Tetterapadequ - Chlopingle (Creative Sources, 2015) ****

By Stef

Not exactly prolific this band: their first album "And The Missing R" dates from 2008 already, and now, seven years later we get their sophomore album, and that is many years too late, but their music is great. The band still consists of Belgian-Italian Daniele Martini on tenor sax, Belgian-Italian pianist Giovanni di Domenico, Portuguese bassist Gonçalo Almeida who resides in Rotterdam, and Portuguese drummer João Lobo. 

The first track, "Non Negative Python", is a slow intimate and intense piece, that starts with a minimalst piano intro with sparse notes and without clear rhythm, bass and drums limiting themselves to add accents and color, creating an eery yet gentle atmosphere. Then after some eight minutes, the tenor joins for slow wailing sounds, with sustained notes, increasing the tension even more, encouraging drums and bass to become adventurous and investigative, and the piano's repetitive percussive almost one-chord hammering changes the context again, forcing the sax to become repetitive too, and the whole piece turns again heads to tail, with the eery yet gentle piano intro ending the long piece. 

"Eprobly Fowler" starts with completely suppressed sounds, like they're trying to escape from somewhere, but are prevented from doing so, giving a kind of suffocating feeling to the listener, yet gradually bass and drums emerge from the background, offering some sounds, and then the piano takes over halfway, for solo, then joined by the rest of the band, with a strong rhythmic pulse that suddenly releases the energy that was waiting to erupt. 

The album ends with "Monogamy Frightful", again a very intense and fierce workout, that lasts 'only' six minutes, yet the band goes at it with full energy and power. 

Again, one wonders why it takes so long for a band this good to publish new albums. They don't lack the creativity or the energy or inspiration to do so. True, the musicians have each individually been quite prolific lately as leaders or as members of various bands, so then can be forgiven, as long as they don't forget that Tetterapadequ also exists!