@C - STUDY (CD)

"It's not without irony, which is probably one of the most distinctive features of our generation creative skills, that the fourth @c's installment is appropriately called Study. After all, it's their first studio album. @c's members are laptop musicians or to be more precise laptop artists, and this is because more than often the output of their laptops is not restricted to sound. Laptop music, at least in its most interesting expression, seems to relate mainly to a sort of processual engagement. While their other releases developed from stage improvisations that later crystallized as a released recording (this obviously after a quick drop at the studio), Study, composed between 2003~2006, Porto, appears as an ongoing quasi-academic construction that seems to be going to make it the other way around. The artwork, a series of illustrations by Júlio Dolbeth, bear an informal touch that is an obvious result of its own ongoing research and brilliantly encapsulate the main concept and spirit of this album. The relaxed informality of the studio dynamic is captured with a blurred combination of looseness and precision. The cables work as a visible metaphor for the complexity of the composition process and its beauty, after all something not very far from the mental engagement that drawing implies, drawing being also the place for studies, sketches, mistakes, chance, a processual playground that can also be presented as closure. Inside, in the actual record, one realizes that an @c studio album retains the same compelling freshness and vivid dynamics of their live acts. As said, this study spans from the last three years of public performances and studio reworking, if you've never caught them live, be sure to grab a sit on the next opportunity and prepare yourself to sonic delight, after all, the stage is the space and space is the place." (label info)