Rodrigo y Gabriela

"9 Dead Alive"

Release date: 28 April 2014

8.5/10

22 April 2014, 09:30 | Written by Ray Honeybourne

(Albums)

(Rodrigo y Gabriela)

The press release for this fine album does it few favours: “Rodrigo y Gabriela playing face to face, guitar versus guitar …” In fact, here and on the best of their earlier recordings, the Mexican duo demonstrate an impressive range of moods and relationships: confrontational, conversational, quizzical, exploratory (inter alia). Indeed, part of the success of 9 Dead Alive arises out of the variety of styles of dialogue. As in great chamber music, communication through tone, nuance and suggestion somehow goes beyond the notes and chords. On “Sunday Neurosis”, for instance, the subtle phrasing of the instruments conveys the interrogatory rather better than the brief, fragmented oral articulating of theological and philosophical points that follows. The pair ought to have put greater trust in their exquisite playing alone to express their inquiries. Beethoven’s Late Quartets are the supreme exemplars of how complex points can be discussed wordlessly yet with extraordinary eloquence.

The following track, “Misty Moses”, with its changes of pace and directions, is a model of how fluent Rodrigo y Gabriela can be when they shift, swiftly yet with startling ease, from one musical discussion to another. In “Somnium”, the development from driving rhythm to more precise focus on instrument separation and back again shows 9 Dead Alive to be vibrant with questions, some answers, more questions and new directions of intellectual and musical travel. This track is a glorious collage of colours, some garish, some pastel, yet the very juxtaposition of tones is what is so convincing. “Megalopolis” develops from the slightly tentative to the confident (but never brash), with its growing fluency across the two instruments. Structurally so impressive, it is perhaps the highlight of the album because of its thoughtfulness, as various directions are explored, yet all the time an underlying rhythmic pulse keeps the dialogue far from any sense of drift or indulgence, and always immediately comprehensible.

The aggressive chords of “The Russian Messenger” hint at something brutal, even barbaric, yet these are disarmingly counterpointed by flashes of delicacy, before the hard-hitting re-asserts with real force. Rodrigo y Gabriela here claim inspiration from Dostoyevsky, and it is fair to say this is rather more challenging than their soundtrack work for Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Shores. 9 Dead Alive has strength, beauty and often a spirit of engagement with the tenebrous. At times, dialogues areunresolved, yet despite (because of?) this, there is vital music-making from two uncompromising artists.