Acre is the Italian, Rome-based trio of drummer Ermanno Baron, guitarist Ginomaria Boschi (who plays on prepared guitar, electric guitar and m’bira) and live electronics player Marco Bonini, that combines the immediacy and the creativity of free jazz, the academic sonic experimentation and the experimental electronic music of today. Acre encourages these influences to interfere with each other and enrich its adventurous, exploratory timbral spectrum. The trio collaborated with like-minded sonic explorers – American trumpeter Peter Evans, and Italian vocal artist Ludovica Manzo, and sax player Gianni Gebbia.
Praxis is Acre’s sixth album since its founding in 2014. The six pieces of Praxis are the result of a process of re-imagining Acre’s performance at Area Sismica in Forli in June 2022. These pieces were extracted from some movements of the performance, and were recombined in temporal order, according to a new narrative logic, but without editing of the original sounds. The cover painting, Monogramma Viola, was made by Rome-based abstract painter Federika Fumarola.
Acre’s music suggests an imaginative sonic journey but also an irreverent yet methodical study of acoustic and electronic timbres in real-time with great focus on detail. Praxis combines the immediate praxis of free improvisers with the academic clinical precision of patient but uncompromising sonic explorers, in the same spirit of seminal, pioneer ensembles of British drummer Eddie Prévost. Acre sounds as if updating the philosophy of the legendary AMM of searching for “for sounds and for the responses that attach to them, rather than thinking them up, preparing them and producing them”, with its own live electronics twist. The titles of some of the enigmatic, tension-filled and highly nuanced pieces, like “Dialettica della deriva” (Dialectics of Drift) and “Teoria e prassi dell’alienazione urbana” (Theory and Practice of Urban Alienation), solidify this bold and thought-provoking approach.
Ermanno Baron (drums); Ginomaria Boschi (prepared guitar, m’bira, electric guitar); Marco Bonini (live electronics).
Here Acre, live at Interzone 2024 pt 1
