Mioritica (gamma)” for double bass and orchestra. Though it continues in the same spirit as the former two pieces it commences more cautiously, swarming the double bass with a circular movement of rustles, as the orchestra appears out of the darkness with heavy humps of the drums, punctuating the sounding space in a very spatial, pointillist way, with warm, brown, weighty downbeats, sparsely distributed. At times whole explosive events cut forward in the static and vibrating mass of tones, like a demolition crew cutting holes in a brick wall. As the dust dies down birdlike chirps out of the orchestra transmits real down home jungle visions, and it strikes me how this modern music can induce all kinds of associations in your mind, to green rain forests in a pristine past as well as to gray and black industrial scenes where the smokestacks stand like endless stabs along the horizon!

“Perspectives au Movemur” for string quartet is the fourth entry. This is indeed a string quartet, which begins beautifully in light caresses, soft strokes of the bow, intermingling in complex chirpings of birds of the mind, loosening the grip and letting you fly off, to hover suspended above the little instrument group, in airy demonstrations of good thoughts and introspective reflections. Your temples are being softly massaged by these stroking sounds, permitting you the hypnosis of a mindful rest, as the tip of your nose is the focus of your whole attention, in a meditation that spreads the warmth of good temper throughout your anatomy. It’s physical and spiritual all at once, and the smell of incense is pleasurable in your listening space.

The concluding work on this Dumitrescu CD is “Apogeum” for 22 wind instruments & 3 percussion groups. The immediate impression at first is that of lonely lighthouses out on the coast, as I’ve heard them in Alvin Curran’s “Maritime Rites”. The lonely calls stay far away behind the scene as the closer mass of micro sounds draws small, quick, never-ending figures with little shining lights in the dark. It’s like a desperate communication hunger, from a world trying to connect, with only fear and horror to convey to anybody in a distant world who might be listening.
“Apogeum” is a peculiar and touching work, much more emotional and bothering than the other pieces on the CD. It has a darkness to it that you seldom experience in modern music. I can think of one other piece with a similar feeling, conveyed through different means; Folke Rabe’s “Cyclone” – an electroacoustic work that distributes an overwhelming hopelessness across your perception. Iancu Dumitrescu’s “Apogeum” is also very, very beautiful, with a mental downdraft that could make you jump off a mountain…

An incredible first CD from the workshop of Iancu Dumitrescu!